When I think of becoming a Bat Mitzvah, it gives me shivers. I am super excited to be taken really seriously in the Jewish community. It gives me shivers because this is a once in a lifetime deal. I only get one Bat Mitzvah and I want mine to be perfect (even though I know only God is perfect). I have gained a lot of things from Sheva, but the thing that is going to help me prepare for my Bat Mitzvah is to respect everyone and treat everyone the same. Rabbi Jonathan told us he treats us like adults because he accepts us and thinks we are equal to the adults and that is why we have adult conversations. Now that I am a Jewish adult I am super excited to take on all the responsibilities of a Jewish person. When I get married I am going to raise my children Jewish and teach them to be great Jewish citizens. From now on, I also will continue to be an active member at Temple. I plan to keep learning Judaism and pass it to others by being a madrichah and teaching others the joy of Judaism. Being Jewish means that I have a faith and believe in something that others might think is crazy and not believe in, but I do. We are enriched by being Jewish. Being Jewish isn’t just about all the fun holidays and praying at Temple. Being Jewish is about having a place, religion, and tradition to practice with my family. Even if you aren’t with your family or don’t have a family, when you come to temple you have one here because we are all connected by our Judaism. I am super excited to be an adult member of our community and continue to enjoy all of these privileges once I am a Bat Mitzvah.

For our Mitzvah Project we did a bunch of things like make sandwiches for the Salvation Army, cook dinner for the Ronald McDonald house, and volunteer at the Freedom School. My favorite was the Freedom School, where we went for four days. Each day we did something different. The first day we went to a pizza dinner with the family and their kids. There, we played games and gave the kids books to read. The next day we went to the morning activity where the counselors do skits and we all sang songs together. On our third day we played chess with the kids, who had just learned how to play for the first time. It was super fun to see how much the kids love to learn, you could see the joy on their faces. The last day we went to see the play “Beauty and the Beast”. After the play we sat with the kids and took pictures. It was a very exciting week! We chose this project because our family wanted to do a mitzvah project where we could help kids that were younger than us so we could kind of be teachers to them. A better appreciation of what I have is what I got out of volunteering at the Freedom School because I realized that a lot of our world are poor, have no books, no food, or even no houses. I now have a better understanding of the many problems we need to fix in our community. Once I am a Bat Mitzvah and an adult I will spend my hours on community service to make our world a better place. We fulfilled the mitzvot of helping those in need, and set a good example of learning.

Ashley is the daughter of Andrew and Christy Horwitz and the sister of Leah and Eddie. Send messages of mazel tov.