Even before I finalized my conversion to Judaism, I was preparing to celebrate my adult bar mitzvah. In a sense, my conversion preparation became a precursor to bigger plans: for a bar mitzvah and a Jewish vow renewal ceremony with my wife Laurie later this year.

Camp is generally a great experience for kids. They deepen their Jewish identities, broaden their communities, and learn new life skills. However, these benefits can also mean your camper needs some time to process their experience on their own while readjusting to life at home.

What happens when you take six Jewish teens and six Catholic teens to Israel? This was the very question that Roger Tilles and the late Fr. Tom Hartman hoped to answer in 1988 when they organized Project Understanding.

A common sentiment among Jewish-affiliated teens seems to be, after your b'nei mitzvah, religious school is over, right? Sure, you might come back for confirmation in a few years, but there's no real reason to stay involved. You're Jewish. You know that, your family knows that, and your friends know that. Staying involved is kind of a waste of time. Right? Actually, no. Even if you've had your b'nei mitzvah, there are benefits to staying involved with your Hebrew School and your religious education.

I love seeing how our students at Temple Shalom of Newton transform throughout the process of becoming BMitzvah. It's the end of my first year coordinating the BMitzvah program and my colleague Allison Lobron, an experienced leader in inclusion and social emotional learning, and I are hosting an end of year celebration for our BMitzvah students.

After two years of teaching remotely and watching far too many movies and television series on Netflix on the same computer screen I use to interact with these students, I wonder if I feel less connected to these "virtual" students than the hundreds of young people I taught in person over the past decades.

But I need your help to ensure that every student can access mental health care, no matter where they live.

Israel is our home. It was in the Torah, and it is now. It sure isn’t perfect, and it might not be around forever, but that’s exactly why we need to come.

“I was in NFTY!” a stranger told me, spotting my years-old T-shirt. This feeling of knowing all of us, that we truly did meet at Sinai, or at least a camp, provides comfort during uncomfortable times.