Youth  Club
​מועדון נוער

Young people are encouraged to join in with informal social activities run at the Centre.  The club meets once a month and the activities are chosen and organised by the members.  Open to everyone in Year 8 and above – you don’t have to attend Cheder or be a member of the OJC to join in.  For more information contact cheder@ojc-online.org .

Young people from the OJC are also encouraged to participate in the local Thames Valley Limmud and in national youth activities organised by the various youth movements in order to meet and mix with other young Jewish people from around the country.

Many of our youth join their choice of national youth group schemes (such as Noam, RSY, and Bnei Akiva) during the summer holidays as well as going to the Kaytana Summer scheme, which is organised in Oxford.
Grants are available to members from the Koch fund and the Posner fund to attend national and other youth events.

Richard and Natalie Koch fund
The Richard and Natalie Koch Fund was set up by the Oxford Jewish Congregation in 2000, following a generous donation from Harriet Cronin in memory of her late parents and a successful fundraising event within the community.

The Kochs were long-standing and well respected members of the congregation who met in Oxford as refugees. Richard Koch had a particularly strong interest in the welfare of the children of the community and was enthusiastic to welcome children into synagogue and draw them into Judaism generally. He will also be remembered as being selfless in his activities for the congregation. Because of the Kochs' particular interest in the children of the community, the Fund was set up to support these youngsters.

The Fund offers financial assistance to children of members of the community, up to the age of embarking upon higher education, who wish to undertake projects that have broadly educational and cultural purposes with a Jewish theme. Although the resources of the fund are too small to provide full funding, it is hoped that the fund can assist most applicants with worthy projects. Trustees administer the fund on behalf of OJC.

Since the Fund's launch, OJC youth (between the ages of 12 and 18) have been supported on a wide variety of programmes. These include Summer camps and trips, both within the UK and also to America and Eastern Europe, gap year projects in Israel and South America, yeshiva study in Jerusalem, and the Limmud conference. We ask recipients to write about their projects in the OJC publication Menorah and judging by these reports, they learn a great deal from their experiences and also have a very enjoyable time.

Application forms and literature about these exciting schemes for young people are available from koch@ojc-online.org