I’ll say it started when I coincidentally met an “Ari'' in rural Uganda. I had just turned eighteen and finally no one could stop my adventurous spirit from taking me on my first journey to connect with foreign worlds. I applied for the first journalism internship abroad I could find online and flew to Africa knowing absolutely nothing about it. I had already spent a month in the most alien world, beyond my wildest imagination, when I randomly met a Ugandan with the same uniquely Jewish name as my brother. 

 

Fresh from my Midwest suburban childhood, I was in Uganda’s largest slum teaching uneducated mothers basic addition and subtraction in a mud hut, helping them organize their forty-cent-per-day income. Most had between five and nine children, most of whom were products of rape. Each family lived in a one-room shack with dirt floors and fractured tin roofs. They didn’t use calendars or clocks. I was one of the only white people in the region and everyone constantly stared, I was an alien. On Ari’s motorcycle, snaking through hours of cassava and millet fields and swampland, we passed the usual infinite masses of children pointing at me screaming “Mazoongoo!!” (Luanda for white person). Then, we arrived at one collection of mud huts where the children wore kippot and instead of shouting about their extraterrestrial sighting, they said “Shabbat Shalom.”

​

That night I sang the same Hebrew words and melodies my parents taught me around our dining room table, harmonized with Ugandan farmers in a mud synagogue. In a place where I was unfathomably

disoriented, I suddenly found myself in a community where I belonged. We discussed the week’s Torah portion, deliberated on the ancient guidebook our

shared ancestors have used for thousands of years

to navigate the world. In many ways of course we

were still aliens to each other- but we were aliens

who grew up reading the same stories, shaping

much of our life perspectives and values, and who

discovered profound inspiration from the same unique

rituals and traditions. And we were also aliens that felt

connected to the same history and a sense of belonging

to this tiny, ancient and resilient community. From

completely different worlds, we were connected in a

special way that neither of us shared with many others

in either of our own worlds.

​

​

When I came home, I continued my journalism degree while slowly discovering my passion for Jewish education and leadership. After college, I spent four years working with Jewish youth. More than anything, I felt this impulse to teach them about the expansiveness of our people. I wanted to help facilitate the realization that we’re a part of a people scattered around the world, so incredibly diverse yet so deeply connected. I wanted to explain that there are kids their age on the other side of the planet, living wildly different lives, that are sharing these same unique and integral Jewish experiences. I wanted to at least give them a taste of that inexplicable feeling of being a piece of a small but mighty people that stretches beyond our wildest imagination throughout time and space. As a fifth grade Jewish school teacher, I crafted a whole curriculum about Jews around the world. Later as San Diego State Hillel’s program director, I created and led all types of international-themed Shabbat dinners and Passover Seders. Still, in my mind, these projects never did justice to the powerful feeling I experienced. 

 

SDSU Hillel used to host a spring break volun-tourism trip, usually to build houses in Central America. Before I even officially took the job, I decided I would develop this trip into a Jewish cultural exchange trip. I dreamed of connecting our students with Jewish students in another country. I’d lead them through this experience as a group while creating a meaningful relationship between the two communities. I began planning this program three times with a passion unlike any I had felt before. By the third time it was canceled due to COVID, I was ready to move on from SDSU Hillel and begin forging my own path pursuing this passion.

 

Now, simply put, I’m embarking on a journey to explore and connect with Jewish communities around the world. I love traveling and have traveled extensively, as a student in Denmark, a journalist in Israel, a farmhand in France and Spain, and as a backpacker traversing dozens of countries. I loved to wander. But now, I have a purpose.

 

A couple months ago, I caught a virus while I was connecting with Jewish communities in Greece. For a moment, I thought I was going to die on that Greek hospital bed. Gasping for air, my thought was, “Damn, I was going to really do something.” I felt like I had just discovered I had this combination of passion, skills, personality, experience and drive I could use to create something unique for the world. 

 

Physically, no I don’t know where I’m going; I’m not creating an itinerary because I know I’ll discover the best course of action on the ground. I also don’t know the physical form my end product will take yet. But in the abstract, I’ve never felt more aware of who I am and what I’m doing. 

 

Ultimately, I want to create new opportunities to connect Jewish people around the world firsthand. I can imagine this project taking a variety of forms but I know my ideas will evolve on the way. Whatever I build and how I build it will be inspired by the communities I get to know (how they’re structured, how it feels to be Jewish in their society, the challenges they face, what is important to them, etc). And I’ll also be inspired by foreign Jewish leaders, their programs, and international Jewish projects that already exist. 

 

And meanwhile, I will write. I’ve already experienced more moving stories than I could have possibly imagined. These stories themselves can be tools to connect Jews around the world. While I gradually craft opportunities for people to experience that powerful feeling firsthand, I can reach many more people by taking them with me on my journey via storytelling. I’m hoping I can help others experience at least some of that powerful feeling vicariously through my journalism. 

 

In my adventures meeting my people around the world, I am continually inspired to re-evaluate everything I thought I understood about identity, belonging, and human spirit. I’m always amazed to learn how our dispersed tribe developed so differently in some respects and maintained remarkable similarities in others. And the more I travel, the more I realize how little I know about our history and how the past shapes us today. As I experience more new places, cultures, and societies, I have the opportunity to contemplate what makes people who they are. Follow my journey around the world to explore the nature of human connection through the impossibly resilient power of Judaism.