Winter - United Synagogue Youth

Communications
Corner
When the wind blows,
it is the roots of the tree that
enable it to stay standing
and not get blown away by the
storm. The same is true for us,
though our roots aren’t as easy to see as those of a
tree. Sometimes it takes a little tracing to find where
they lead.
For a number of years now, my family has been
tracing our roots, literally. We’ve traced our genealogy
as far back as Bobruisk, a small town in Russia -
and have managed to connect with many other
people who descended from citizens of this town. It’s
amazing what you can find out if you really look and
do some research.
How did we do all of this It wasn’t so hard -
everything is sitting there waiting for people to come
look at it. Governments keep records, and if you do
the research, you’ll probably find a lot more than you
expected to. Who would have expected that we could
start with our family’s verbal history, and then take
that and connect it to all of the death certificates,
marriage licenses, passenger manifests on the ships
from the old country, censuses, and even archives
from over in Poland and Russia
As I write my final column for Achshav! and
approach the end of my year on board, I look back
on my years in USY and what I’ve done, and not
done. For many of you reading this, you are in the
second half of your senior year, and are doing the
same thing with your years in USY. When you first
start out in USY, oftentimes you don’t know what to
expect. As freshman in high school, USY is a big
place with big people. But if we do a little looking
around, as many of us did, we find that there are
amazing things going on. Unfortunately, there are a
lot of people who don’t look around, and don’t see
Continued on page 12
From the Editors
When
we were younger
we are
taught that every
Jew has one
thing in common.
If you trace
your roots all the way
back as far as you can go, we’ll all end up at the Forefathers.
That’s why all Jews are related.
But that’s not what really binds us together
as a people, is it Just the fact that we all have the
same great great great... (you get the point) grandfather,
enough to sustain generations of Jews We think
not. What truly binds us together, as a Jewish community,
is the state of Israel.
Just like roots are intended to feed a tree, so
are we intended to feed the state of Israel. We are to
feed it with love and devotion. There is more than
one way to do this. We must support politically by
flooding the White House and Capital Hill in America
and the Parliament Building and Parliament Hill in
Canada with letters declaring our support for Israel.
We must plan and actually show up to rallies and
demonstrations in support of Israel. We must buy
Israeli products whenever we can. Whenever Israeli
vendors come from Ben Yehuda Street we must support
them. Most importantly, and perhaps above all
others, we must visit Israel. If we stop going, we stop
having a place to go. The survival of the Jewish
people depends on this fact alone! Just like a tree
can’t survive without its roots, Israel can’t survive
without us.
- Jon Schwartz and Jeremy Moses,
2003 Achshav! Co-Editors
2 • ACHSHAV! WINTER 2003
Jason Lustig of Tzafon is the International
Communications Vice President of USY. E-mail him at
communications@usy.org.
If you have questions, comments or want to volunteer
to write for _______ , e-mail Jeremy Moses or Jonathan
Schwartz at achshav@usy.org