Category Archives: Family history

September 22, 2025 · 7:30 am

Braiding the challah

by Miriam Bassuk (Seattle, WA)


            for Rachel


I watched as your hands melted

into soft dough, the dome of it,

puffed and swollen, and how naturally

your fingers formed and divided it

into four roughly equal parts,

then each of those into snakes,

the kind I remembered creating

in kindergarten with clay.

 
I watched as you designed four

round Challahs as Rosh Hashanah

gifts for friends. You said it was easy, 

and I wanted to believe that, as I observed

you, the snake charmer, plaiting the strands. 

You alone knew the rhythm, the form 

of what would soon become four fragrant crowns.

Miriam Bassuk’s poems have appeared in Snapdragon, Between the Lines, PoetsWest Literary Journal, and 3 Elements Review. She was one of the featured poets in WA 129, a project sponsored by Tod Marshall, the Washington State poet laureate. As an avid poet, she has been charting the journey of living in these uncertain times beyond Covid.

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September 19, 2025 · 7:30 am

T’shuvah

by Richard Epstein (Washington, DC)

It was just before the high holy days. 
My brother traveled from Hawaii to the east coast
to spend the holidays attending my father’s shul. 

He was invited to have lunch with an orthodox family,
members of a local Chabad.

I found the location of the house and decided
to surprise him. I knocked on the door, entered
the house, and asked for my brother by name.     

I was not dressed as an orthodox Jew. 
Nor was my brother. No beard, no white shirt,
no black fedora, no black jacket, no tzitzits. 

“Jack! Is this your brother?”  I heard someone call out.  
“Yes…  T’shuvah!” my brother announced with a sly smile.  
We greet with a hug. I’m vaguely familiar with the word. 

Like a password: it explains my appearance, my presence.  
Ahhh, T’shuvah! They shouted the word as if it was a toast;
their faces alive with smiles

Richard Epstein, a long-time resident of the Washington, DC area, was brought up in the Orthodox and Conservative temples of Scranton, PA. He has also spent some time as a student of Buddhism. Richard often examines and questions his religion through poetry. He has been a featured reader at the Silver Spring Civic Center, Kensington Day of the Book festival, Philadelphia Ethical Society, U.S. Navy Memorial, The Vietnam Woman’s Memorial, the Memorial Day Writers Project, and Walter Reed National Medical Center. He is the editor of two veteran anthologies and his poetry has appeared in The Beltway Poetry Quarterly, The Jewish Writing Project, Poetica, and others.

Author’s Note: T’shuvah — One who returns.  Being that all definitions are inadequate, t’shuvah involves repentance. 

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September 15, 2025 · 7:30 am

The Letter Home

by Milt Zolotow (z”l)

(with his daughter, Nina Zolotow)

Note from Nina Zolotow: My father enlisted in the Army during World War II when he was told that they needed mapmakers in New Jersey and that with his background in commercial art the map making division would want his skills. Instead, the day he enlisted, he and the other recruits were put aboard a train whose destination was Camp Chaffee, Arkansas, for basic training to be a member of an elite force of soldiers in a tank battalion under General George Patton. 

After completing basic training, he was shipped to North Africa—he never said where—and from there he wrote his family a long letter about a very interesting Rosh Hashanah that he spent with members of the Jewish community who lived in a big city there. He also sent home a small portfolio of drawings he made of people he saw there. 

The letter is typed, so it’s very legible, but the paper on which he typed the words is old and crumbling. The drawings aren’t in the best condition either. Many of us face the same kind of situation when we go through our parent’s things. I decided to transcribe the letter and scan some of the drawings as the best way of preserving them and sharing them with family members. 

But I really think the letter is so fascinating and raises a lot of important issues about the Jewish diaspora and the state of the world back then that I thought I’d share the letter with you, dear readers. 

Dear Folks:

Spent Rosh Hashanah in a big African town and it is a day I shall never forget. I had been learning to know these people from the outside, but before that day, I had never come so close to understanding their lives. 

I went to the largest synagogue and after a few minutes rushed outside to sketch some of the wonderful things I had seen. The boys approached me and asked if I were Jewish. I was then handed a copy of a G.I. Siddur and asked to read from it. I stumbled through a couple of words and the littlest kid picked up and rattled off about three minutes of minhah from memory.

