FZY, the Federal Zionist Youth movement which takes the largest number of Jewish teenagers on "Israel Tour" each summer, has elected Noah Levy as its new Mazkir (National Director).
Noah, a third year student at University of Bristol and former head of its JSOC (Jewish Society), said it will be "a great honour" to head the organisation. "I’m looking forward to teaming up with other youth movements to enhance community cohesion for a strong and united Jewish future in the UK," he mused.
Speaking to The Freud Word, Noah explained his priorities as "engagement, education and social action." He said: "For next year, I'm passionate to increase engagement with our Hadracha -leadership programmes - all over the country. Along with this I want to increase participation on all our programmes including our gap year - Year Course.
I am passionate for Tikkun Olam, this is a concept which unifies Jews from across the spectrum: so my vision is for FZY to increase its engagement with social action and to be a leading player within the community."
And Ed Tyler, current Mazkir, praised Noah's "passion for the Jewish community in the UK, and love of Israel" as the reasons why he will be " the ideal replacement." He added: "Noah will be a fantastic Mazkir and I have no doubt he will keep the movement on the upwards path it is on at the moment..."
"I really hope he is able to work with his incredible competitor and friend, Laurie Hirschowitz on developing her ideas for the movement as well as his own," he said. Tyler can't reveal Noah's majority, but he told The Freud Word that "it was a very tight race and could have gone either way."
Reflecting on his current job, Ed added "I feel we have made tremendous progress in engaging our members and developing new and exciting ideas for FZY. We are extremely excited to see a rise in our numbers for Israel Tour, the birth of new programmes Livnot and ATID, and the passion of our members at our recent Veida (conference) shows that youth movements such as FZY should continue to be an integral part of British, Jewish society"
He summised: "It will be emotional for me to leave my post in August, but I know I will be leaving FZY in very safe and capable hands."
Tyler also said that the new policy to "change reform service to an 'egalitarian service'" was a sign of good things to come. "On various cross communal seminars with other movements I've seen how well they (services from different strands of Judaism) work together and are able to create one joint Egalitarian service which represents all their forms of Judaism. I believe the service we run has the potential to do this better than it does to serve one particular stream of Judaism," he mused.
