What RVF Taught Me About My Voice

If you had told me a year ago that I’d be in a Zoom meeting with a group of young Jewish feminists every month, and that I’d flown across the country twice to see them, I wouldn’t have believed you. When I was going through the interview and application process for the Rising Voices Fellowship (RVF), I had no idea what I was in for. I barely knew what being a Jewish feminist meant. All I knew was that I was one, and that I wanted to meet a lot more. The Rising Voices Fellowship has given me a community where I can be myself. As a Rising Voices Fellow, nobody tells me I can’t be what I want to be, silences my ideas, or prevents me from speaking my mind. I’ve learned that my voice matters, and it is powerful.

When I flew to Boston for the opening retreat in August, I was scared of the people I would meet and the things I would do. I’d never flown alone before, and meeting new people seemed daunting because of my social anxiety. However, meeting a group of teens like me who shared many of my experiences taught me to love life and love myself.  Meeting a group of people who seemed so confident in themselves and their opinions gave me confidence in myself. The first real conversation I had with some of the fellows was during our first dinner together. From discussions about Netflix shows featuring Jewish families to the books we were reading, hearing everyone speak up gave me the confidence to speak up as well, and that hasn’t stopped since. We learned about what it meant to play a pivotal role in our communities through the knowledge we shared. I realized that my connections to my RVF cohort made me happy and helped me realize the abundance of other things in my life that did, too. 

RVF helped me find my identity and reminded me that I still love to write, and taught me that I want to pursue it in the future. When we worked on things we were passionate about, like writing about one of our favorite Jewish women, RVF taught me that Judaism, what I thought was my personality, is really just one aspect of myself that I’d identified, not explored. I would tell people that I was Jewish, and as a result, my faith became my personality. However, I hadn’t realized that other aspects of my life tied into Judaism, and that was what my personality is. 

RVF has taught me that being a Jewish feminist doesn’t have a definition that’s set in stone. I would call myself a Jewish feminist, without truly knowing what that meant to me. In August, a writing workshop about midrash didn’t just teach us about what we called “Torah fan-fiction.” It taught me the story of Lilith and how women’s actions are interpreted differently in Judaism. However, that interpretation wouldn’t be possible without feminism. Lilith’s story specifically affected my understanding as a writer within Jewish feminism. Midrash helped me understand why Jewish feminism utilizes interpretation. Interpretation means analysis, and as a cohort, we’ve analyzed and learned about so much.

Jewish feminism is something that grows with you your entire life. I learned that early on in the fellowship, specifically with my writing. When getting to know the writers in the RVF cohort, their experiences as Jewish feminists helped me realize that feminism is something that’s been with me my whole life. From experiences attending the women’s marches to the incorporation of an orange at seder tables, I learned that it’s the little things that develop our individual identities. Specifically, our shared experiences as a cohort. Whether we knew the definition of Jewish feminism or not, our shared experiences are what make us, us. But most importantly, we learned what it means to be a community that supports each other, outside of our shuls and hometowns.

Since joining RVF, I’ve noticed that I use most of what we’ve learned in my writing. RVF taught me that writing always has meaning, whether or not we think it does. I see that impact in others' writing, such as poetry my friends write in school. I see how hatred impacts people when they write biased comments on Instagram. I see people sending love to each other in the birthday cards they write. But it’s not what they’re writing. It's why they write. Writing is like being a part of a community. Though we all write for different reasons, we always connect in some way, or in many ways. Just like the 2025-2026 cohort of the Rising Voices Fellowship. 

It hasn’t hit me yet that RVF is coming to an end. Yes, we had our final Zoom on the first Sunday of May—just like every other month—and our final retreat in March. However, I hope to continue connecting with the friends I’ve made over the past few months, and I am forever grateful for them. RVF went from something I was afraid of to one of the best experiences of my life, and it has greatly impacted my writing, my connections with others, and how I see the world.