Alef: The NEXT Conversation
A So-Called ‘Lost’ Jewish Family
By Shannon Sarna
This piece originally appeared in The Jewish Week.
Almost eight years ago I traveled to Israel for the first time on a Birthright Israel trip through Hillel. Recently I returned with my husband, brother and uncle to visit my sister, who is spending the year there on a Young Judaea Year Course. At first glance this hardly sounds different from the experiences of any other Jewish professional.
But my siblings and I are the products of a typical American Jewish narrative: attractive Italian Catholic pianist from Brooklyn meets disengaged Jewish rocker from Yonkers. They fall in love, get married, and have a family.
Did our mother convert? No. Did we attend synagogue? Not regularly. Were we exposed to Christianity? Absolutely. Religious institutions were frowned upon in our household, but being a good person, believing in a higher power and giving back to community were all emphasized. Amazing Jewish grandparents who loved and embraced us no matter how we identified were another important piece of our childhood.
Working in the Jewish community for the past six years, I hear a lot of negativity, even from the very funders of “crucial” Jewish organizations, that the investment in youth and outreach isn’t working; that there aren’t enough measurable outcomes. That we are “losing” Jews. I would not claim that we’re achieving miracles daily. Or that every success can be measured. But the situation is not the Jewish crisis that so many like to bemoan.
I take great pride in explaining to such naysayers that my family is a success story of the Jewish community; we are an example of the choices children of interfaith families make when they connect with welcoming, embracing professionals and organizations. The Jewish development of my family is no accident. We started by having a spiritual, open-minded and culturally Jewish family. The next key ingredient was engaged Jewish grandparents who exposed us to Jewish religion and culture, but never forced it down our throats.
Although the Jewish Outreach Institute’s Grandparents’ Circle didn’t exist at the time, I am confident that a support system like this program would have only further championed my grandparents’ loving influence. I was also lucky to have mentors who encouraged my spiritual exploration, and caring Jewish professionals who welcomed my desire for further education. By the time I had the opportunity to engage with the Jewish organizational world during my formative college years, I was primed to be open to the experiences presented.
One of my former bosses, Avraham Infeld, frequently remarks, “There’s only one thing that 90 percent of North American Jews do: go to college!” Hillel (along with other campus-focused organizations) is uniquely positioned to have an impact on the greatest number of Jews in North America simply by being a presence in one very common location.
Hillel had a major impact on my personal and professional Jewish journey. The first time I went to Israel was on a Birthright Israel Hillel trip. The second time was also with Hillel, to attend the 2003 United Jewish Communities (now Jewish Federations of North America) General Assembly, and it was on that trip that I made connections with Hillel staff that led to my eventual career as a Jewish communal professional.
And now, in a similar fashion, my sister, with little formal Jewish education, was accepted for a Young Judaea Course and is having a life-altering year in Israel; she is bonding with other Jewish students from all over North America, volunteering with various communities and connecting with her own Jewish identity in ways she never imagined.
Her ability to attend can certainly be attributed in part to the patient and welcoming staff at Young Judaea, which spent countless hours on the phone with her and our father, explaining all the ins and outs and walking them through the application process. Her year in Israel, a major investment in my sister’s Jewish identity on the part of the community, will have a lasting impact on her, our family and her future family, as did the investment that Birthright, Hillel and countless other organizations made did on me.
With nearly 50 percent of Jewish students on college campuses having only one Jewish parent, our family’s story is not an exception. We represent the community’s greatest opportunity to affect those who have had negative experiences, or no experience, with the Jewish community. We are the “lost” Jews that so many organizations are trying to “find.”
When I brought my brother and uncle to the Western Wall in Jerusalem for the first time last month, along with my sister and my husband, I was thankful for all the professionals and organizations who have contributed to my success and to a meaningful Jewish identity for my typically American Jewish family.
Shannon Sarna is communications manager at The Samuel Bronfman Foundation.
Photo by Calsidyrose, licensed under Creative Commons.
The Sum of the Parts = Home
For all of us, home isn’t just the place we are now.  It’s the place we’re comfortable being ourselves. With that in mind we’d like to share one of our favorite monologues, by our friend Farrah, about composite identities, and the place they call home.
Shabbat Shalom,
Alef
Read more posts from Issue 12: Aliyah – Going Home.
