Sixty-three juniors attended a “Pluralistic Day School Seminar” sponsored by PANIM, The Institute for Jewish Leadership and Values, in Washington, D.C., from Dec. 14 to 16.

The seminar was held at the Washington Marriot Hotel and aimed to educate high school students to apply Jewish values to public policy and social issues.

The seminar was designed to teach students to “explore public policy, politics and activism through a Jewish lens,” according to PANIM’s Web site, www.panim.org.

This is the third year PANIM provided the seminar exclusively for JDS students.

PANIM Stone Fellow Julie Lowe, who led the seminar with with PANIM Director of Education Rabbi Jason Kimelman-Block, has been leading an egalitarian junior minyan since the start of the school year.

Julie became interested in working for PANIM because she had been in “the Jewish community in college and wanted to work in Jewish education,” she said.

“I wanted the experience where I could be exposed to Jewish educators who could teach me in ways that I’ve never been exposed to,” she said.

Lowe said that “being at JDS definitely helped me work on the seminar because there were a lot of familiar faces and a lot of people who I interact with on a daily basis.”

Junior Marina Irony attended because “students had told me that it was really a life-changing experience,” she said.

The program opened with a lecture from PANIM founder and President Rabbi Sid Schwarz, who highlighted the importance of self-identity.

“What you do in your life flows from how you identify yourself,” he said.

Schwarz then posed three questions and asked students to record them in their PANIM notebooks and leave blank space to write responses during the seminar. One of the questions was, who am I?

Schwarz addressed social activism and explained that one of the major purposes of Judaism is “the responsibility to extend the boundaries of righteousness and justice in the world.”

Students visited five D.C. area “service sites” in groups and participated in projects ranging from building apartments to reading books with three-year-olds at a daycare for underprivileged families.

The sites were Bright Beginnings, Inc.; Community for Creative Nonviolence; Lutheran Social Services for Refugees and Immigrants; N Street Village; and Urban Tree House.

The rest of the program included discussions on societal issues such as capital punishment, poverty and human rights. Each issue was discussed both from a policy perspective, or the way in which the government views them, and from a Jewish perspective, or the way that Jewish values are involved in making decisions about the issue.

On Thursday evening, students went to McPherson Square in Northwest D.C. to participate in a program called “Street Torah.” They handed out toiletries to homeless men and women who gather there to receive soup from a truck that serves as a makeshift soup kitchen every night.

“Street Torah was the highlight of the conference,” said junior Josh Akman. “We got to talk to the homeless people.”

Irony agreed. “It became more personalized seeing people who were homeless,” she said. “We got past stereotypes such as homeless people being lazy and dangerous.”

A major goal of the seminar was to teach the students how to lobby effectively, emphasizing that the number one way to effect tikkun olam, or the Jewish virtue of repairing the world, was to e-mail, call or lobby your elected officials.

Lessons on lobbying included a “Civics 101” and an “Israel Advocacy Session,” and culminated in an hands-on experience in which the students met with senators and House representatives on Capitol Hill on Friday. This had an empowering effect on students.

“I know now that I have an influential voice in politics because I’m educated because I now have had a lobbying experience,” Irony said.

The seminar made students understand the meaning of social justice and how they can advocate for it.

The entire experience made Akman more aware of his role in other people’s lives.

“I now have a greater understanding of my obligation to help other people,” Akman said.