Engaging in Citizenship

When considering how I engage in citizenship in my life, I must first realize what I consider myself to be a citizen of. There are many communities of which I consider myself to be a citizen. The Ohio State Community, the Jewish community, the pro-Israel community, the women's community, and many more. In this post I will talk about multiple communities that I am a part of, and how I engage in citizenship in these communities.

1. Empowerment. Women's empowerment is something that is EXTEMELY important to me. I feel that many of my life's goals revolve around empowering women to become the best and most whole woman that they can be. Due to this passion, I decided to get involved with Girl's Circle, an organization on college campuses that reaches out to younger girls in the outside community who are in need of some girl power. We run girl's circles in which we follow curriculum that touch on various girl's issues in order to help these girls learn how to cope with their lives while feeling strong and good about themselves. I feel that by doing this, I am doing my part as a citizen of a women's community to empower others who are also a part of this community.

2.Awareness of the Issues in the Community's History. I am a zionist. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, it basically means that I believe in the existence of the state of Israel as a Jewish state. Now, in order to be an advocate for the state of Israel, I must be aware of not only the current events going on in the country, I must also have a good grasp on the history of the land. I have spent much time learning about and living in Israel, so that I have a much tighter grasp on the complexity of the historical issues of not only Israel and Israelis, but also of the Palestinians and surrounding Arab nations. It is extremely important to me to be able to be an informed advocate for the Jewish nation that I am so proud of, and so I make a conscious effort to educate myself and others about as much as I am able.

3. Empathy. Although I would not consider myself to be the most service oriented person, I have participated in a few programs that have given me a very different sense of the world through the eyes of other people. One was this summer. While living in Israel, I taught English to children from families with large socioeconomic problems. These kids were from social classes considered to be toward the bottom of society's ranking system, and were from families with little money, parental guidance, or any kind of security. I worked with these children from 9-5 everyday for two months, and was truly impacted by the difficulties they had to face. The children from Ethiopia not only had to go through hell to get to Israel from Africa in the first place, they now rested at the bottom of the social food chain, making it difficult for them to get the resources, education, and opportunities needed to make a better life for themselves. Often, their parents didn't speak Hebrew, and had little control over their children who felt superior to them due to the language barrier they faced. The Mizrachi children faced similar dilemmas, because society deems them less desirable than the lighter skinned Ashkenazi children whose families originated from Eastern Europe. On a daily basis I was able to see what these kids were going to have to overcome in order to improve their life situation, and gained a better understanding for many of the social complexities of Israeli society.