The kids invited me to dinner at their home and introduced themselves. The small one was named Maurice. I dubbed him Moish; he was six and smart as a whip.

On the way to their home he recited his lessons in French, Hebrew, and sang Moroccan songs for me. The home was in the “off limits” area, the vilest slum I have ever seen. I stumbled through a dark alley and found myself led into a dark room with a table inside. I was in the quarters of a family of six, and the size of the room was like the one Eleanore [ed. note: his sister] used to use.

I shook hands with the mother and father and felt very ill at ease. The mother hid in the corner behind the bed, occasionally covering herself in the manner of the Moslems.  

They were Moroccan Jews and spoke poor French, no Yiddish, and though the father was a Hebrew scholar, I couldn’t even recognize the few remaining words in my Hebrew vocabulary because the vowel sounds were distorted and he always stressed the last syllable in the manner of the French.

We spoke little till the arrival of the daughter, son-in-law, their baby, and an audience of neighbors, who gathered in the courtyard causing great excitement amongst the chickens.

When the younger generation arrived, we sat down to the meal and conversation picked up. Son-in-law and myself in French, kids helping with English, and all translating into Moroccan for the benefit of the parents. Kiddush was said and we went through the ceremonial washing of the hands and brochos for each course. After some more anisette, Moish and I sang Au Claire de la Lune, Hinai Matov in all three traditional melodies, and Frére Jacques. Everybody was gay and we toasted the brotherhood of the Jewish race, the liberation of all people, the end of the war, and my return to America.

We all ate, including the baby who was nursed at the table, and I got the lion’s share, doing my best to swallow the miserable food. 

Here’s the menu: Pimento, etc. The main course was a tiny piece of meat which I could not eat despite my good intentions. For dessert there were grapes and pomegranates (poor ones, not like the delicious red ones from Palestine). To drink, much wine and anisette. 

We talked of big buildings, freedom, the Moroccan antecedents of the family, and we all shared a dream of America and the good life. 

I rose to go and they asked me if I were not pleased; I said I was very happy and would return after a walk with the boys.

I got a pass to the restricted area from the Chaplain and we went on a tour through the streets.

Every step I took, people grabbed me and shouted, “Jew?” and when I answered they said, “Sholom Aleichem” and called me brother. They brought me some Jewish girls, lovely faces like Hadassah F. [ed. note: possibly one of Milt’s friends] and rich black hair, but incredibly dirty.

The streets were full of soldiers mingling with the populace. From the balcony, I heard Pistol Packin’ Mama, and saw a couple of G.I.’s celebrating and dancing.

I spoke to many people, poor diseased people with glazed eyes and infections. All of them expressed their great love for America. We mean food and life to them. They all told stories of starvation at the hands of the Germans.

After a long discussion with several amusing salesgirls, I finally managed to buy the boys some un-rationed wooden shoes, and in this small way expressed my gratitude.

All the neighbors heard about the shoes and came to see. We went out again and met a cousin of the boys, and I was invited to his house for some more wine. He and his young wife lived in an apartment house of modern construction, with tasteful furnishings and a gramophone. We drank and listened to Harry James, Jimmie Lunceford, and Arabic music.

The Moroccan music was Spanish in origin and its basic rhythm was tango. Some resembled the music of the Yemenites. Ali ali, and Zum Gali. I really regret not having learned to sight-read for I really wanted to have a record of the songs we played and they sang. They were well informed and quite cultured. The father had been a classical scholar and the young man and his wife were alert to young people.

We discussed freedom and they asked about antisemitism. I could not say our country was free from it and had a hard time explaining in my poor French its subtle manifestations in the U.S.

When I left, he made a little speech over a glass of wine and looked forward to the victory of the allies, days of peace and plenty, and, of course, my eventual return home. A La Victoire! 

Moish almost cried when I left him, and I promised to come back. We walked hand in hand to the place where I took my truck back to camp. 

I have hardly touched the reality of their painful existence. I tried to record shapes and colors of the environment in my mind and by rapidly sketching what I remember. To tell the truth of this poor yet dignified life would take a Zola or Rembrandt.

The disease and pain is written onto the faces, and some of them stayed with me so that I have had to draw them several times.

