ONE Jewish Generation Z: Who/What/ Where/Why When other Jews are trying to suss out how religious I am, they want to know whether I keep kosher, observe Shabbat, and am a member of a synagogue. These are questions about what I do, not what I believe. —Sarah Hurwitz, Here All Along: Finding Meaning, Spirituality, and a Deeper Connection to Life—In Judaism (After Finally Choosing to Look There) “Being Jewish for me isn’t about what you believe, or God, or any of that. A lot of being Jewish is doubting God. It’s the community and the people you’re with and the things you do that make you Jewish.” Elana is a high school freshman in the Washington, DC, suburbs. In many ways, she’s typical. She’s an overachiever. She is close to her family and calls her mom her best friend. If you let her get started talking about her summer camp, she’ll wax poetic for hours on end. And like thousands of her peers, she spends her time perfecting TikTok dances and stressing over the college admissions process, and she is more concerned about mak- ing the varsity field hockey team than she is about existential questions of her identity. But beneath the bubbly, quick-to-giggle surface, she’s in the throes of an identity transformation as she explores what it means for her to have come of age as a young Jewish woman in the United States of 2020. In her childhood, Judaism was something fun. It meant presents on Chanukah, Shabbat dinners surrounded by family and food, and a network of friends,
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