Mazal Tov to Rhonda and Nachman
Last night I had the privilege to attend a particularly poignant vort celebration . The vort was celebrating the engagement of Nachman Bergman and Rhonda Spector, one of my oldest NCSYers.
My wife and I drove up to the house in Boro Park at about 9:30pm, just as everyone assembled there began to daven mincha. I was very excited to meet the groom who seemed like a wonderful young chasid, complete with a big round bekisha and long payos. As I met Nachman all I could think about was the Rhonda I first met many years ago in Berkley High School in Oak Park, Michigan.
Berkley, filled with unaffiliated and unconnected Jews, is a public high school where I established one of my first public school clubs. At the club meetings I met Rhonda who excitedly joined NCSY on our Yarchei Kallah Retreat and then went to seminary in Israel after she graduated high school.
As I looked at the happy couple, I could not help but wonder, ‘What if?’ What if NCSY had not touched Rhonda’s life? Rhonda is just one example of the thousands of wholly unconnected young Jews that NCSY has brought close to Yiddishkeit. I don’t believe there is any way to count how many intermarriages NCSY has prevented by educating Jewish teens about their heritage and introducing them to the Torah.
As I spoke with Rhonda she frankly stated, “It’s pretty wild that I’m marrying a chasid”. Thinking back, I replied, “It could just have easily been a non-Jew”, to which she responded, “How true”.
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