JCC Program Teaching Youths the Roots of Maturity

Steve Albanese, a Christian, is spending his summer at the Jewish Community Center learning how to be a mensch.

In the popular understanding of the Yiddish word, mensch generally means a “good person.” But the word has a deeper meaning; a mensch is also an individual of integrity.

And that’s what Steve and more than a dozen other youths who will be entering eighth or ninth grade in the fall are learning this summer.

In the center’s Leadership in Training program, the youths on the verge of adolescence  spend half their days in training to be camp counselors and the other half in training how to be adults. They are learning, through experience, the importance of responsibility and respect. 

On Wednesday, the youths continued learning the value of helping those who are in need by preparing vegetable soup for the clients of the Stein Hospice in Franklin.

It’s called the Chicken Soup Project but because there is so much fresh produce in the summer, the youths decided to switch to vegetable soup, Sharon Katzenell, head of the Leadrrship in Training unit, explained.

Sara Culang, the volunteer coordinator at the hospice, told the youths that the soup is more than a nourishing comfort meal for the clients.

“It lets them know they are people in the world who care for them,” she said.

Culang said making the soup — from scratch — is one of “the ways we can make this world a better place.”

One of the youths in the program said the lessons learned this summer will serve as metaphysical “mulch” as their character develops and matures. “It will be a foundation for what I do later in life,” she said.

The Chicken Soup Project is not the only community service the students are performing this summer. Each Monday they hold a bake sale at the JCC on Talamini Road to raise money for efforts to help those affected by Hurricane Sandy at the Jersey Shore.