On Saturday, May 14th, Congregation Har HaShem hosted a Shabbat service and luncheon for “Better Together,” an intergenerational program funded by NFTY-Missouri Valley and an anonymous donor. Since January, a group of teens from Boulder and Denver have gathered monthly at Frasier Meadows Retirement Community to participate in, and later help to lead, Shabbat services with the local residents. Teen and senior participants in the program have found more commonalities than differences in the ways they approach prayer, and have enjoyed exploring outside of their respective comfort zones during these Shabbat gatherings.

This was the first gathering to occur at Har HaShem since Winter Chavurah, when a group of residents from Frasier Meadows came to participate in the teen-led service; a service at which 200 visiting youth sang joyously and watched intermittent video clips from the Harry Potter movies as they were related to the Shabbat morning prayers. In subsequent months, Shabbat experiences have been held at Frasier Meadows where JFS volunteers Lynn Nadel and Har HaShem member David Bernstein alternate leading prayer experiences for the residents and our visiting teen participants. Both David and Lynn have been wonderful allies in building the relationships between these two wonderful generations in our local Jewish community.

The video highlights some of the experiences we’ve shared over the course of this year together. We look forward to continuing to offer this program next year, with the first Shabbat service at Frasier Meadows to be held on September 17th.