Finding Unity Within a Diverse Jewish World This Elul
As Elul approaches, Rabbi Alex Braver finds a deep sense of interconnection around the Jewish globe — and cherishes the things that makes us different.
By Rabbi Alex Braver - Congregation Tifereth Israel; Columbus, Ohio | September 24, 2024
Global Jewish Reflections is a recurring feature highlighting the spiritual wisdom of rabbis, Jewish educators, and others from around the JDC world.
I had a whole lesson plan of Jewish texts and reflections on leadership prepared for a group of teens at the KEDEM Jewish Community Center (JCC) in Chișinău, Moldova. Instead, I ended up throwing most of it out the window.

I was abroad for four months this past summer on sabbatical from my pulpit in Columbus, Ohio. Though my family and I spent most of our time in Tel Aviv, we included a number of trips to visit Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe that my husband has gotten to know during his decade-long experience at JDC. I’d heard so much about each of these places from his travels as a video producer and storyteller for the organization, but seeing them firsthand together — along with our two small children — had been a longtime dream.
Now, though, with a dozen teens in front of me and after a few days in Moldova dedicated to getting to know the former Soviet republic’s Jewish community, my prepared texts on leadership seemed less immediately relevant than whatever would emerge from us organically and authentically sharing our stories with one another.
We spent our time asking each other about our Jewish lives — deeply connected as Jews are all across the world, but living in very different contexts. I got to speak about the diversity of Jewish religious life in the U.S., and I asked about their Jewish identities and social lives. We all spoke about our passion for and connection to Israel, especially at this challenging moment, and we discussed how each of our communities grapples with antisemitism.
Our conversation felt like its own kind of Torah, the sort of powerful learning we encounter when we take the time to really listen to members of our global Jewish family who are so much like, and yet so different from, ourselves.
I had a similar experience two months later in Bulgaria, meeting with a different group of teens at Jewgaton, the country’s JDC-supported communal Jewish summer camp, where more than 250 kids and counselors spent almost two weeks learning, praying, singing, and playing together — something like 5% of the country’s Jewish population of about 5,000 people.

As a Conservative rabbi, I was an unusual phenomenon for many of them, as they grew up with a religious life that was mainly Orthodox, and a Jewish communal life that was largely cultural. On top of that was the fact that I was there with my husband and kids!
One teen asked me, directly but not impolitely, “Why do you feel the need to change everything? Why can’t you just keep the traditions?”
At first I was a bit taken aback — that’s not the sort of question I often get in my American Jewish context, where the importance of a dialogue and give-and-take between tradition and change feels taken for granted, even as we each fall on different points of that spectrum.
I was quiet for a minute, and then I realized how grateful I was for his question — to have some of the basic assumptions of my Jewish life questioned simply and with curiosity. It also reminded me and helped me to remember that Bulgaria, like Moldova and every other Jewish community throughout Europe and the rest of the non-American, non-Israeli world, has its own unique and valid way of doing things, with its own hard-won assumptions and norms.
What a gift to realize that my way of doing things — the American Jewish way of doing things — is not the center of the Jewish universe!
As an American Jew, I was raised from childhood to think about global Jewish life as having two main poles — the United States and Israel. Even through rabbinical school, most of us thought of everywhere else as a footnote, the remnants of a destroyed world after the Holocaust. But without diminishing the trauma and devastation of the Shoah, I’ve come to learn — and, thankfully, to see with my own eyes — the vibrant, thoughtful, and diverse forms of Jewish life beyond those familiar contexts.
Our conversation felt like its own kind of Torah — the powerful learning we encounter when we take the time to listen to our global Jewish family.
This Bulgarian teen and I had a nice back-and-forth. I’m not sure he was completely convinced by my pitch for Conservative Judaism, and I don’t think I’m about to abandon my movement either. But how beautiful it was for that moment to connect with one another’s experiences, and for the whole group of campers to see us have this respectful back-and-forth, exposing each of us to Jewish ideas we might have never considered otherwise.
In this month of Elul, as the Jewish High Holidays approach, I’m thinking about my encounters with the global diversity of the Jewish community as reminders of how to treasure the things that make us different. They’re a chance to reconsider the many ways to be Jewish and act Jewishly, and the many ways we can each be in touch with our truest selves as part of the process of teshuvah.
Now more than ever, we need this reminder of our interconnectedness, even with our differences.
Alex Braver serves as a rabbi at Congregation Tifereth Israel in Columbus, Ohio, where he loves teaching and coordinating Jewish learning, working with kids and young families, and accompanying people in both joyful and difficult moments.
He’s attended a JDC Entwine Insider Trip to Argentina, along with a virtual trip to Georgia during the COVID-19 pandemic. He lives with his husband Alex Weisler, JDC’s senior video and digital content producer, their children Ezra and Margot, and their dog Benjy.
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