תורת רושל זלLetters to a Future Child
Finding Judaism, And Yourself, In a Jewish High School Matt Weiss
D ear Little Weiss, In 8th grade, I too hated Hebrew school. For five detestable years, I had gone on Wednesdays to synagogue, a block from my house, to “learn” about Judaism. By year three I barely could recite the first ten letters of the Hebrew alphabet. That was the extent of my Jewish education. I had alef, bet, vet, gimel, daled, hay. The people I was taught by were not enthusiastic. The people I learned with were unengaged and forced into attendance, but at that point in my life, that was Judaism. Judaism was a once a week type of commitment, and for me that was fine.
growing more secular by the day. The religiously unaffiliated comprise almost one quarter of our Northern American population . Whether the extreme rise in separation from religion is due to our increasingly materialistic culture or our desire for convenience is beyond me, but all I know for certain is that I am not allowing our family, I am not allowing you, to breeze over the opportunities the covenant, Judaism, presents to a young bright child like yourself.
I
was a sophomore once I realized what Judaism was. I had been immersed in a Jewish community for One of my good friends, your uncle Evan, was attending more than a year at that point. I was going to a JewSolomon Schechter at the time. When he would hang ish school, I was going to a Jewish camp. My transition out with my public school friends, my friends would al- from public school had gone fantastic. I went from a ways end up interrogating him about the life of a Jew place where I had felt increasingly isolated to a place who goes to private Jewish school. The funniest thing is where I felt loved, appreciated and needed. Judaism had that all my public school friends were Jewish. done something important, answered my first, pressing, internal question. Why am I here? The world we live in was exponentially secularizing when I was your age, and the world we live in now is See Weiss, next page
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