"It was all part of being there, showing the unaffiliated that bnei Torah can be fun, normal, and serious about Yiddishkeit at the same time"
There’s a certain thrill in planning the “best summer ever,” whether that means an adventurous cross-country road trip, having a blast in camp as one of the cool staffers, or some exotic vacation destination. But sometimes the greatest opportunities are the ones that aren’t even about you. What happens when you spend your summer in the service of others?
Having grown up in an enclave of Torah Jews, my exposure to non-Orthodox Jews was limited to a few general studies teachers in school. I was frum, surrounded by frum neighbors, and living in a frum community. Torah was our way of life and even when we questioned it, it was not so much asking why as it was asking what.
Joining Torah Umesorah’s SEED program in Charlotte, North Carolina, was eye-opening. Charlotte is a nice, quaint community, but not exactly a religious hub. A devoted husband and wife team, Rabbi and Rebbetzin Chanoch Oppenheim, serve as leaders of the Charlotte Torah Center, the town’s Orthodox shul and Jewish learning center. They welcomed us — a group of six yeshivah bochurim who were starting to doubt why we were 500 miles away from our friends who were surely enjoying their summer in the Catskills — into their shul and introduced us to the community members who showed up.
I remember the first Shacharis we had in Charlotte. We took out the sefer Torah to lein that week’s parshah. We were up to Sefer Devarim while the sefer Torah was still in the middle of Vayikra. We knew it was time to jump in, joining Rabbi Oppenheim’s night seder learning program for men who were willing to participate. I thought we would be the ones teaching and mentoring, but we gained so much from watching the community members.
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