Savanna Byles

Every week, students in B’nai B’rith Youth Organization —a non-profit, Jewish, teen-led organization — engage in meetings to celebrate and connect with their Jewish culture. Broken down into Aleph Zadik Aleph for the boy chapters, and B’nai B’rith Girls for the girl chapters, teens within all chapters can celebrate their culture while participating in social activities.

At Miami Palmetto Senior High, students from all grade levels participate in this out-of-school extracurricular. In some circumstances, students have attended international conventions where they can meet other teens with the same aspirations as them from all around the world or participate on their chapter’s board.

Most notably in the Miami Region, there are three main chapters that MPSH students are involved in:  Ha’lom BBG, N’Shammah BBG and Hurricanes AZA.

For junior and Miami Regional Board N’siah (President) Peyton Byrd, BBYO has given her a life-changing experience in which she has been actively involved since eighth grade.

“I originally joined because I wanted to have a sense of community in connection to my Judaism. After having my Bat Mitzvah and during COVID it was a nice way to get to know people that I would be with in the future and that I’d be seeing throughout high school,” Byrd said.

This last summer, Byrd attended Camp Perlman: a BBYO-run summer camp where she was involved in the International Leadership Training Conference, which helps to develop leadership skills while meeting teens in BBYO from all over the world.

“Summer consisted of getting to meet people like myself from around the world. And meeting these people I’ve learned how other regions work and how other people participate in BBYO. And not only have I gotten to make these connections and friendships I know will last a lifetime, but also get the experience to learn how to run a region and chapter,” Byrd said.

Within all chapters and boards of BBYO, fundraising is especially important to raise money. Most recently in May, the Hurricanes AZA Chapter hosted a carwash.

“The car wash we held raised a lot of money and it was really fun and made a lot of people laugh. The money goes towards the chapter and chapter events,” Miami Region Gizbor (Vice President of Fundraising) and senior Ruben Behar said.

In his position, Behar works with the AZA Chapters by overseeing their fundraising and helps plan one of the biggest fundraising events of the year: Giving BBYO Day. 

“BBYO has this big day called Giving BBYO Day, which is their day of donations that goes on and it expands throughout the week. And I’m in charge of planning an event anyway we need to fundraise for the Miami Region,” Behar said.

Within the N’Shammah BBG chapter, meetings occur every Tuesday at the Alper Jewish Community Center and typically feature a discussion of any old business followed by an activity such as a clothing swap or an art project.

“For the meetings, we start off by opening and we discuss old business, new business and anything happening in the Miami region. And then we do our programs, which are usually art, or cheers or really just things that have to do with sisterhood. And then we close by doing a bunch of our cheers with everybody,” N’Shammah BBG Chapter S’Ganit (Vice President) and junior Maddie Sakalo said.

These meetings allow school friends to catch up and dedicate time to see and meet new people from different schools throughout Miami.

“The meetings are just really great to see everybody and their good distraction during the week. And it’s great to see girls from other schools because it’s not just all Palmetto people,” Sakalo said.

This year marks BBYO’s centennial year, in which it has celebrated 100 years of establishing a youth program for Jewish teens to form new memories and friendships.