Muslim - Jewish Drama Group 

Noam was born out of a seminar in Israel in the summer of '88. One Nikki Phillips attended and left the seminar (talking about hadracha training) full of ideas and passion for a Masorti youth movement back in Blighty. Noam was therefore born out of two of its current pillars - Hadracha and Zionism. By 1989 Noam was ready for its first camp and on that camp there were six madrichim and only 24 chanichim. Two of those chanichim were Reg Sklan and Josie Cohen who both went on to be Movement Workers.

Noam had its first employee in 1990 and he went by the name of Paul Glantz. He worked for a year and started club, it ran nearly weekly and he created a structure for both club and 'Noam Shabbats', which were run on a regular basis. He also began to train and define the role of madrichim.

Joel Levy and Nina Lindon then took over and between 1991 and 1993 really worked to give Noam a purpose. They wanted to create a movement with strong beliefs and ideology. In those two years they started Anafim France, Anafim UKOK, and crucially Meltam (leadership training) and Veida (annual conference). Veida began Noam off on its course of democracy.

Meltam was written and created by Cheryl Sklan, Rob Rabinowitz, Sara Levan and Joel Levy. It proved to be incredibly successful and elements of the program written in 1991 are still used today.

Sara Levan took over the reins in 1994 and by this time we already had up to 60 chanichim on Machaneh in the U.K. as well as more on Anafim France.

In 1996 while Matt Plen was running things he realised what Noam needed... organisation! He started off by creating the policies, protocols, procedures and pre-camp we still have today. You could call him the man of p's.
On Veida in 1996 the glorious day happened and Noam members took control and created our five pillars. They debated and argued, cried and cheered as Noam's ideology was carved into stone. Until the day that a new generation would seek change. This change came in 2003 when the Zionism pillar was rewritten and in 2005 when the remaining 4 pillars were rewritten. But that is what they wanted and on that day in 1996 they knew that any majority of Noam members could change their good work, and that made them smile.

And that is a brief history of a beautiful movement.