Shabbat at synagogue was the one place where my grief belonged, where I belonged, after my my dad died. 

I decided that I, a thirteen year old, would convince the rabbi of my synagogue to change a rule no one else had successfully challenged.

To this day, I’m astounded by congregants’ enthusiasm as they hopped on weekly—and eventually daily—Zoom voter phone-banking sessions.

As a Modern Orthodox Jew, prayer spaces for women (or lack thereof) in synagogues I've attended have made me feel like an outsider in my own religious space.

“Are you going to read Torah? We think that’s a boy’s mitzvah.”

Even after the hardest, most boring, or most heart-wrenching weeks, Shabbat is calmly awaiting me at the end.

As president of the youth group, I was a full-fledged member of my synagogue’s board. The chair had no power to evict me from the room.

My reaction to antisemitic gun violence is not one of fear, but of alertness to a threat far more normalized for me than for my elders.

I was visiting Brooklyn, New York with a group of students in my Reform synagogue’s confirmation class. 

Existing at the border between modern and traditional values often feels like teetering across a balance beam.

I feel as if I won the lottery by being born Jewish, as so many of my most cherished memories and values are inherently tied to this part of my identity. As proud as I am of my Jewish identity, I’ve always been troubled by one of the fundamental ideas in Judaism: that Jews are “the chosen people.”