April 24, 2026

Our involvement in and engagement with organizations have the potential to shape us, and when we become leaders in those organizations, we have the potential to shape them. For young people, organizational participation is sometimes part of the college résumé-building process, but more importantly, such involvement provides community and profound meaning. For young Reform Jewish high school students, their involvement in Jewish teen organizations is certainly meaningful, with the potential to form their identities.

Last week, we learned that our very own Cade Crane was named President of NFTY, the North American Federation of Temple Youth. Our kids know Cade as our song leader and K–2 music teacher in religious school. Our families know Cade because he has joined us to lead songs for our family Shabbat service celebrations. We are so proud of his involvement this past year as NFTY Ohio Valley regional president and look forward to his leadership on a national level.

While I cannot speak to how NFTY has shaped Cade’s life—that is for Cade to share—I can say that he has traveled across the country attending NFTY events. In a leadership capacity, he helps guide and lead programming for many Reform Jewish teens. Personally, I am not sure I would be sitting here as your rabbi without NFTY shaping my life. From my days in what was then called LIFTY (Long Island Federation of Temple Youth), I remember engaging in thoughtful conversations about Jewish values and Tikkun Olam. NFTY prayer services introduced me to creative worship, as we combined traditional liturgy with contemporary melodies, poetry, and readings. The moments I experienced during kallot and NFTY conventions remain vivid memories in my mind. Leadership opportunities during my youth gave me the confidence to know that I had a voice. NFTY certainly shaped me.

I am so proud that Cade will now have the opportunity to shape it. While NFTY looks different than it did in the mid-90s, it still provides an important outlet for Reform Jewish teens to create community. As NFTY President, Cade will have the opportunity to be a voice representing North America’s Reform Jewish youth. I know that, as a teen, I thought the national board members were really cool and was in awe of their leadership. Jewish life continues to be in a pivotal moment. We know the challenges facing the Jewish community writ large, and in many ways, those challenges affect teens even more acutely. Our teens have questions about what it means to be Jewish in a world where so many have turned their backs on Jews and Israel. Teens strive to navigate a world where Jewish values can sometimes conflict, and they wonder which direction to choose. In the coming year, when the Reform Jewish world needs a voice representing Jewish youth, they will turn to Cade to be that voice.

Cade became Bar Mitzvah in December 2020, a time when we were celebrating these significant life cycle moments on Zoom. He has been involved in GUCI, our Reform movement’s regional summer camp, as a camper, counselor, and song leader. Cade has been through our confirmation program, has taught in our religious school, and has been a leader locally in Student to Student, a Jewish organization that goes to public schools to teach about Jewish life. He is also highly involved in his local community in Marysville. Cade now has the opportunity to bring all that he has learned to his new national leadership role as he helps shape the future of this organization. There are significant questions facing Jewish youth at this moment, and we are proud that Cade will be at the forefront of these conversations.

Congregation Beth Tikvah is a thriving congregation in the Midwest. As we sit down to celebrate Shabbat this evening, let us take a moment to think about Cade Crane, NFTY’s next President; Marci Delson, whom we just honored as WRJ Heartland District Co-President; Andy Shafran, who serves on the Executive Board of the Union for Reform Judaism; and, I humbly include myself, as I serve as President-Elect of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. All of our lives have been shaped by these organizations, and we now have the blessing of shaping them.

Cade, I share with you the words Moses shared with Joshua when he passed on his leadership: “חזק ואמץ, hazak v’ematz—be strong and of good courage!”

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

Rabbi Rick Jacobs, URJ President, and Cade Crane at the October 2024 NFTY Collab.

April 17, 2026

We are in the midst of a ten-day period of modern Jewish holidays that began Monday evening with Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rabbi Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi labeled these days, in this week’s For Heaven’s Sake podcast, as Israel’s “10 Days of Awe.” The days continue from Yom HaShoah to Yom HaZikaron, the day to remember Israel’s fallen soldiers, and conclude on Yom Ha’atzmaut, Israel’s Independence Day. We associate the 10 Days of Awe with the traditional liturgical time on the Jewish calendar between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Tying these modern holidays to the traditional 10 Days of Awe elevates their meaning, as these days invite us to dive into our past and recognize the thread that connects the Jewish people across the present moment and throughout history.

In the podcast, Rabbi Hartman refers to the holidays as a “speed bump to stop you from your regular flow of life. A holiday descends on you and demands something of you. It demands that you think about something. It demands that you remember. It demands that you concentrate on a certain value or idea. That’s the way all holidays work.” It’s a remarkable metaphor because speed bumps are meant to slow us down. In my neighborhood, they were installed because people drove too fast, putting young children in danger. To call the holidays speed bumps shows us that we need to slow down and pause. In Israel, on Yom HaShoah, sirens blare and everything stops for two minutes. On Yom Ha’atzmaut, the nation stops—and the celebration begins. The debates pause for a day, and we simply celebrate Israel’s existence.

Yossi Klein Halevi adds another layer to the conversation when he explains that Yom HaShoah is the consequence of Jewish powerlessness. Yom HaZikaron is the consequence of Jewish power, as we mourn the lives of those who fought to create and preserve independence. Finally, Yom Ha’atzmaut is the day we “suspend our grief, agony, and debate” and simply celebrate that we exist.

I appreciate the need to pause the debate so we can celebrate our existence. God knows (literally) that we, as a Jewish people, spend much of our time debating and discussing who we are and where we are going. We spend days doing that. For one day, we need to celebrate. If these are days that call on us to remember and concentrate on a certain value or idea, then let us do just that. Can we remember where we came from? Can we remember the stories of those who helped build the State of Israel?

