Personal Statement

The following was submitted as my personal statement as part of my HUC application.

There’s a video of me at age five saying “when I grow up, I want to be a rabbi.… Or a farmer.” While other kids dreamed of being an astronaut or a movie star, I apparently dreamed of milking cows and giving sermons. It has been a running joke my whole life. Becoming a rabbi has always felt like a second option for me, something to be kept on the back burner, a “maybe.” Now I’m finally choosing to say “yes!” I know that it is the right choice for me because it makes me feel good, like I’m living up to my full potential. I know that putting myself in such a positive Jewish learning environment will bring out “my best me.”

My best me is enthusiastic. My best me cares about other people. He is funny. He laughs at other people’s jokes. He likes to tell other people that they matter to him. He craves meaning and interaction. He thrives on intimacy. He likes talking to people. He values learning. He expresses himself clearly and well. He loves music. He loves to dance. He loves old memories and old jokes. He likes to smile. He has a big soft spot.

My best me found himself at Camp Coleman. I can’t possibly overstate the impact that camp has had on my life. At camp, I learned how to make friends, how to contribute to a group. I also learned how to use a table saw, how to throw a Frisbee, how to play guitar, how to talk to girls. I was kind of shy at home, but in this Jewish setting I really got to shine.

As a younger camper, I had a vague appreciation for what was Jewish about Jewish camp. I knew that I liked services, especially the songs. On the drive home from camp, my siblings and I used to sing our favorite melodies from services. We would sing every harmony we could think of and make up new ones. I loved that at camp I could sing as part of a group, the sound of my voice among 400 others. I felt a part of something big.

It wasn’t until my Machon summer (counselor-in-training) that I started to better understand why camp was a specifically Jewish experience. Suddenly, I knew that I loved Shabbat—a day to do something different, to swim in the lake, to sleep in, to dress up for dinner. Suddenly, I knew what it meant to be part of a community—with traditions, with history. Suddenly, I knew what it meant to feel sacred—to sit around a campfire, to show friends that you love them. Suddenly, camp was holy—something away, something elevated.

As a counselor, I continued to find more and more meaning, giving back to my campers what so many counselors gave to me. Inspiring people. Helping a camper find his best self. Camp means the world to me. For everything camp gave me, I am deeply, deeply grateful.

My best me grew up in a very loving and caring family. Judaism played a central role. Every fall, we would build a sukkah on our back porch and eat dinner outside. Every night of Chanukkah, we would sing songs by the light of the menorah. As kids, we always celebrated Shabbat—whether by going to Temple on Friday night or by having Shabbat dinner at home. After dinner, while doing the dishes, we would listen to the record of Fiddler on the Roof. “Sounds crazy, no?” If we were busy on Friday, we improvised Shabbat dinner. I remember on more than one occasion eating at Ryan’s Family Steak House and singing HaMotzi over a roll of cornbread.

It didn’t need to be Shabbat for us to say a blessing. At every family meal—whether two people or the whole mishbucha—we said a prayer before eating. Not HaMotzi, but a similarly prescribed blessing: “Let’s thank God for all the food on this table. Amen.” Those same words, almost every single time. If anyone (often my dad) was feeling effusive, he or she would add to the prayer. “Let’s thank God for our kids and all of their successes,” or “Let’s thank God for our parents who love us so much.” We usually acknowledged very ordinary things, but that we took a moment to express our love was extraordinary.

From moments like these, I developed a sense of caring. In high school, my mom’s sister, Aunt Stella, came to live in Tallahassee. Aunt Stella was schizophrenic and needed much family attention. She often aggravated my mom. It was like having another child who won’t ever grow up. Nevertheless, I know they loved each other. When Aunt Stella first moved to Tallahassee, we went with our rabbi to her assisted living facility to hang her mezuzah. Aunt Stella said how thankful she was for her sister and that she loved her. We all started to cry. This moment stands out for me about the power of family. We love each other, no matter what.