It’s a strange mixture, this complex picture I discovered, with roots in our ancient traditions and existing side by side with the businesses, like brothels, of the French; it makes cultural polyglots out of the children.

Moish could be a great man, a man of intellect but someone else will have to throw off the shackles that confine him to memorizing the phrases of a dead culture. 

If only we could or would realize the meaning we Americans have to these poor people in terms of their survival as a people. We are their dream embodied and the facts of our lives, however unsatisfactory to us, are the meat and some of the future they want.

I told Moish to always go to school and added to the tremendous store of his memorized knowledge two words, the “Glory Hallelujah” which he sings to Hinai Ma Tov. 

He already knew the Star-Spangled Banner. 

Milt

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August 10, 2025 · 7:16 am

In His Hands

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

My grandfather once held my grandmother’s hands in his. I never knew her. He held the keys of his wooden register in his hands. Canned goods. Fresh produce. Milk bottles for the 1915 free milk campaign as announced in the Newark Evening Star. He held my infant father in his hands, an American-born baby of a Litvak and a Galitzianer. He held his aging mother’s hands and when I was born, and my mother asked him for a name, he gave me the name of his mother, Bryna, and his eldest sister. Doba, who died in the 1918 flu pandemic. He once held shoelaces that he dipped in leather in his first job at a Newark tannery. He once held pencils and rulers in his work as a joiner in Russia. He once held the parcels of his Russian life as he steamed across the Atlantic at age 19 on the SS Rotterdam in 1899 to join his brother in Newark. He held the fringes of his tallis and the leather straps of his phylacteries that I now keep in a special treasures drawer. My grandfather once held the remote to his Amana television to watch The Lawrence Welk Show and used it to change the channel to The Wonderful World of Disney for me. He once held the lever to vote for Al Smith for American president after he became a US citizen. He once held the keys to a corner lot house after decades of living behind the general store he and my grandmother owned and operated. As he aged, he held the iron-wrought banister of the outdoor stairs to my father’s car. He held my father’s hands for support. He held onto life itself to the age of 93.

But with all that my grandfather held, I don’t think he ever once held me.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

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August 4, 2025 · 7:30 am

A Cultural Jew

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

I am a cultural Jew, a result of my upbringing.

I am not religious in terms of doctrine, attending

synagogue or following the rules of Sabbath or

the strictly kosher culture. Still, I’ve never thought

of myself as anything but Jewish. 

The religion has a magnetic hold on me. 

I felt this way most potently when I was dating 

the woman who became my girlfriend, my wife, 

and, finally, my much more than significant other. 

She came from a kosher life, a family that celebrated 

holy days and attended synagogue … if you’ll excuse 

the play on words …  religiously. 

I was not a smooth fit, not the final piece of a sacred

jigsaw puzzle. It took much flexibility and patience 

for them to welcome me into the fold, a little like a 

shepherd embracing the prodigal lost sheep … but 

in time it happened, and there was a wedding which was

instructive to this somewhat ill-fitting member of

the congregation.

I recall with fondness seeing so many happy faces,

standing under a chuppah for the first and only time,

breaking the glass. At that time, to me, a rabbi was a

rabbi. But I later learned that the rabbi who said magical

words that united me and my ever-after wife was special. 

He’d helped liberate Buchenwald and had supervised 

the start of new lives for Elie Wiesel and a thousand other 

orphans … and this night he was leading me and my bride 

to our own new life.

I am now in my eighties and remain a cultural Jew,

but I say with pride that I am as Jewish as I can be.

I show all Jews respect, love learning, try to harm no one.

I stand as tall as my fellow Jews. I look upon all Jews

as children of HaShem. I know my place in the scheme

of Judaism and am sincere in my love of all the tribes.

And when the time arrives, I will sit among my ancestors 

and I will be quite comfortable and proud of the life I led.

Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 100 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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July 28, 2025 · 7:30 am

Isn’t Carol Married Yet?

by Carol Blatter (Tucson, AZ)

“Isn’t Carol married yet?” 

Gossipy women whispered to my mother thinking I didn’t hear them. But I did, and it hurt. Obsessive thoughts stuck in my head unabated. I was worried. Would I ever find a Jewish husband?