Finding Home
By Natasha Gluzman
What is home? Does the place where you are born and raised automatically become your home? Are you born into a home or do you make one? When you hear the word “home,” what comes first to your mind, the people or the place?
There is no right or wrong answer.
My parents were born and raised in Ukraine, but they never felt at home. Ever since they met at the age of 16 (imagine yourself living with one person for that long) they dreamed of Israel. The land that they were walking on was foreign for them, the streets they were crossing never invited them to stay. So they built their “home” with people who shared the same dream of home. They listened quietly to the Israeli radio station, and read books about Israel before hand-copying them and passing them between their Jewish friends. It was unsafe to be a Jew and Zionist in Ukraine in those days, but this was what made my mom and dad feel at “home.”
Many years passed and yet my parents still dreamed of “home.” And, even though my grandparents resisted the urge to make Aliyah and live in Israel, my parents never gave up.
September 28, 1990 was an extremely hot day, my parents and I didn’t speak any Hebrew, we didn’t know anyone and didn’t even have our luggage, or even a place to stay. But, we felt at home. Our first year in Israel was very difficult for my parents; known as great musicians in FSU (Former Soviet Union) they became nobodies in Israel. And still, nothing changed their minds. They loved the country they found themselves in even more than they had loved the imaginary place those many years ago.
Ima and Aba always told everyone that I was born at the wrong place, that I was a natural Israeli, who grew up in a small town in the northern part of central Israel. Everyone knew each other and each other’s business.
I was the only Olah (immigrant) in class, and while everyone knew, they never let me feel different. I had only Israeli friends and Hebrew quickly became my primary language instead of Russian. Being accepted put the ingredients of “home” into one big mixture: the people, the place, the language, the culture, the food, the smell of dew at the beginning of every hot summer day, all made me feel at home.
After years of running barefoot on the grass at my school, it was time to put on the uniform and go into the army. There was no prouder person in the world than me, but I never expected that the meaning of “home” would change as a result of my service. When we’d just arrived in Israel, my dad immediately went to volunteer in the IDF, but was rejected as “too old.” So when I joined the army, I wasn’t just doing it for myself. I was doing it for my Aba, as well.
I spent the first year of my army service teaching Hebrew to soldiers who were Olim Chadashim (new immigrants) in Israel. My army base was 40 minutes away from Eilat, the southernmost city in Israel, and it took me 7 hours by public transportation to get there from my house, and in those 7 hours I transformed from daddy’s little girl who played the clarinet, to teaching soldiers who were “playing” with tanks. All of a sudden, the dessert and the tanks became the most romantic things in the world for me.
At that point in my life the meaning of home changed for me once more. Home was now the sand that covered my country. Home was the steel wheels that rode on that sand and protected my parents and friends, back home. Those wheels were also a nightmare for so many of the parents whose children were ridding those tanks at night. But that was home for me.
Unlike the average Israeli, I went from the army directly to the university and eventually became a Hebrew literature teacher. In my eyes, both the kids I was teaching, as well as their families, were the face of my country, and since my country was my home, those kids were my home as well. I dealt with a lot of criticism but ultimately, this was my family.
Today I am a Shlicha, a young emissary for the State of Israel in NJ. I am far away from the grass I sat on in high-school. I am far away from the tanks I used to watch, and I’m far away from my family, friends, and everything I knew before. I don’t speak Hebrew every day and sometimes I even dream in English. And yet, I feel at home. In a way, I feel like my parents did when they were young – Israel is everywherem in my classrooms, in my kitchen, in my dreams, in my hopes, and especially, in my community.
So I ask again, what do you call home?
Read more posts from Issue 12: Aliyah – Going Home.
Photos provided by Alexkerhead, Rennett Stowe and ohmeaghan , licensed under Creative Commons
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
By Nava Szwergold
When I think about going home I think of Philadelphia. As an adult I walk down the street, and see the places where I used to hang out after school: parks, diners, movie theaters. It makes me feel safe. Everything is familiar and yet I know that there will always be something new for me to find- new connections to be made and things to learn. This is my place and I don’t want or need to live anywhere else. But, it hasn’t always felt this way. In high school I could not wait to get away. I thought it was my destiny to go forth and start a life in a new city, just like my parents and my grandparents had done. Staying in the city I grew up in would show a lack of independence I thought, a lack of imagination.
