My Jewish Life at Houston High School

By Nava VanderWalde

Nov 23rd, 2024

This year I started 9th grade at Houston High School, a public high school in Germantown. This has been a big change, as I went from Bornblum, a private school with a graduating class of eight, to a public school with over 2,000 kids. For one thing, the hallways are like Times Square on New Year's Eve. It’s so crowded that sometimes I get run over, or lost in the hallways. There have been times when I’ve gone into random staircases trying to get to a class, and had no idea where I was. Another difference from Bornblum is that now, each of my teachers teach the same subject, for six periods, to over 200 students. I’ve had to learn to advocate for myself and make myself known, because otherwise I would just be a name and a grade...Read more

How My Life Changed After October 7th

Essay Submission for the Forward

By Ethan VanderWalde

Nov 23rd, 2024

I was in synagogue on October 7th, 2023, and my family and I were hearing some filtered, second-hand news about what was going on in Israel. I can still remember walking back home with my dad in silence, trying to understand what was going on. I turned to him and said “You don’t think it's really that bad, do you?” He responded, “I’m usually able to tell when something big is happening; when I first heard about 9/11, I knew it was worse than just an accidental plane crash. Whatever is happening today, it’s going to affect us for years to come.” He was right...Read more

From Generation to Generation: Jewish Continuity and Antisemitism

By Abby Portnoy

The senseless violence of October 7th took the world by storm and opened the eyes of Jews to the reality that antisemitism is thriving, even in 2024. While I do not know the names of my family members who perished in the Holocaust, I mourn their slaughter. This is why I take personal responsibility in sharing stories from the Holocaust and educating my non-Jewish friends on why it was wrong. If people are not educated on the atrocities of the past, history is bound to repeat itself. The transmission of stories from generation to generation allows us to benefit from our ancestors’ experiences. The Holocaust was a genocide of Jews, but it was not the first massive conflict to target the Jewish people. Unfortunately, as we saw on October 7, antisemitism is still a prominent evil in our society...Read more