Rabbi Jaech's Blog

This past Friday evening, five outstanding high school seniors celebrated their confirmation at Temple Israel.  As part of the ceremony, they each offered a personal statement that reflected their thoughts about their Jewish identity. I am inspired by what they wrote.  Their words offer us a glimpse of our Jewish future and give us every reason to face that future with hope. 

 Rachel Cofsky

Being Jewish puts me in the small minority of people who eat lox and bagels. I’m joking. New Yorkers eat enough lox to drain the Atlantic ocean of their salmon supply and I don’t even like lox to begin with. Anyway, what I like about being Jewish is that I feel a sense of community, around me. Being Jewish connects me to a long line of strong people who had to fight hard to be Jewish. But I don’t want to talk about Jewish suffering, that’s for another day. I want to talk about the joy that comes from our identity. For me it’s not just a religion, it’s a culture, when I was feeling isolated and I was struggling with my mental health last year I went to the Rabbi for guidance. We had a long conversation and in the end, she convinced me to join the confirmation class. Rabbi Jaech is very convincing, and although I wasn’t fully sure about how I felt about the class at first, my opinion soon changed. Through our bi-weekly meetings and our trip to DC I have made connections that made me feel safe and I can honestly say that I consider everyone in the class to be my friend. So in conclusion what I like most about Judaism the community built around it and maybe the food too. 

Molly Levitt

Good evening everyone. Thank you so much for being here to see us be confirmed. When I was brainstorming for this speech, thinking about my experience growing up Jewish, being part of the larger Jewish community here and globally, and later coming to take a more active role in being Jewish, I kept coming back to time. No, not the Pink Floyd song (ba-dum-tss). You probably know time as the physically objective yet psychologically malleable concept that rules over pretty much every area of our lives. Anyone who’s ever stopped for a second to think about it understands the significance of time. Time divides and unifies. Time makes and breaks people, cities, and empires. Time is everything, and it has meant everything to my journey with Judaism. Judaism is more than 3500 years old and is one of the oldest religions practiced to this day. So if anyone knows time, it’s us. And time has been our friend and our foe.

On one hand (the clock hand?), the rest of the world, time and time again, likes to dredge up the same stereotypes and use the same tactics to terrorize us and drag us down. Looking back at some of the worst moments in our history, from the atrocities of the Holocaust, to how my great-grandparents escaped the pogroms in Eastern Europe, to the discrimination my mother faced growing up Jewish in the south, to the events of terrorism that have happened across the country in recent years, you come to realize the gravity of the saying: “history repeats itself”. I remember after Pittsburgh - I was in eighth grade at the time - Temple Israel held a Shabbat service open to the community to mourn and pray together. I remember when my dad dropped me off. I remember crying in the car in the parking lot, being afraid to go in, for fear that we, too, would be victims of such a horrific attack. That was the night that I first realized why we always had security outside for our High Holy Day services. In this way, time doesn’t work in our favor.

The threads of time connect me to my ancestors going back thousands of years. That fear I felt that night has been felt by generations upon generations of Jews. The fear to be ourselves, to not just practice our religion, but to live safe, authentic, meaningful lives. And over time, people have weaponized the same lies and scare tactics to threaten us and violently rise to power.

 But, as Rachel said, I don’t just want to talk about our suffering. I want to talk about our joy, and our hope.

We as a Jewish people never forget the importance of time. We reclaim time and make the most out of it. My grandfather loves to tell the same stories over and over again. We all know exactly how he starts them, the exact moments he will build suspense and exactly how he’ll end them. If you know pop-pop, you know what I’m talking about. Bow ties, anyone? But no matter how many times he tells them, I secretly love to listen. We are storytellers by nature, because we need to be mindful of time. We need to remember - it’s crucial to who we are. Pop-pop once told me, “if you don’t have memories, you have nothing”, and I’ve never forgotten it.

We cherish our stories, pass them down generations over centuries and millennia and make them central to our being, from the smallest to the largest of stories. Some of the highlights of my confirmation class have been looking at our ancient stories and how they have held up over time, but also changed based on what we as a people were going through at the time. We looked at the creation story - the classic versions, and a “newer” version that spoke to me. In this version, when God said, “let there be light”, ten vessels came forth holding the light to deliver to the world. But they were too fragile to hold such a powerful, divine, primordial light, and so the ships split open, and sparks of light fell all over the world. We, people, were created to find the sparks and bring them together again. In a time where we were exiled and living in fear of persecution across Europe due to being blamed for the plague, this story gave the Jewish people context for their exile. It was their job to collect the sparks from every corner of the Earth. When all of the sparks were one day collected, the broken vessels would be restored, and tikkun olam, the repairing of the world, would finally be complete. When I read about this story, once again, I felt a thread connecting me to Jewish people of centuries past, but this time, it wasn’t fear I felt. Instead, I felt the hope and empowerment that I like to believe my ancestors felt when reading this story despite living in such a dark time. I have always been interested in justice, and making the world a better place for us and future generations, and this story only further motivated me to do so.