How I wanted to be married! As early as my young twenties I knew that I wanted to marry a Jewish man and carry on the Jewish traditions for our family (to be). But finding such a spouse was challenging. And waiting felt like an eternity. 

Painfully, I waited, and life felt like a travesty. Imagine! I had graduated from college without an engagement ring when the pressure for a young Jewish woman to marry was common (even though my parents tried to be subtle in their messaging). 

My mother, a college graduate in 1931, expected me to get a college degree, become a teacher (although I was not interested in teaching), and find a suitable mate. Education, first. Marriage, second. “Suitable” meant a Jewish professional young man with a good future who would earn well and provide for me and a future family. A mensch. 

Dad, who was still wedded to Old World thinking, wanted to see me married, but his criteria were what the prospective suitor’s father did for a living. Mom would say, “Albert, it doesn’t matter what his father does, I want to know what he does. That’s more important. She’s not marrying his father!”

Years later, on a wintry night at Shabbat services in January, 1966, I met Harold for the first time at the Highland Park (NJ) Conservative Synagogue. Mom was with me. During the Oneg Shabbat, she noticed Harold standing alone. Knowing Mom, I could read her thoughts. Perhaps he was single? 

Never one to miss an opportunity to make sure I would meet the right man, Mom encouraged me to start a conversation with him. But that wasn’t something I wanted to do. I was polite, but distant. It felt awkward. And, sadly, there were no sparks.

It wasn’t until a year later, after I had forgotten about Harold, when my husband-to-be met Mom in synagogue, and Mom invited him to dinner on a Sunday when I would be home from graduate school in Baltimore. 

I still remember when Harold arrived at Mom’s apartment. He was handsome, tall, with hazel eyes and a kind smile. He had loving hands and a soft, sweet face. I sensed a mensch, and was mesmerized. On the three-hour drive from New Jersey back to school in Baltimore, I kept thinking about him.

A year and a half later, after asking Mom for permission to marry me, Harold put a ring on my finger. (Dad had died a few years before our engagement.) Our wedding ceremony was held at the Princeton Jewish Center in Princeton NJ on March 30, 1969. This date was chosen so we could marry before the prohibition of marrying between Passover and Shavuot.

Harold and I signed the Ketubah, my new husband broke the glass, and all in attendance cried, Mazel tov!

Now, following the traditions that my husband grew up with, we keep a Kosher kitchen. His parents changed dishes, pots, and pans for Passover, and so do we. They attended Shabbat services, and so do we. They observed the High Holidays, Chanukah, and the festivals, and so do we. 

My fears of never finding a Jewish spouse or having a Jewish family of my own have melted away over the years. But I remember how painful it was when I was younger to wonder what the future might hold if I never married…

Carol J. Wechsler Blatter has contributed writings to the 2024 Birren Collection The Gift of A Long Life, Chaleur Press, Story Circle Network Anthologies, Writing it Real anthologies, The Jewish Writing Project, the Jewish Literary Journal, True Stories Well Told, Writer’s Advice, New Millennium Writings, and 101words.org. She has contributed poems to Story Circle Network’s Real Women Write, Growing/ Older, and Covenant of the Generations by Women of Reform Judaism. Ms. Blatter is a recently retired psychotherapist, she is also a wife, mother, and grandmother of her very special granddaughter who already writes her own stories.  

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July 21, 2025 · 7:30 am

Meditations on My Yiddish Name:  Mudke Velvel ben Yankel Yisroel, ha-Levi

by Bill Siegel (Boston, MA)

1.  Mudke

They named me Mudke

          Makes me think of mud cakes, mud crawlers

          Muddy Waters

But they must mean Mordche

          which translates to Mordecai

The Latin mort, Death

          coupled with the Hebrew chai, Life

In America, they changed it to Morton

          dropping the chai, taking the life out of the name

How could you saddle a baby with a name like that?

