Jewish Self-discovery
"Sarah, we need your help in the Ukraine this summer. Can I count on you?" This question changed my life profoundly. I was asked to be a counselor on JOLT, Jewish Oversees Leadership Program, an opportunity to interact with young campers in an impoverished country and positively influence their lives. Little did I realize that this experience would impact mine so greatly.
JOLT, an outreach program, runs an annual overnight summer camp in the Ukraine with counselors from the United States and Israel. These counselors are carefully selected because of the rigorous programming and the many physical hardships of living in the Ukraine. Over one hundred local children come to Charkov to learn about their Jewish background. As one of the counselors, I had the privilege and extraordinary task of exposing them to the beauty of our religion and heritage.
I remember the anxiety and excitement that I felt as I exited the plane with twenty other high school students, embarking on my summer teaching experience, wondering if I was fully prepared. The moment the busloads of children arrived, I attached myself to a group of kids and started singing and dancing with them. Despite my initial fears, we began to form a bond. My role changed from that of a teenager to that of a responsible counselor. Not only was I here to teach them about Judaism through classes and activities, but more importantly I was acting as a role model. For the majority of Ukrainian children, we were the first Americans they had ever met and, therefore, were watched vigilantly and constantly emulated. This humbling realization made me feel rather self-conscious at first. However, their desire to imitate also heightened the impact of that which we taught them. They wanted to learn. Although an immense language barrier lay between the campers and me, we managed to communicate through translators, hand signals, songs, and broken English and Russian.
With the help of a book that contained both the Hebrew and Russian, I taught Hebrew to a group of ten children who had never before been exposed to Judaism. Glieb, a ten-year old boy rapidly rose to the top of the class. In addition to the mandatory hours of daily learning, he was motivated to extend these sessions. So often at night after the fun and entertainment, he and I would practice reading Hebrew and we discussed, in simple terms, aspects of Jewish ritual that fascinated him.
In studying the Jewish elderly members of the Center, Myerhoff attempted to understand the people there as an isolated society with a distinct culture. Through participant observation, as well as carefully recorded interviews and conversations, Myerhoff aimed to document this culture and understand it as a basis for unity among the Center members. Her immersion in this culture along with her anthropological perspective made her successful in representing the people of the Center. In her book, Number the Days, Myerhoff provides readers with an ethnographic analysis of the existence of a culture. After reading the book, I feel that I have a comprehensive understanding of the Center people. Through her descriptions, based on observation, and her recorded dialogues Myerhoff actually offers readers an illustration of this `society.' "She uses this material to show us the very processes through which her subjects weave meaning and identity out of their memories and experiences," thus not only presenting the culture itself, but defining the context in which it emerged (Turner (in Myerhoff), xv).
I chose to write about Jewish-Americans after my mother, who was raised Christian, chose to identify herself as Jewish. In my reading I examined Jewish culture and how it is in American society. I looked at how Jewish-American culture has become a prominent component of American society. I looked at the historical forces that have shaped Jewish-American experience in the United States. I looked at demographics of where most Jewish-Americans live. I examined how Jewish-Americans have contributed to our culturally pluralistic society in the United States.
For thousands of years people have left their home country in search of a land of milk and honey. Immigrants today still equate the country they are immigrating to with the Promised Land or the land of milk and honey. While many times this Promised Land dream comes true, other times the reality is much different than the dream. Immigration is not always a perfect journey. There are many reasons why families immigrate and there are perception differences about immigration and the New World that create difficulties and often separate generations in the immigrating family. Anzia Yezierska creates an immigration story based on a Jewish family that is less than ideal. Yezierska’s text is a powerful example of the turmoil that is created in the family as a result of the conflict between the Old World and the New World.
A Lucky Child by Thomas Buergenthal is a memoir about his time as a Jewish child in multiple ghettos and death camps in and around Germany during World War II. The author shares about his reunions with family and acquaintances from the war in the years between then and now. Buergenthal wished to share his Holocaust story for a number of reasons: to prevent himself from just being another number, to contribute to history, to show the power and necessity of forgiveness, the will to not give up, and to question how people change in war allowing them to do unspeakable things. The memoir is not a cry for private attention, but a call to break the cycle of hatred and violence to end mass crimes.
