This year we celebrate a momentous occasion: the sixtieth anniversary of NCSY. To truly appreciate the enormous contribution NCSY has made to strengthening Orthodox life in America, we must take a trip back in time, to America in 1954, the year of NCSY’s birth.
In the 1950s, Orthodoxy in America was fragile. In many cases, children came from homes where the parents were Holocaust survivors, traumatized immigrants struggling to find their way in a strange land. They were eager to Americanize, and had difficulty conveying the significance of religious life to their American-as-apple-pie children. Across the country, the decline of Orthodox Judaism was apparent, especially among the youth.
What will become of Judaism? This was the question leaders of the Orthodox Union asked back in the 1950s.
At the OU convention in 1954, a resolution was passed that would, over time, address the escalating assimilation among the youth: the creation of a national youth movement. And so, due to the vision and persistence of OU National Secretary Harold Boxer and his wife, Enid, NCSY was born; and for those fortunate Jewish teens who have been touched by NCSY, their lives have never been the same.
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