From our Youth Group Advisors – December 2017 – January 2018
From our SPeTY Advisor
Rachel Fischer
Imagine a Conservative Jewish house in the 1970’s without a TV. No Monday Night Football. No ball games of any sort in the household. Just Saturday morning radio broadcasts for fun.
Then, imagine the former Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena (currently the Oracle Arena.) The glass exterior sparkles. The interior buzzes with the excitement. Basketball thumps and the constant squeaking of rubber-soled shoes on the hardwood cut through the din. The Harlem Globetrotters hit the floor for the pre- game show and the crowd explodes.
If it weren’t for a bunch of Jewish kids, I never would have experienced my first professional basketball game. I knew of neither the Golden State Warriors nor Sacramento Kings. But because my temple youth group was going to that game, my parents made me go too. Yes, it was awkward. I didn’t know the other kids in the group, which team to root for, or even how to respond to the game. So incredibly awkward.
But looking back, I have to wonder. If not for that day, would I have gone to basketball boot camp in high school or signed up my kids up for junior basketball league? Youth group allowed me to do something I had never done by trying something different from what my parents did. Though I didn’t know it at the time, youth group planted some seeds that changed my future.
That’s the magic of youth group.