Highlights from the 2024-2025 L'Taken Season

Another incredible L'Taken season has come to a conclusion! Over the 2024-2025 season, we brought 1,800 Jewish high schoolers from across the US to join us in Washington, D.C. over our five seminars. They visited the sites, met other Reform teens from coast to coast, learned about social justice and advocacy, and made their voices heard on Capitol Hill.

Read about our season highlights of the 2024-2025 season of the Bernard and Audre Rappaport L'Taken Social Justice Seminar and then register to join us for the 2026 season!

1. L'TAKEN BY THE NUMBERS

See some of our statistics for the year below:

• Our largest weekend was January 31 - February 3, 2025, with 542 people in attendance!
• Throughout the whole L'Taken season, we scheduled 453 meetings with congressional offices, representing the Senate and House offices of all of our attendees.
• 27 brand new delegations attended L'Taken for the very first time this year!
• We had 29 states represented (30 including Washington, DC) encompassing all 177 delegations in attendance across the five weekends.
  • The state with the most delegations in attendance was New York, with a total of 27 groups.
  • Tied for second-most were New Jersey and California, with 17 groups each.

2. ADULTS @ L'TAKEN

This year, we launched a new program, Adults @ L'Taken! Adult participants joined the magic of L'Taken, learning about advocacy and social justice in their own specialized programming. We had about 30 adult participants across 6 congregations. They came together to form their own community, learning social justice concepts and lobbying on Capitol Hill alongside our teen participants.

While we are excited to bring the program back in 2027, we will not offer Adults @ L'Taken in 2026. In the interim, learn more about the Consultation on Conscience, taking place in Washington, DC, December 12-15, 2025. At this event, we will convene our core leadership bodies for strategizing, collaborating, sharing, and learning, building off of the work we all do virtually. Convening our Movement in DC is part of our long-term power building strategy that cuts across our work at the federal and state levels, adding a more nuanced voice to Jewish advocacy in DC and standing behind our elected officials who share our values.

3. SPECIAL DELEGATIONS

We had two special groups attend L'Taken this year. We were very excited to welcome a delegation from URJ 6 Points Sci Tech Academy, and URJ Teen Jews of Color Fellowship group. Each group both participated in the usual L'Taken learning, had some of their own programs, and debriefed through their unique lens. The L'Taken team loves seeing groups from all communities and hope to welcome more camps, cohorts, and other fellowships in the future!

4. OUR REVITALIZED CLIMATE JUSTICE PROGRAM

While we shake up all of our programming each year, the Climate Justice program went through an extensive revision . While we all know how bad the climate crisis is, this new program explored why it is so hard to get meaningful, effective climate legislation to pass. Students went through a simulation where they were "lawmakers", each trying to serve their own interests, while trying to pass a national bill. It was both informative and fun!

5. CSA MEETING

On our December 13-16, 2024, weekend, we had the wonderful honor of hosting the Commission on Social Action (CSA) meeting during our L'Taken seminar. While the CSA was busy meeting throughout most of the weekend, they got to share some meals with L'Taken, experience the joys of Shabbat, and see some fun programming with the L'Taken participants. It was great to learn alongside our leaders and see the work that we do that ties us all together.

6. RETURNING STUDENTS PROGRAM!

Our returning student program grows bigger and bigger every year! We had 144 students across 54 congregations that were back at L'Taken for a second year - or even a 3^rd year!They had some specialized programming to frame the weekend, selected new elective programs, and lead our community during services, Friday night blessings, and Havdalah. They also got a special ribbon on their nametags to identify them as returning students! Most importantly, the returning students had a special opportunity to have lunch with our Eisendrath Legislative Assistants to talk about their jobs at the RAC, how they got there, and what motivates them to do the work. There are certainly some future Legislative Assistants among this group of students!

7. SAFE SCHOOL IMPROVEMENT ACT

The Safe School Improvement Act (SSIA) was introduced to the 119^th Congress on Monday, March 3, 2025. This was just hours after our teens spoke to their members of Congress about this bill! SSIA had bipartisan support in the 118^th Congress (learn more!), so we hoped to see it come back with the current 119^th Congress. Throughout the entire L'Taken season, students had been asking their members of Congress to reintroduce and support this bill, so it was very exciting to see that work pay off, and we hope to see it keep moving forward with the current Congress.

It is so incredible to see the power of our collective voices, and the impact we can have when we tell our elected representatives about legislation that is meaningful to us. Many of the 82 cosponsors of the SSIA bill are offices we visited throughout the year, 17 of which we visited just on the day it was introduced from CA, DE, FL, IL, KS, MA, MD, NJ, NY, OR, and VT! Learn more about the bill, and see the full list of cosponsors on congress.gov.

8. L'TAKEN CANADA

While this was the end of our American L'Taken season, we still have L'Taken Canada, coming up March 28-31, 2025 in Ottawa! Read more about how that program went!

L'Taken 24-25 was an incredible season of coming together, community-building, and growing our force. We can't wait to see what the next generation of Jewish social justice advocates will do with their new skills and power! 

We're already planning for the 2026 season. Registration opens on March 20, 2025, at 1 PM ET. Join us before space runs out!