As the time came near, I was busy planning with the Lewis AZA Shaliach to lay out what our chapter Global Shabbat would consist of. With the international theme being ‘With all our Might’, we decided to make the focus of the night about Anti-Semitism awareness.
The night we had anticipated soon arrived and we started the program the right way, with food of course. After eating and catching up with members of Lewis AZA, we began participating in some activities. We began explaining what the theme of the night was, and all of the different ways anti-semitism could appear in our daily lives. We then went around and told everyone to write on a piece of paper a time that they experienced anti-semitism, or had seen someone they know experience anti-semitism of any form. We went around and shared what we all wrote on our paper, which made us feel more united. We soon realized that although antisemitism is horrific and disheartening, we were not alone and could fight it together. Continuing the activity, everyone threw their piece of paper with hatred into the trash and got rid of them.
We then spoke about how it may have been easy to just throw away our paper, but anti-semitism will never go away that easily. We may always be surrounded by resentment, but we can never stay silent and must speak out to what is right.
The goal was for everyone to leave that night with a better understanding of what antisemitism is and how we can stand up against it.
Gabi Mitchell is a BBG from North Texas Oklahoma and has four siblings.
All views expressed on content written for The Shofar represent the opinions and thoughts of the individual authors. The author biography represents the author at the time in which they were in BBYO.