When I was a kid, every month or so, my brother and I would pile into the car with our parents to go and visit the family in New York. We would fight in the back seat, drawing invisible lines down the middle of the car to mark off our space; My mom would threaten to turn the car around. Sometimes, the car would break down. Once across the final bridge or tunnel we’d begin our rounds- stopping in to see aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents in all corners of the city. I assumed that when I grew up I would take my own kids away for the weekend to see their grandparents, somewhere else.
There’s a kind of “kid’s logic” that lacks a thorough understanding of cause and effect. What I realize now is that my parents and grandparents didn’t want to leave the places they were from. There were external factors that helped bring those changes about. Grave factors like Nazi or Soviet persecution, or just really inconvenient ones like a career opportunities in another city. The conversations that I’ve been able to have with family members over the past several years have helped me see how even the least traumatic of these moves has been a source of pain for someone.
Ok, so maybe it builds character; It’s cosmopolitanism to move around, to be spread out  but, I come from Philadelphia – the biggest small town in America, where it’s normal to have all your extended family in a 3 block radius and feel like you know every other person in a city of 1.5 million. Conveniently, I happen to love this city, and have the opportunity to stay, An opportunity my grandparents didn’t have for sure. I can fulfill this longing for place and groundedness, the same longing which I imagine fueled the movements of early Zionism as well as Diasporism.
As a young adult people expect me to move around, for the best job, the best school. Making a big city my home means I can do pretty well with all that stuff without going very far. Staying in one place gives me a greater opportunity to build community with other young adults. Without community, this time of life can be very isolating. Creating connection to place helps to sustain connections between people. For me remaining in this city where I grew up and building a community here is an original and creative process.
Read more posts from Issue 12: Aliyah – Going Home.
Photos provided by vic15 and Tony_The_Misfit,  licensed under Creative Commons
You Can Take the Girl out of Israel…
By “Tell Danielle”
Like most children, my birthday was my favorite day of the year. Not only because I got presents, cake, and a treasure hunt, but because all eyes were on me, and I loved the attention. You can imagine how I felt, when arriving home from school on my seventh birthday – January 17th, 1991 – I found my mother in our kitchen listening to the radio, sobbing. This was not the the birthday I had envisioned. Confused, I asked my mother, “if today is my birthday, how come you are crying?” My mother explained to me that scud missiles had begun falling in Israel, launched from Iraq by Saddam Hussein as a result of the Gulf War.
Although we found out later on that there were much fewer casualties than expected, the grave tone of the radio announcer made it seem as if the imminent destruction of Israel was at hand. It was difficult to reconcile my personal reasons to celebrate – my birthday – with the national state of panic in Israel. On my seventh birthday I learned that as Jews, our personal joys cannot be fully realized without the assurance of safety and security in Israel. Although I was born in Vancouver, BC to Canadian parents (and grandparents), my parents have always identified as more Israeli than Canadian. Early on in my parents’ marriage, they lived and studied Torah in Israel; my father worked for Israel’s Ministry of Justice while my mother worked as a reporter for English news television. They hoped to make aliya and raise their children in Israel. As life often goes, their plans didn’t work out as expected, and they ended up back in Vancouver, where my brothers and I were raised. However, many of my childhood summers were spent exploring Israel: car trips visiting our cousins in Mitzpe Hila up north, or day trips from our apartment in Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, or the Dead Sea. Israel is where I was first allowed to roam the streets alone as a child and I truly felt safe. After high school, I spent one year learning and living in Jerusalem before returning to Canada to start university.
My parents passed on their “Israeliness” to myself and my siblings, not by lecturing us on the political justification of the Jewish state, but by exemplifying through action what it means to be a diaspora Jew who longs for Israel and strives for aliya. I believe one day, after my youngest brother leaves home, my parents will return again to live in Israel. But, regardless of where my family ends up, our hearts and minds will always be in Israel.
Knowing that I feel most at home in Israel, Ryan (my husband) proposed to me on the top of Masada. Romance to us isn’t just roses and candlelight – it’s rooted in the beauty of common values and tradition. Although we live in California, we hope to celebrate all our future simchas in Israel, passing our “Israeliness” on to the next generation.
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Danielle loves solving life’s dilemmas: family, relationships, career, religion, love, and life. To read Danielle’s advice column, visit: www.telldanielle.com.
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Read more posts from Issue 12: Aliyah – Going Home.
Photos by Zeevveez, licensed under Creative Commons
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