Katie’s Korner

Katie (2nd row - first person on the right seated on the wall) and the Hillel at Miami Student Leadership team and staff - August 2021

Katie’s Korner is a space for our Engagement Director, Katie Spector, to share personal insights from her Jewish journey.

I have always believed I was Jewish, but often, I questioned why I would choose to be Jewish. My mother is not religious, and my father has not practiced Judaism in years. The answer has always been the same: it is just who I am and who I will always be. As an only child, I felt responsible for my continuing my family's Jewish narrative. I would be the deciding factor if we would continue to be Jewish, or I could choose to be the last Jewish person in my family.

Recently, I heard the following words by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks: 

I have a little dream; it goes like this. You are wandering through a library. It has millions of books and you're wandering through and you're looking at all the titles of the books, and then suddenly you stop dead.

There's a book and on the title, it’s got your name. You take it out, open it up, and you see that there are several hundred pages of that book written by many different hands in different languages. With a shock, you realize that this book has been written by your ancestors.

Every single one of them has written a chapter in this book telling their story and handing it on to their children. And as you get to the end of the book, with a shock you see an empty page with your name on it, and you realize that is the chapter that you have to write.

For years, I felt drawn to Judaism after years of not feeling Jewish enough. I still felt drawn to my Jewish heritage in ways I could not explain. However, Rabbi Sacks brings up an important point -- If you found a book written by your ancestors, could you put it down and walk away? How could I walk away from my family’s book? Knowing as an only child my family’s book would end with me and, I choose to continue to write my family’s history, just as our students are continuing to write their family’s stories. 

This week, families from across the country will join our Hillel family for Shabbat services and dinner. Their college-age children attend Shabbat weekly with us, and for the first time in two years, we will be able to join together as a community. Their parents have written their chapters and now their children are currently writing their own. Each of us mentioned within sentences or paragraphs in the new stories their children are crafting. Their children continue to fight to be Jewish in a society where it can be easier not to be. We will join together to break bread and share in the delight of continuing as Jewish people. All of us write our own stories that come together; as one in the library of the Jewish people.