When I read The Genius of Israel by Dan Senor and Saul Singer last year, I was drawn to a story about a man named Tzvika Fayirizen (pp. 108–111), who retired in 2020 after 35 years of service in the IDF. His final position was commanding the IDF Education Corps. Fayirizen wondered why the IDF had an education corps when no other Western country did. He asked what motivates a young person to respond to their enlistment letter by saying, “I want to be a combat soldier,” and to take an oath to die for a cause greater than themselves.

He offers three answers. First, the willingness to die for one’s brothers and sisters in arms. He acknowledges, however, that a young person has not yet gone through training, so there must be something more. His second answer is what he calls the heritage of battle—stories shared by previous generations of soldiers, passed down as a sense of responsibility.

For me, though, the third answer is the most compelling. Fayirizen shares that when he turned 18, his grandfather took him on a walk and told him a story no one in the family had ever heard before. His grandfather had served in the Polish army, was captured by the Germans, and lined up in front of a pit to be executed. Instead, he threw himself into the pit, waited until everyone had died, and then escaped into the forest. He went on to serve with the partisans during the Holocaust.

Then Fayirizen’s grandfather said, “During those six years, I had many dreams. I dreamed of food. I dreamed of my wife and son” (no one had known he had a wife and son before coming to Israel). “I had many dreams, but I could not dream of one thing. A person can only dream of something they can imagine, and I never imagined that I would walk unbowed as a Jew in the State of Israel—and that this country would be mine.”

Then he shared words that struck me deeply: “Do me a favor. Make sure that it does not fall apart.” As we celebrate Israel’s 78th birthday, we think about all the people who have done the sacred work of keeping Israel alive. It is a place that allows Judaism and Jewish culture to thrive. It is a place at the heart of the Jewish people, even if we do not all live there. As Fayirizen says, it is a home we are meant to nurture and protect.

If that is a story to remember, then perhaps the idea we should reflect on is found in the closing words of Theodor Herzl’s The Jewish State, published in 1896. He writes, “The Jews who wish for a State will have it… We shall live at last as free men on our own soil and die peacefully in our own homes.” Herzl envisioned a state that would benefit both the Jewish people and humanity. Yom Ha’atzmaut is a time to celebrate what Israel has contributed—not only to the Jewish people, but to the world—through advances in science, literature, technology, community, and more.

The debates and the grief can be suspended for the day. These are days to remember—and to celebrate.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner

April 10, 2026

Several weeks ago, I was invited to teach at Otterbein University in a course focused on the history of the Holocaust. My presentation centered on memory and identity within the Jewish community as they relate to the Holocaust. As I considered what I might share, I returned to several Jewish population surveys and found that a high percentage of respondents say that remembering the Holocaust is deeply tied to their Jewish identity. In the most recent survey, 73% of American Jews indicated that remembering the Holocaust is critical to their identity. It is one of the strongest markers of Jewish identity in the survey—and it invites us to ask: why?

To answer that question, we might turn to insights into how Jews and Judaism understand memory. Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks writes, “There is a profound difference between history and memory. History is his story—an event that happened sometime else to someone else. Memory is my story—something that happened to me and is part of who I am. History is information. Memory, by contrast, is part of identity.” In remembering the Holocaust, we remember what happened to us. Some of us are direct descendants of Holocaust survivors. Others, like me, have families who were in the United States long before the war; all of my grandparents were born here. And yet, through story and study, remembering the Holocaust has become part of our collective Jewish identity.

The act of memory has the power to shape us because we inherit these stories. Just as we include in our seder the famous line from the Mishnah: “In every generation, a person is obligated to see themselves as if they personally came out of Egypt.” None of us walked through the parted waters of the Red Sea, and yet we were there; slavery and liberation happened to us. So too with Holocaust memory. We have told and retold the stories of those who came before us. We feel the pain, perhaps because in another time or place—or even today—we, too, have experienced antisemitism. That internalization shapes our identity, our behavior, and the way we move through the world.

My brother, Greg, recently sent me an email in which he recalled a memory from our childhood. When we gathered at the seder table, we reached a point after the meal when the humor subsided and a sense of seriousness set in. From the time we were young, my mother added a “Fifth Child” to the seder. It was a supplement from Hadassah that became part of our family tradition. She would begin to read:

“On this night, we remember a fifth child. This is a child of the Holocaust who did not survive to ask. Therefore, we ask for that child, why? We are like the simple child. We have no answer. We answer that child’s question with Silence. In Silence, we remember that dark time. In Silence, we remember that Jews preserved their image of God in the struggle for life. In Silence, we remember the seder nights spent in the forests, ghettos, and camps; we remember that seder night when the Warsaw ghetto rose in revolt.”

Then, in silence, we passed Elijah’s cup, each adding a bit of our own wine, remembering our people’s return to the land of Israel—the beginning of the redemption Elijah is meant to herald.

On Monday evening, the Columbus Jewish community will gather to remember the Holocaust. It is Yom HaShoah v’Hag’vurah—the Day of Remembrance of the Holocaust and Heroism. It takes place each year on the Hebrew date of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, reminding us that the stories and memories of the Holocaust are complex. We must remember the victims. We must remember those who resisted. We must remember the Righteous Among the Nations. We must remember stories of survival. We must remember.

Every act of memory, every story told, is sacred. I hope you will join us Monday evening at 6:30 PM for our annual Yom Hashoah v’Hag’vurah commemoration. Please RSVP in advance and the location will be shared upon registration.

Shabbat Shalom,

Rabbi Rick Kellner