When did you join JHP? How involved were you?
I got introduced to JHP my sophomore year of college and I think it was because I had gone to Israel on a whim my sophomore year. I am Jewish on both sides of my family, but I had never even considered going to Israel because I was very Reform growing up. When I went to Israel, I was just blown away. I went alone and found this program called Sad El, in which you volunteer with the army. I lived on an army base for two weeks and this experience really connected me to the country. After, I became more interested in being Jewish and as a result, I looked for someone that would talk to me about it. For me personally, that was not Hillel. I could not relate to those people, and so I found Ephraim and he was just great, super welcoming and we started studying together. I became more and more involved and then the next year, my junior year, I went to Israel with them because I wanted to go back. I met my ex wife on that trip. She was our tour guide. And then I just kept staying involved with JHP!
When you think of JHP, what comes to mind?
I can't even overstate it, my children are alive because of JHP. It sounds dramatic, but truly, I met my ex wife, who I still love even though we're not married, because of JHP. For me, JHP set me on a path for my entire adult life.
JHP was a very welcoming way for me to explore my love for Israel without contradicting fundamental beliefs I have about the world. As I got older and I went into other Jewish environments, that was not the case. It was always open-minded with Menachem or Ephraim, and that's why I'm still so close with them, because I can coexist with them. I can have totally different views about God, about life, and even about being Jewish, but we work together as people. At the end of the day, it's just so important to me that there is a strong bond there, but we just express it in very different ways.
What was JHP’s impact on your life?
JHP impacted my Jewish identity by taking the goofiness of it away. In America, it had become either you're religious, which for me was like a foreign world growing up, or it was like this caricature, you're Jewish cause Jon Stewart's Jewish and Woody Allen's Jewish, and that wasn't interesting to me. For me, it allowed me to find an identity and realize it's pretty deep, it's who I am. JHP allowed me to be comfortable with being Jewishly myself and celebrate it.
