(Courtesy of NCSY) NCSY named Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy as the winner of its annual Jewish Unity Mentoring Program (JUMP) competition.

With the goal of making Halacha as accessible as possible while still conveying the Halachot in an interesting and captivating way, high school students at Melvin J. Berman Hebrew Academy (Rockville, Maryland) launched Helpful Halacha, a text-messaging initiative whereby these students send out interesting Halachot every weekday. After canvassing their schoolmates about which topics within Halacha they were most interested in, the students decided to focus on Halachot related to davening, lashon hara and Shabbat.

JUMP is the NCSY national leadership program that trains and empowers high school students from all over the United States to become leaders. Participants are given the tools and training to make positive changes in their schools and communities, while broadening their understanding of local and global issues facing the Jewish people today. This year, 17 high school teams participated in the competition, including four public school teams. Teams were challenged to respond to issues facing the Jewish community in the realms of Jewish education or Jewish advocacy.

“The JUMP Program was created in order to provide leadership opportunities for high school students who are looking for innovative solutions to issues facing Jewish youth,” said NCSY’s Managing Director Rina Emerson. “We’ve been running the competition for more than 10 years and each year we are impressed with the inventive approaches these students take to solve issues that their peers are grappling with.”

“NCSY’s JUMP program has provided a platform for hundreds of our youth to cultivate a sense of commitment to others and to address issues facing their immediate communities. No doubt this experience will encourage and empower them to continue to develop creative communal programming as they become adult members of the larger Jewish community,” added Orthodox Union President Moishe Bane.