My best me thrives on intellectual pursuit. In college, I was an English major and a Jewish studies minor. I really loved a class that I took on the poetry of Emily Dickinson. I loved that a single poem could hold at the same time contradictory meanings, that neither meaning was less real or less true. While studying abroad in Prague, I took a class on Jewish History in East-Central Europe. I particularly loved learning about Judaism under communism, how parents hid their Judaism from their children, and the great freedom they now feel to practice in the open.

My major and minor combined most potently during my junior year when I took a class on Midrash. I would sit in the park and read until my brain was rich. I loved the biblical characters, the recurring themes, the Rabbinic wit. I read carefully, closely—like an English major—deconstructing syntax and examining rhetorical devices, drawing connections between stories and psychoanalyzing the characters.

The same semester as Midrash, I took a class on Arts in Medicine. For my class project, I kept a diary of my dreams. Over the course of three months, I recorded 60 entries in my dream journal—strange, non sequitur, passionate, confusing, vivid dreams. I read books on dream interpretation, theory and practice. On lucid dreaming. I studied with an artist at Shands Hospital who specialized in dream work. I explored the symbols of my unconscious, the recurring characters, images, and themes. And I learned a lot about myself, about my relationships, about my obsessions, about where my brain goes when I stop paying attention.

My dream project and my Midrash class led me to write a paper on the Jewish collective unconscious, as it is embodied in Torah. Like my dreams, Torah is often strange, non sequitur, passionate, confusing, vivid. Jewish tradition teaches that dreaming is 1/70^th of prophecy. It also teaches that before a person is born, she knows the whole Torah already. Immediately before birth, an angel comes and presses its finger to her lips, making a “shhhh” gesture, and she forgets it all. And it is her job here on earth to relearn it. In this teaching, Torah is what we knew before birth and everything we learn in life. Torah is personal. It is our psyche and our destiny. Torah is in each of us.

My best me pursues religious and spiritual fulfillment. My sophomore year of college, my brother and I started meditating for 10 minutes a day. I did this 4 times a week for about 6 months. I experimented with different techniques—imagining the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 coming in and out of my nostrils, sending relaxing breaths to different areas of my body, imagining the letters yod, hay, vov, hay on each breath. I started stretching, making the meditation period about both mind and body. It was hard—hard to keep myself focused, hard to make the time to do it, hard to stay mindful even after the 10 minutes were over. But it was also rewarding. I found that I listened more carefully when I talked on the phone with my family and friends. I found that I took a more genuine interest in my sister when she came home from work. I found that I better appreciated beautiful things. I started walking more slowly, enjoying the campus architecture, enjoying every bite of food. I was able to quiet a nervous tick. It was the most sustained spiritual period in my life.

Falling in love is also highly spiritual. There is a teaching that when we pray, we come face-to-face with God. This is love. Face-to-face with the person you love, you open a world of possibility. There is a gentle push and pull in a romantic relationship, a giving and receiving. It brings elation. It is a fine art.

My greatest religious fulfillment came during my semester in Prague. I was on a Jewish studies program. The other students on my program ranged in Jewish practice from modern orthodox, to secular, to a Christian who was just interested in learning about Judaism. I made very close friends with a girl named Emmy, who had grown up Conservative, kept kosher, kept Shabbat, had a nuanced understanding of halakhah, and was very active in her Jewish community. Emmy helped me grow Jewishly. With her as my partner, I started celebrating Shabbat every week. Though it took me several weeks to learn the new melodies, I eventually became very comfortable in the Masorti minyan on Friday night. Emmy and I made a pact to set Saturdays apart from all other days. I didn’t accompany her to Shabbat morning services, but I always spent Saturday exploring Prague—going to the many parks, reading books, sitting by the river, going to art museums, going into music stores to play the guitars, detaching from my cell phone. At the concluding service on Yom Kippur, I stood next to Emmy as we davened the final prayers of the day. Never have I prayed so vigorously. I could feel the weight of an entire year lifting, the gates of the new year beginning to open, the gates of the past year beginning to close. On Simchat Torah, we danced in the streets of the Jewish quarter. It was the first time I had celebrated the holiday since I was little. I really felt a part of the Prague Jewish community.