          My aunt chided her sister

As if forgetting it was her own father’s name given to me

As if forgetting it would keep their father’s name alive

2. Velvel

A stutter, or better, a strut

One syllable with each shoulder’s swagger

          Vel~right shoulder forward and

          Vel~with the left now 

Say his name twice if you say it once:

          Vel~Vel

3. Ben

Son of,

          the rising sun of the father’s new life

The dawn of his hopes

The bend when a river changes course

          Giving birth in its time to a new flow

Ben, bene, bien

The good son

          May he not forget his ancestors

          May he remember where he comes from

          May he remember his names

          That they may carry him

Where he’s going

4. Yankel Yisroel

Who wrestled with God’s Messenger

          Or maybe God Himself

The original knock-down, drag-out, one-fall, winner-take-all

          first fixed bout, a mismatch made in Heaven

Who wrestled with the mighty Thunder King

          forcing It to reveal Its name

Jacob, who became Israel

Yankel, who became Yisroel

Yankel Yisroel

Who patrolled the Shadow of Death

          lined with the dead of Hitler’s demons

          That would boil his people

          To make soap for the armpits of strangers

Peel their skin for lampshades

Who stood, barely 20 years old,

at liberated death camps, surrounded

          by the dead, the dying and the barely surviving

Who stood between captured German officers

          And the interrogating Americans

Using his Yiddish to translate,

          to bridge the combatting languages

To make what happened perfectly clear

5.  ha-Levi

Children of Levi, the one desert clan

          To keep their name for 40 centuries

Through 400 years of slavery

          And 40 years in the desert

Temple servants and warriors

          Guardians of the faith, stationed in every city

And still the tribe with no land of our own

          4000 years and still we wash

The hands of the Cohanim

before the priestly blessing

Look now at the graves of ha-Levi, the Levites

          See the cup carved into the stone

Like all Levis before me, my stone

will honor Miriam ha-Levi

          And her well of Living Water

          that will never run dry

6.  Mudke Velvel ben Yankel Yisroel, ha-Levi

All this in one name.

          All this in my name.

Bill Siegel lives in the Boston MA area, and writes both prose and poetry – about family, fishing, jazz, and more. He has two manuscripts in process: “Printed Scraps”, poems inspired by Japanese woodblock prints; and “Waiting to Go Home”, about family and memories of growing up. His work has been published in “Beyond Lament: Poets of the World Bearing Witness to the Holocaust” (Northwestern University Press), and “Indigenous Pop: Native American Music from Jazz to Hip Hop” (University of Arizona Press). His poems also appear in Blue Mesa Review, Rust+Moth, JerryJazzMusician, Brilliant Corners, and InMotion Magazine, among others.

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July 14, 2025 · 7:30 am

Questions I Never Asked

by Herbert Munshine (Great Neck, NY)

It’s too late now, far too late. Both my parents and

both my sisters are gone. My wellspring of family

knowledge has faded into the mysteries of history.

I was smart with books and sports, but I am ignorant

of my own history, full of regrets and a desire to know

but missing the precious resources that would have

filled the holes, the chasms in my consciousness.

When did they arrive in the U. S.? Why did they leave

Poland and Latvia? What was life there like for Jews?

How did they meet? Was the meeting accidental, 

spontaneous, arranged? How long did they date before

he proposed? Where did they get married? How long

were they married before she had my older sister?

What did he help build as a carpenter (besides the

Museum of the City of New York?). What was her

favorite color? Flower? Song? Pre-TV radio show?

Which members of my family were lost during the

Holocaust? During the pogroms? Did any of them

make the Aliyah to Israel? Who were my living relatives?

Where did they live? What did they do? Why were we

and they so distant? 

Why did she have me 10 years after my second sister?

Was she happy when I was born? Did she feel too old

to care for a baby again? Is it true that she almost

aborted me but changed her mind literally at the final

moment?

Then there are the closer queries to my toddler self:

What did her voice sound like? What did her touch

feel like? Her scent? Her presence? Beliefs: Did she

light Shabbas candles? Did he attend synagogue 

regularly when he was much younger and she was

still a vital presence in our lives? Afterthoughts:

What was his favorite opera? Why did he switch from

being a builder to owning a store? The ethereal gems:

What would they feel about the man I have become,

the woman I married, the children and grandchildren

I had – – – and how little my progeny know about them?

One final question: Why did I wait too late to ask?

Herbert Munshine grew up in the Bronx and graduated from C.C.N.Y. with both a B.S. in Education and a Master’s Degree in English. You can find his baseball poetry on Baseball Bard where he has had more than 160 poems published, and where he was recently inducted into that site’s Hall of Fame. He lives with his wife in Great Neck, NY.

