A collage of photos of the Ratner family at an ECE Purim Carnival, the JCC swim team including Noa and Rahm Calili, a group of BBYO teens and Rita and Keith Pitzele with two of their granddaughters

Jewish Life

JCC Indianapolis is proud of its Jewish heritage and seeks to create a community space driven by these values. For a listing of Jewish holidays, visit https://jccindy.org/about-us/holidays/

Jewish Holidays

The following are programs specifically for, or about, Judaism.

Shinshinim

Thanks to a grant from the JCC Association and the Jewish Agency for Israel, the greater Indianapolis Jewish community will have an opportunity to engage with young emissaries from Israel who are here as part of the Shinshinim Young Ambassadors program to bring Israeli culture to life. The program is a partnership between Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Jewish Agency for Israel. The JCC is a constituent agency of the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis and receives funding for programs like this through its Annual Campaign.

Shinshinim, a Hebrew acronym for Shnat Sherut or “year of service,” are the best and the brightest of Israel’s recent high school graduates who have deferred army service to spend a year in a diaspora community. They serve the community through volunteering in synagogues, our JCC, Hebrew schools and youth groups.

Follow them on Facebook or Instagram. Or subscribe to their monthly newsletter, Shinshi-NEWS below.

And if you would like to host the students, please contact Eric Koehler at ehkoehler@JCCindy.org.

Meet Our Shinshinim

Enav lives in Haifa. Likes to dance, paint (she has an Instagram page for her illustrations!) and play piano. She looks forward to teaching about Hebrew vocabulary and current events.

Maya lives in Jerusalem. She has studied classical music, ballet and piano and taught social-distanced yoga and creative writing classes. During the pandemic, she organized meal trains for seniors and volunteered at a kibbutz picking avocados and mangos due to the shortage of farm workers. She looks forward to teaching about Jewish holidays and popular Israeli music.

BBYO Chapter

For Jewish teens. BBYO is the leading pluralistic teen movement aspiring to involve more Jewish teens in more meaningful Jewish experiences. For over 95 years, BBYO has provided exceptional identity enrichment and leadership development experiences for hundreds of thousands of Jewish teens.

Interested in joining? Contact

Ethan Cohen
BBYO City Director
317-532-5996
ecohen@JCCindy.org

Members may join the following Facebook groups:

BBYO Indy

BBYO Indy Parents

Indy BBYO Alumni

For more information about BBYO, visit the Kentucky-Indiana-Ohio region page on the BBYO website.

Events

The J is a partner in hosting a Jewish and Israeli Film Festival.

Jewish & Israeli Film Festival

Other upcoming Jewish events:

No Events

The Albert and Sara Reuben Holocaust Memorial Garden

Located on the Max and Mae Simon Jewish Community Campus, is the Albert and Sara Reuben Holocaust Memorial Garden. The centerpiece of the garden is a sculpture “Surviving Spirit” by survivor Alfred Tibor, a single statement of the horror and triumph of the Jewish people.

The base of the monument is six-sided like the Jewish star. It is inscribed with the names of some death camps and concentration camps. The Mourner’s Kaddish (Jewish prayer for the dead) is part of the Memorial as well as a poem and a quotation from Elie Wiesel.