Yesterday I had the honor of sitting on the bet din of Rabbi Mitch Cohen, one of the rabbis who provides conversion through our sister website Darshan Yeshiva. It’s a true blessing to sit on his bet din because Rabbi Mitch and I have become friends over the years. But it’s a double blessing because the synagogue whose mikvah we use is the same one I converted in so many years ago.

It got me thinking a lot about the PunkTorah community and how much we have grown. We started as a YouTube channel. Then we had this website. Then we had a few that failed to launch. Oh well…we tried. A bunch of ebooks. Podcasts. An online synagogue and now, our online school and online conversion to Judaism program.

This was made possible not by me, but by you.
I have said for a long time that I consider myself the Chief Helper Monkey, not the CEO. You’re the boss. It’s your job to tell me what you need, and it’s our collective responsibility to one another to make that happen, whether it’s through donating financially, through providing content, teaching a class or leading a service. It doesn’t always work out that way, unfortunately. But we all try our best and there are many victories along the way.

On a personal note, the greatest victory that has happened over the years is my own personal maturity.
To be honest, there are YouTube videos that I did many moons ago that just make me cringe. I look at who I was and think, “gee, what kind of poser is that??” I’ve read some of my oldest blog posts and seriously wondered what was going on in my mind.

You gave me a space to grow up.
And over time, we gave each other a space to mature. Now, we are giving others a space as well. Thank you for that.

I have many dreams for PunkTorah’s future. I hope that you do, too.