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July 7, 2025 · 7:30 am

Repairing the World with Chicken Soup

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

Boil chicken bones and chicken parts with water, parsnip, dill, carrot, and celery in a pot larger than your firstborn. Ladle the soup into a bowl and add Goodman’s fine egg noodles if it’s Shabbos or handmade lokshen if it’s Pesach. Form dense matzoh balls with your hands. It’s all right if they’re misshapen. So is the world. Should the matzoh balls sink to the bottom of the pot and your stomach, it’s okay. They’ll soak up the golden liquid that soothes all that ails you and the world. Tikkun olam. 

Having kosher chicken soup from your mama’s stove is like no other. Better than the best kosher deli. Because it contains love like your mama’s kiss on your keppele. You’re all right, it’s the Sabbath, time to end one week and start another fresh and clean. The broth will clear your head, clear all mistakes, fill you up so you can curl up under your featherbed all cozy, warm, and loved.

And maybe this is the best of all. Knowing that your mama learned how to make the soup from her mama, Rayzel Entel, who learned it from her mama, Esther Taube Drewno, who learned it from her mama, Chaja Rojza Mularzewicz, who learned it from her mama, Buna Etla Przestreleniec, who learned it from her mama, Ruchla Herszkowna of no last name, born at the turn of the nineteenth century in Brok, Poland. You are a link in the chain doling out the remedy to repair the world a spoonful at a time.


Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

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June 23, 2025 · 7:30 am

My grandfather, Bubushi 

By Sophia Nourafshan (Los Angeles, California) 

My grandfather, Bubushi, is a man who wears his Jewish identity with pride, refusing to conceal it, regardless of the circumstances. My grandfather shared a painful incident he experienced, and the impact of his words has stayed with me ever since. It was a typical Saturday afternoon when he walked out of the synagogue, his blue kippah on, tzitzit hanging visibly, a siddur in one hand, and some chicken and rice from Shul in the other. As he walked toward the crosswalk, he saw a man sitting on the cold ground, shivering in ragged clothes, with a sign asking for money.

My grandfather, always looking for a chance to do a mitzvah, went over and slowly began placing the meal beside him. That’s when the man grabbed his wrist, looked him in the eye, and yelled, “You filthy Jew,” before punching him. I vividly remember the deep wave of upset that hit me when Bubushi initially told me about this. All I could think was, how could anyone treat him that way, simply because he is Jewish? But the next part of the story completely changed how I saw the situation.

Instead of reacting in anger or fear, I learned that my grandfather calmly placed the food beside the man, looked at him, and said softly, “Shabbat Shalom, and have a great rest of your day.” I could hardly believe it. I was told that he did not flinch. He did not feel the need to fight back nor defend himself. It struck me that what he did in order to perform a mitzvah was more powerful than any retaliation could ever be.

Hearing this story made me rethink how I approach life. I was always proud of my faith, but after hearing what my grandfather had done, I felt a deep connection to his act of kindness, one rooted in resilience. I now wear my Star of David every day, not just as a symbol, but as a reminder that I should not let fear or prejudice silence who I am. Walking with my grandfather to Shul every Saturday has become more meaningful as each step with him feels like a quiet statement of who we are and where we stand.

Bubushi has shown me that real strength comes from humility and kindness in a world that can sometimes be hostile. His example has shaped how I see myself, my faith, and the importance of standing tall, even when the world tries to knock you down. I have learned from him that dignity does not come from how others treat you but from how you choose to respond. Like him, I hope to embrace faith and resilience as the core of my identity, a testament to the strength that comes from knowing who I am and standing by it, no matter what. 

Sophia Nourfshan is a current senior at Milken Community High School. She writes: “I am fortunate to have two older brothers and wonderful parents who inspire me and set an example for me every day. From a young age, my parents instilled in me the importance of Judaism and the values that define us. This story is essential for me to share, as it reflects who I am and resonates with the challenges we are facing in today’s world. Judaism is a core part of my identity, and despite the antisemitism we encounter, I will continue to live proudly and authentically as a Jew. I hope my story can inspire others to stand up for their faith and respond courageously in the face of adversity.” 

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