Our Families

In this personal interview, David Raphael, Co-founder and CEO of the Jewish Grandparents Network, and Ilene Vogelstein, President, reveal: The compelling reasons that the Jewish Grandparents Network was created. How the voices of many Jewish grandparents have been sidelined in Jewish institutional life — and...

This interactive guide is designed especially for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 3–8) to use together — either in person or at a distance. The kit offers ideas and activities to bring Shavuot to life through play, imagination, and hands-on discovery. The 13 downloadable pages include:…

How Jewish life has changed since the first Bat Mitzvah 100 years ago

David Raphael Note: I wrote this essay in 2010 and it was published in The Forward   Two years ago, at age 79, my mother became an olah hadashah, a new immigrant to Israel. We moved her to live in the small apartment above my…

This interactive guide is designed especially for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 3–8) to use together — either in person or at a distance. The kit offers ideas and activities to bring Passover to life through play, imagination, and hands-on discovery. The 14 downloadable pages include:…

18 text discussion cards prompt B-Mitzvah teens and their families to relate thought-provoking texts from the Jewish tradition to their own lives.

Listen to what’s on your B-Mitzvah grandchild’s mind as you cook together.

This interactive guide is designed especially for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 3–8) to use together — either in person or at a distance. The kit offers ideas and activities to bring Purim to life through play, imagination, and hands-on discovery. The 13 downloadable pages include:…

Moving Traditions B-Mitzvah curriculum weaves in grandparents as integral to the family experience.

Music, movement, and dance are core ingredients in transforming B-mitzvah into a vibrant celebration.

For nonbinary, transgender, or gender-expansive teens, grandparents can celebrate grandchildren in ways that honor who they are.

When a teen grandchild collaborates with a grandparent on a mitzvah project, they can share their most important values.

Relationships with our adult children — the parents of our grandchildren — are often close, trusting, and warm. Yet these relationships can, at times, be difficult to manage. Sometimes a wrong word or a misread facial expression can lead to harsh words and anger. And…

A skip-gen trip, especially to Israel, can be a peak B-Mitzvah experience for you and your grandchild.

What the Sikh Turban-Tying ceremony can teach us about B-Mitzvah

This interactive guide is designed especially for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 3–8) to use together — either in person or at a distance. The kit offers ideas and activities to bring Hanukkah to life through play, imagination, and hands-on discovery. The 13 downloadable pages include:…

3 strategies for having significant pre- and post- B-Mitzvah conversations with your grandchild

Steps you can take to develop and enhance your own relationship with the parents of your B-Mitzvah grandchild

Steps for clergy and educators to imagine what is possible for the B-Mitzvah teen with disabilities.

Combine the memory-power of objects and the ease of photography for you and your B-Mitzvah grandchild to share parts of yourselves.

JGN held a two-afternoon virtual symposium in May 2022 in which Jewish spiritual leaders, educators, ritualists, grandparents, and teens from across the country explored expansively how to transform grandparents’ roles in their grandchildren’s B-Mitzvah. The report below documents key findings and recommendations from the symposium….

Our closets and cabinets are filled with ordinary personal treasures — a pitcher from an aunt, a grandfather’s Kiddush cup, trinkets you collected in a foreign country, a pocket watch that no longer works. Sometimes we forget the potent family stories they hold. We have…

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Your grandchild is becoming B-Mitzvah. You envision them standing on the bimah, or perhaps encircled by family in a home celebration, chanting and singing and sharing the wisdom they have found in the Torah portion. At this milestone occasion, you may…

The B-Mitzvah walks across the bridge from childhood to young adulthood. It’s our Jewish way of accepting growth and inviting our teens into the community of adults. Grandparents can cross the bridge with them. We can engage with them, encourage them, and enjoy each other…

Interviewing your grandparent might be a brand-new and fun experience for you both. The conversation, if you develop it thoughtfully, may coax forgotten memories from your grandparent’s past, give you some new insights into their life, and perhaps bring the two of you even closer…

Prompts for family members to reflect on their family relationships

This interactive guide is designed especially for grandparents and grandchildren (ages 3–8) to use together — either in person or at a distance. The kit offers ideas and activities to bring the Jewish High Holidays to life through play, imagination, and hands-on discovery. The 14…

Across time and geography, memory is how we Jews come to understand our past. The Torah elevates memory to mitzvah (commandment) status, for example, Remember the Sabbath day and Do not oppress strangers (remember we were once strangers in Egypt). Our tradition reminds us of our collective responsibility to memory.

Passover begins on the evening of April 5, 2023.
Once again, this night will truly be different from all other nights. Our updated “Ten-Minute Dayenu Seder” is designed for multi-generational family seders whether held in person, virtually or a combination of both.

This Passover, the Jewish Grandparents Network spotlights the Grandparent Ambassadors of the Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit. Terry Kaye, JGN’s Director of Creative Partnerships, spoke with the JCC’s Mikki Frank, Senior Director of Jfamily, and Judy Loebl, Chief Program Officer.