United Jewish Communities. (2003). National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01. Retrieved October 8, 2033, from: http
In Nina and Gustav’s story, they were in constant fear of the world around them. For Nina, being both Jewish and a girl meant that she would never be safe i...
For a Jew arriving in America from Europe starting anew marked a defining point. After losing six million Jews in the Holocaust, the United States of America served as one of the most secure havens for reestablishing a strong Jewish presence ...
As a boy, Shteyngart was torn between the Russian culture and the American culture and sometimes it was hard to understand what he wanted and what he was taught. Growing up in a multicultural family, I can understand how Shteyngart must have felt. My great-grandmother’s father was the grandson of Jacob Hostettler, who was one of the founders of the Amish C...
Vladka Patel Meed was an 18 year old girl when she and her family has to face the atrocities of the holocaust. born in 19211 in Warsaw, Poland, Meed was born in the center of Polish Nazi operations during the Holocaust. As Jews, she and her family were sent to live in the Warsaw Ghetto where there was ‘starvation and typhoid and hunger and [constant] terror’ conditions in the Warsaw Ghetto were terrible and inhumane although to make things less depressing, Meed ‘belonged at the time ... to the Jewish Cultural group’. While in the ghetto, Meed and other young people ‘has lectures and ... cultural events.’ After spending some time in the Warsaw Ghetto, the Nazis in charge of the ghetto decided it was time to begin deportations, which both meed’s mother and brother were included in, although she was not. Her mother and brother were to be sent to Umschlagplatz, a place that was well known as being a poor place to be sent to, often resulting in death. In vain, meed tried to bribe an officer to keep her mother and brother, the only family she had left, from leaving. They left and her brother later sent her a note telling her that he was hung...
Regine Donner, a famous Holocaust survivor, once said, “I had to keep my Jewishness hidden, secret, and never to be revealed on penalty of death. I missed out on my childhood and the best of my adolescent years. I was robbed of my name, my religion, and my Zionist idealism” (“Hidden Children”). Jewish children went through a lot throughout the Holocaust- physically, mentally, and emotionally. Life was frightening and difficult for children who were in hiding during the rule of Adolf Hitler.
"A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims." A Teacher's Guide to the Holocaust-Victims. University of South Florida. Web. 19 May 2014.
He focuses on the need and importance of teaching ancestral values to the young people, in a way that they can relate and understand. Young people of the world have become un-rooted from tradition, not knowing how they are connected to the world, who they can turn to for guidance and support, and lacking in spiritual leadership. This has caused increased violence, disparity, and suffering around the world. It is the responsibility of all leaders, cultural, spiritual, ethnic, religious, and educational to assist in the understanding of traditions, heritage, ancestral roots, belief systems, and values in a way that the young people of today can comprehend and feel connected. The young people of today are the leaders of tomorrow, they need our guidance and support to grow and mature into responsible adults. They must become re-rooted in tradition and beliefs to maintain a since of stability for the
"The Southern Institute for Education and Research." The Southern Institute for Education and Research. http://www.southerninstitute.info/holocaust_education/ds1.html (accessed December 11, 2013).
The education of a Jewish person is very important for the rest of that person’s life. The Jewish education was split into two types. One was the informal education and the other was the formal lessons. Before the first century, the information would be passed on from the mother to the child. Using this style of teaching, the mother would teach the child, mainly practical idea and information. This style of teaching was considered to shape many things. An idea that was considered to be shaped by the education of a child was the child perspective on the idea of being a Jewish person.
Many years ago when I was a freshman in high school, an event happened to me that changed my life for the better. My friend invited me to go hiking with him and his sister. He was going to go hiking in Yosemite. The following day I prepared myself mentally and physically in order to accomplish this hike.