Carl Abramowitz is passionate about working with the next generation, with over two decades of experience as a middle and high school teacher and his current role as director of teen engagement at the Katz JCC in Cherry Hill.
Abramowitz said he always knew he wanted to work with kids. His passion came from his mother, a college microbiology professor. Growing up, he saw her efforts to support and inspire her students.
“At a time when it wasn’t a very popular position for women to go into sciences, every year she used to have gatherings and get-togethers of her students, and they just looked up to her. She celebrated students who were … just working night and day to also become professors and get their doctorates in biology or major in sciences,” Abramowitz said.
After leaving the education field in the early part of his career, Abramowitz found his way back to working with teens and took the teen engagement job at the Katz JCC in 2024.
The Cherry Hill resident said at least a couple thousand teens take advantage of the JCC’s services throughout the year. His job is to engage them with programming so they socialize with each other and build a Jewish identity.
He collaborates with other Federation agencies like the Jewish Community Relations Council and Jewish Family Children’s Services to create interesting activities that will draw teenagers to the facility on Springdale Road.
He also works on the J-LEAD program, which works to inspire Jewish teens to be leaders in their communities.
Abramowitz said he has the freedom within his job to fashion and launch these programs.
“What this job affords me, is that it allows me to be creative. And it allows me to create spaces for teens to opt into a variety of interests,” Abramowitz explains.
Abramowitz started working at the Katz JCC just over a year ago. He said that early in his tenure, parents told him they wanted programs that they could bring their children to on vacation days from school, so the kids would socialize instead of sitting in front of a screen all day.
Those conversations led Abramowitz and the JCC to create “School’s Out! Vacation Days at the J.”
The program offers kids and teens a variety of indoor sports, movies, obstacle courses and “mitzvah projects” to do during those welcome weekdays off from school.
“Parents are the backbone of the work that I do. I started out my job actually running something similar to the way a school would have an open house, inviting parents in, where I’d want to present some of the ideas and thoughts that I had about what the teen engagement program would look like, but also to invite their own ideas,” Abramowitz said.
Abramowitz said he loves the idea of his students connecting with each other; he said it’s amazing to see kids building relationships and learning from the programs at the JCC.
He said a mentor of his gave him a mantra that’s become an important part of his job.
“It’s not just about the teen’s relationship with you. It’s also about how you are creating a space for the teens to grow the relationships with each other, and that really stuck with me,” Abramowitz said.
Abramowitz recently became a member of Congregation Kol Ami in Cherry Hill, another development that brought Judaism back more prominently into his life.
He said his work has brought him full circle from his time working as a counselor at a Jewish summer camp to recreating the experiences he loved as a kid.
It’s been fun “rediscovering” his religious connection, Abramowitz said. “And I think the story is that, like most secular Reform Jews, they disappear from the Jewish organizations and any sort of Jewish practices pretty much after the bar mitzvah … until they have children themselves,” said Abramowitz, who has a son.
And now his work allows Jewish teens to find and create their own Jewish identity. He said it’s “serendipitous” how his career turned out this way.
“A lot of my teens that are part of my Jewish philanthropy program talk about how … they appreciate this hidden communication and unwritten connection that you automatically have with when you’re in a room with another Jewish teen. I really, really appreciate that I’m part of something that where they feel like they don’t have to hide, they don’t have to they don’t have to try to defend. They can be their full selves, experience Jewish joy, and sense of pride in their Jewish identity,” Abramowitz said.
