A Strategy to Stop Assimilation
by Rabbi Yisroel Roll
From the age of 5 , Iqbal Masih, worked 12 hours a day, six days a week, in a carpet factory in Pakistan. At age 10, Iqbal escaped and began speaking out against child labour abuse. He was murdered at the age of 12 in April, 1995.
In Canada, twelve year old, Craig Kielburger, read about Iqbal and organized an awareness campaign about child labour abuse. He was concerned about the 246 million child labourers and the 73 million of whom who are under 10 years old. He named the group Free the Children. It made international news. Craig is now 27. There are now Free the Children offices in 35 countries and 1 million people have been participated in its projects. Craig said: “We had the daunting task of breaking down the barrier of belief that children are incapable of being key agents of positive social change. We were often seen as idealistic; dreamers who could not translate words into action.”
My meetings with enthusiastic Jewish students and young adults on my lecture tour in London in May, 2011, and the unfolding of recent tumultuous world events, have convinced me that we have a window of opportunity to prod the Third Commonwealth of Israel into becoming a reality. How? With a pro-active campaign of mainstreaming Jewish youth into leadership roles in the community.
Many youth are disaffected and are marrying out-so let’s ask those young people who are involved and actively engaged in Jewish communal life how to bring their friends back into the fold. And we can only do that if we bring young, active Jewish leaders to us-- and give them a voice in our synagogues, institutions and organizations.
