After our kick-off meeting in Paris (December 2009) the Marom Europe group has met again in London. The timing was intentionally adjacent to the time of the Masorti Europe conference where the Marom Europe leaders have actively participated.
Participants of the Paris meeting were happy to welcome new members in the group. While in Paris there were ten Marom leaders attending, in London we had a core group of twenty people with an additional ten people attending some of the sessions creating a group of thirty young adults. This shows how quickly the group is evolving and how much there is an interest of young adults in many cities and countries to engage in Marom.
Representatives have come from the following cities:
Alicante / Amsterdam / Berlin / Budapest / Jerusalem (Marom Israel) /Ljubljana /London / Madrid / Nice / Paris /Prague / Stockholm / Valencia
On the meetings Marom leaders identified core values of Marom chapters, common vision, next steps in co-operation project and individual needs of the different Marom chapters.
While all of the Marom groups are on different stages of development we all agreed in the end of the meeting that challenges are often similar and both newer and older initiatives can learn from each other and inspire each other.
During the weekend we have learned Jewish text together, we have had social events, shared personal and professional stories. Among others the group has met Tzvi Graetz, executive director of Masorti Olami, Avigail Ben Aryeh, director of Marom Olami, Chaim Weiner director of Masorti Europe, Matt Plen, director of Masorti UK and Gill Chaplin, chair of Masorti Europe, chief organiser of the conference and rabbi Jonathan Wittenberg. These meetings offered a good opportunity for the representatives to speak out their fears, problems, dreams, questions and to receive answers of the professional and lay leadership of the Masorti movement.
A unique experience was the visit in the Moishe House where the group has met the co-founder of MOHOLO (Moushe House London), Joel Stanley, former Marom coordinator of the UK.
It is certainly not a co-incidence that the Budapest Moishe House was also founded by Marom members. The cutting edge initiative of Moishe Houses (see recent article in
New York Times and
JTA)
On Friday evening participants have visited the Bait Noam that is built on a similar concept of the Moishe house and during the meeting it was raised by several members that the existence of Marom centers built on a similar structure of Moishe house and the Sirály Marom JCC in Budapest belong to their vision.
As part of the seminar it is important to mention the special shabbath experience with the New North London Synagogue, especially the shabbath service with Assif (egalitarian minyen of New North london Synagogue). Many participants do not have the possibility of such services in their home country and many of them were inspired by it very much.
Last but not least the conference was closed by a panel discussion by three Marom leaders: Noemi Taylor (Paris), Adam Schönberger (Budapest) and Jackie Gerber (London, UK / US).
Schönberger has summarized the essence of Marom as follows: Marom is the outreach of the masorti movement, and being such has an enormous importance. Being such it is also the “PR” of the movement, needs to remain open, inclusive and requires special attention. At the same time, Marom has the potential of innovation, creativity, experiment which are values and needed elements of the worldwide masorti movements. An interesting result of the panel was the statement, that Marom is not necessarily the continuation of the Noam groups, as young people are searching for new group identities after 18/20. Both Noemie and Jackie has emphasized the success and importance of such simple events as Sabbath dinners. This was in line of the participants earlier statements about the needs of Marom people: young adults are searching for non-judgmental, open community spaces where they can feel at home – in their own ways.
Eszter Susán, current coordinator of the Marom Europe initiative has emphasized quality above quantity and the advantages of being a smaller organization and being more flexible to changes. Both the need of intimate groups and the focus on quaility are genuine characteristics of the generation X needs mapped by the
survey of Jumpsart / The Natan Fund / The Samuel Bronfman Foundation that was also quoted by Joel Stanley, Moishe house director. ) The survey describes the new type of eco-system of young Jews in America that seems to be very similar to many initiatives in Europe, even if in Europe there are still much less such ventures as of today. Besides, Susán was also emphasizing the importance of social justice in Marom programming.
In the conference closing session Tzvi Graetz has mentioned the importance of support of Marom - the future of the masorti community, whereas Eszter Susán has emphasised the power of innovation through Marom.
Concrete results:
Communication as priority
Home hospitality between Marom Europe chapters
Ideas of further bilateral co-operations (Amsterdam-Valencia, London-Paris, etc.)
Exchange of existing projects (Jewstock, skype hevrutah)
Ideas about next meeting (probably in the fall, depends on EU funding)
Idea of extension of online hevrutot
Common blog
Mapping values of Marom Europe
Networking, information distrubition
Defining special needs and challenges of the Marom communities
After spending three days together the participants left with new ideas, new friendships and a more clear vision of Marom Europe - its mission, goals, challenges and their role in advancing it.
Rabbi David Lazar Inbar Bluzer Shalem (in the middle) 
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Cock-a-doodle-do ! The French Marom Paris team is happy to present its brand new logo to you ! We hope you will recognize and like : 
we have spent time together after Motzei shabbath in a nice bar
and we have discovered a bit of Paris together - of course!