Just like how my ancestors would have been lost without these stories, I would also be lost without the Jewish stories told by artists across space and time. Reading Night by Elie Wiesel as a freshman in high school, and even the Maus graphic novels in eighth grade were experiences that had such a big impact on me and made me feel more connected than ever to my Judaism. I love this show called Russian Doll, and I won’t spoil it cause it’s a really underrated show and you all should watch it, but the second season goes surprisingly deep into the backstory of the main character, who is Jewish. It follows her grandmother as she survives Nazi-occupied Hungary, to her mother as a young woman in New York, to the character herself and how she grapples with this legacy and the trauma it has left her and her family with. While my generational story is quite different, I noticed so many parallels between her family and mine, and the unique ways in which our Jewish culture and past has shaped us. As I was watching, I felt like the gaps in my own understanding of myself were being filled in. I don’t know what I would do without the creators and the storytellers who honored time, and helped shed light on its mysteries for all of us to understand. I like to think they’ve played a role in helping collect some of those sparks, repairing the world through sharing stories. In some way, shape or form, I hope to do this someday. If not through fiction, then through conversation. I love conversation (in case you haven’t noticed, I like to talk). If my story and conversation can guide someone, help them understand someone or something they didn’t, or heal them somehow,then I’ll feel like I’ve fulfilled my purpose.

I think it’s beautiful, what we’ve done with time. That’s what I love about being Jewish. Being Jewish means that in this great expanse of time, I will never be alone. I will always have my people, in past, present, and future. We are united by strength and by time. Thank you.

Hanna Ranis

A middle school classroom is chaos. People throw pencils at each other’s heads, roll on the floor, and do other weird things. In the midst of this chaos, I remember saying something to a friend about celebrating Hanukkah. That small disclosure seemed to temper the chaos in front of me for a moment, as a classmate turned and blurted out “but you don’t look Jewish.” In that moment, someone else had defined what makes me Jewish. I didn’t have a Bat Mitzvah in 7th grade, so many of my peers assumed that I wasn’t Jewish. My classmate came to a decision about my ability to call myself Jewish based not on my own identity, but on his perception of what makes a Jewish person: physical appearance and having a Bat Mitzvah at a certain age. 

When I was younger I wasn’t sure about being part of a Jewish community. I worried that I didn’t believe every word written in the Torah, and that I wasn’t “religious” enough. That changed when I came to Temple Israel. Rabbi Jaech showed me that my Jewish identity can be so much more than this. I will always remember a sermon she gave about the phrase “choose life.” We choose, it is not a command. I have learned that I can choose the parts of my Jewish identity that fill me with a feeling of purpose, appreciation, and love. This choice isn’t about cherry-picking. Rather, it is about finding meaning in family, friends, traditions, and community. I decided to have a Bat Mitzvah my freshman year of high school because I wanted to honor my own family heritage and learn more about it. My parents gave me the space to make the choice for myself, which made the experience more meaningful. What I didn’t expect was that in the process I would meet a community of people, people who have made me a better person and touched my life forever. Our shared history, set of values, and often laughter-filled experiences are what matters to me most. 

Our experience going to Washington DC also showed me that being Jewish doesn’t have to exist in a silo, away from my other identities and interests. We lobbied to support access to reproductive healthcare, using Jewish text to back up our position. If Temple Israel has taught me that choosing parts of my Jewish identity is important, then our DC trip encouraged me to appreciate the Jewish community around me and use it to advocate for issues that I care about. A few months ago my dad and I were listening to a podcast. It talked about how organized certain social movements are in the US because people get involved with them through their churches. This initial involvement makes them feel more connected to the cause because they already have a community supporting them. In DC our congregation lobbied for reproductive rights, gun control, and mental health resources in schools. All of these are topics that can only be addressed through collective action. This is action that we can choose to start right here, in our own built-in community. The idea of choice also extends to the decisions we make about our relationship with Israel. This is something I have struggled with, especially this year as I try to reconcile my identity as a Jewish person with my anger and sadness over the actions of the current Israeli government. Through discussions at CJL, I have seen that we must stand against the democratic backsliding and human rights abuses happening in Israel. In fact, saying nothing is also a choice, one that signifies support of the current leadership. Silence has power that we may not realize.  

This idea about silence is something that I learned when studying my Torah portion for my Bat Mitzvah. The process showed me that the ideas in Jewish texts can be applied to our personal and political present. They help us figure out the road ahead. These stories and prayers are important to me not because I think they historically took place, but because of how they bring us together in conversation and song in the present. A few years ago I attended a Friday night service with a family friend. My mom was going through cancer and having surgery the next day. I was scared. Singing the prayer for healing helped me, not because I thought the words would medically help my mom, but because they allowed me to have a moment to face my fears and appreciate the people I love. My family friend hugged me during it, reminding me that I am part of a vast support system that I too often take for granted. We turn to our Jewish traditions in times of sorrow and times of joy because they provide a roadmap for grieving, healing, and celebration. This roadmap provides comfort because it has been traveled on for generations and is filled with feelings of mutual love and support. 

