My Local Jewish Community

At my home in the Bay Area, I have a pretty spectacular Jewish community. I'll be honest, I rarely celebrate Shabbat, and attend services. However, I am very active in my community in other ways. I have served on the board of my temple youth group, CRuSTY, for two years, and I am very involved with CRuSTY as well as NFTY. And, as of a few weeks ago, I will be serving on NFTY CWR's Regional Board of 2015-2016, which I am thrilled about! In addition to CRuSTY and NFTY, I have been attending URJ Camp Newman for ten consecutive summers. Camp is truthfully the beginning of my Jewish identity. It's the place where I am surrounded by hundreds of people just like me, experiencing the same things, creating the same, yet very different memories, and having the summer of a lifetime. I am fortunate enough to have many of my camp friends a part of my local Jewish communities, which makes me more interested in engaging in activities in the community.

In the Bay Area, we have a newspaper called the J. This newspaper features those who are having upcoming bar and bat mitzvahs, stories of famous Jews, articles from summer camps, and much more. I looked at their website to see if anything interesting was happening and I found an article called "Visiting Young Israelis Chat Up the Country They Love." These two Israelis are from Tel Aviv, and they want Americans to be able to see Israel through their eyes. This pair is going around Northern California and sharing their love of Israel by putting a face on the IDF uniforms, and explaining their experiences in their beautiful country. I found this article interesting because here I am, studying in Israel, gaining such an appreciation for the land and the culture and all of it's beauty, however, it is so difficult to be able to express my love for this place to everyone back at home. The fact that they are traveling all over to express their love and pride for their country, is truly inspirational and moving to me.