NCSY, Oakland
Rabbi Naiman is the NCSY director for teens at Oakland’s Beth Jacob Congregation, and is the founding director of BILT, which is an NSCY program that brings boys from the USA for a 5 week trip to Israel, with the goal of forging strong bonds between them and their Jewish identity.
Rabbi Naiman is the NCSY Director for the Bay area of N California, where the numbers have increased over the past three years from 20 to 280.
Rabbi Naiman’s success derives from the dynamic shabbatons and other programs which he runs, and which magnetically attract the local teens. Recently his chapter ran a program called TAP – Teen Advocacy Program where high school teens were trained for a period of 5 weeks in the art of lobbying. After that they went to Sacramento where they lobbied for gun control and against anti-Semitism on campus.
The chapter organizes chavrusos over Skype for high school students, and runs summer programs and GAP year programs in Israel.
Rabbi Naiman runs one of the 12 NCSY programs every summer in Israel, and this year his chapter is sending 25 high school students to Israel. This is the largest amount for any chapter on the West Coast.
This year he organized the first ever Israel GAP year fair in California which was attended by a record 50 attendees. They are thrilled that the number of 12th graders coming to yeshiva/seminary this year is up from 1 last year to hopefully 6 students this year.