Now when I think back to being told that I don’t look Jewish, I laugh. I laugh because of how ridiculous it is to think all Jewish people are the same when we all approach our Jewish identities in such different ways. And I laugh because when I told the story to my friends at CJL, many of us had the same experience and laughed about it together. Finding this support and solidarity is everything. By allowing someone else to decide what it means to be Jewish, I had let my own identity be defined by others. I had decided that a Jewish identity wasn’t for me before I had the chance to decide for myself what this identity truly means. Today, because of the family, friends, teachers, and mentors surrounding me I know that I can choose what a Jewish identity means for myself. I know that I can choose for this identity to overlap with my identity as a writer, woman, history nerd, and activist. This choice gives me strength.  

Coby Rinke

One of the prompts that Rabbi Jaech gave us to use to write this speech was “who is your Jewish hero, and why?” Fortunately for me, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Albert Einstein and Jonas Salk, the inventor of the Polio vaccine, were all Jewish. However, my personal favorite is a man named Tobin Mitnick. Wait, “Who is Tobin Mitnick?”. Well, Tobin Mitnick, put simply, is a Jew who loves trees. He loves them so much that he runs a TikTok account (named Jews Love Trees) with about 200,000 followers, where he makes videos about Judaism, and trees. Just so you all can understand the true Jews Love Trees experience, one of his recent videos consists of the movie Titanic… reenacted entirely with pinecones. Aren’t you glad I didn’t choose Albert Einstein?

But while Tobin Mitnick is a mostly unknown minor internet celebrity, he is right that Jews do, in fact, love trees. The most obvious example is Tu BiShvat, or the so called “new year of the trees,” often celebrated as a Jewish earth day. Another example is Sukkot, where we are commanded to sleep outside, in sukkahs that allow us to be closer to nature. Jews have loved trees, so to speak, for thousands of years, just maybe not in the way we are used to. Both Tu BiShvat and Sukkot originated for agricultural purposes. Each year, the Israelites were required to bring an offering of fruit to the temple, and Rabbis set the deadline at Tu BiShvat, the day when the fruit trees started to bear new fruit for the next year. Similarly, Sukkot mostly likely originated as a festival celebrating the end of the summer harvest, and later yet another day to bring offerings of food to the temple. It is not just our current holidays that have agricultural origins. Both Passover and Shavuot likely have their origins in holidays celebrating the end of harvest and the changing of the seasons. They were also both days where offerings were brought to the temple (we were big on that type of thing).

However, this all raises the question, what does this have to do with us today? We don’t bring offerings to the temple anymore, nor could we, as most of us aren’t farmers anymore. We don’t even live in an area with many of the tree types mentioned in the Torah. So… why? Why do we still carry on with these traditions? I unfortunately can’t give you an answer. Fortunately, Tobin Mitnick can. Or at least he seems to have found his answer. In one of his most recent videos, he plants trees for each member of his family. He speaks about how this is an adaptation of a tradition outlined in the Talmud, which says to plant pine tree for the birth of a girl and a cedar for the birth of a boy. What Mitnick has done here is what us Jews have been doing for millennia, taking a tradition, and making it his own. The modern versions of Tu BiShvat and Sukkot both are efforts to create holidays that are relevant to us. Even the combination of the stories from Torah with agricultural holidays was an adaptation of old traditions to fit a different and new world. That is why I love Tobin Mitnick, for doing what each new generation must do, make Jewish text and traditions relevant to them. I can’t wait to see what Jews Loving trees looks like in the future.

Derek Rudley

My Jewish identity has always been my most challenging one. There are times I don't like being Jewish and there are times that I love being Jewish. But what if I don't follow all of The Ten Commandments? What if I don't eat a Kosher diet? Am I a bad Jew or a Jew at all? Or am I Jew-ish! I'm not sure and I don't think I ever will be.

However, there is one thing that I cherish most about my Jewish identity: God. As a child, I never really believed in God, but I do now. To me, God is not a person or a man, but a spiritual being that hopes for the best in all their children. One of the most important lessons I will takeaway from Temple Israel is something that the great Rabbi Hillel said “In a place where there are no humans, one must strive to be human.” I try to always be as kind and fair as possible and lead my life with integrity and grace.

I definitely am sad to leave Temple Israel. Ever since I first enrolled in the CJL in the second grade I loved the temple, its beauty and the programs offered. I sang with the Temple’s Glee Club and with Selah -the temple’s teen choir led by former Cantors: Devorah Avery and Ben Ellerin and by our current Cantor: Lauren Fogelman. I want to say thank you to all of the teachers, mentors, and educators that inspired me to be the Jew and person I am today. I want to say thank you to the cantor for always being such a kind spirit and to the Rabbi, thank you for teaching me about what Judaism is really about and why it is so important to embrace your Jewish heritage. And lastly I would like to thank God for leading me and guiding me through the toughest of times. Please keep me, O God! Period and Thank you!