Since my semester in Prague, my love of interactive Jewish community has only grown. For the past several years, our family has celebrated the second night of Passover at a close friend’s seder. As a group, we retell the story of the exodus together, each participant adding whatever he or she can remember, in a sort of living Midrashic debate. There is much singing and joke telling. At camp, Erev Shabbat culminates in a huge song session, with singing and dancing and shouting and jumping and laughing and hugging. At Hillel staff conference this year, we had a global tisch. In an impromptu way, people shared stories and told jokes and we sang songs and pounded on the table and made a few l’chaims. My favorite mitzvah is to celebrate with bride and groom. I love doing the Hora. I love lifting the chair. There is no moment more joyous.

My best me feels a deep emotional attachment to Israel. I feel an attachment to its history, to its current events, to Israelis themselves, to Israel’s image in the world, to its landscape, to its fun, to its achievements, to its struggles, and as a symbol of the Jewish people. I developed these feelings relatively recently and they have changed my Jewish identity. I feel full-bodied Jewish when I sing Hatikvah. I feel a strong connection to Independence Hall in Tel Aviv. I am inspired that from nothing came something. On Jewish blogs, I’m immediately drawn to anything Israel—news, editorials, speeches, philanthropy, campus activism, new educational tools, art exhibits, technological advances, Birthright data, anything about JAFI, JDC, or JNF, anything about AIPAC, JStreet, or NIF. I feel Israel—that what happens to Israel happens to all Jews. I believe in Israel—as a place where a Jew can be a Jew.

At the same time, I am worried about Israel. I am concerned about the Rotem conversion bill, the end of the settlement freeze, the proposed loyalty oath. I am disheartened by the negative response to JStreet. I am worried about the nuclear threat of Iran. I am disappointed by the lack of convincing Palestinian leadership. I am angry at the anti-Arab racism I hear from some of my own Israeli friends. I am worried about boycott, divestment, and sanction movements on college campuses. I believe in an Israel that is a light unto the nations. This is not the Israel I see today.

Nevertheless, I feel the significance Israel plays in Jewish history and am inspired to be a part of it. Jewish history is, after all, still unfolding. I imagine how my great-grandparents would have felt if they had been able to pray at the Western Wall.

My great-grandfather, Jessoula Cohen, was the lay rabbi of the Romaniote shul on the lower-east side of New York City. Last year, my family traveled to the town in Greece where he was born. The town is called Ioannina and was once the center of Romaniote Jewish life. Jews from all over Greece would travel to Ioannina on the High Holidays to hear the chazzan chant the unique Romaniote melodies. The Jewish community there is now only 35 people. We spent Shabbat morning in the old synagogue with Samuel Koen, one of Ioannina’s oldest Jewish residents. After showing us around the shul, he pulled out his machzor and sang for us his favorite songs. He voice was deep and booming. Such simcha! It was a very special moment—three generations descended from Ioannina there in an empty shul on Shabbat morning, filling the pews with joyous song.

Our trip to Ioannina symbolized how my ancestors are played out in me—how we stand on the shoulders of giants. I am who I am today because of my family and my heritage. I am nearly brought to tears when I imagine my great-grandparents packing up their lives to move to America. What courage! My middle name is Harrison, after my dad’s dad, Harry, a man I never met, but who liked to read the newspaper, who liked walks after dinner, who liked playing with children. This is my direct inheritance. This is me.

I have chosen to become a rabbi because it is inside of me. When I think about it, I feel confident, my best me starts to emerge. It is the right decision for me. I am saying “yes” to all that is good inside of me. I am saying “yes” to hundreds of years of history. I am saying “yes” to life’s many joys. I am saying “yes” to life’s many struggles. I am saying “yes” to my relationships with others. I am saying “yes” to my relationship with myself. The time is now, and I am ready.