Emily Steinberger

Hillel’s official policy supports a Jewish and democratic state in Israel. That policy encompasses the range of opinion among Jewish students concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, as the policy calls for the unconditional support of the existence of the state of Israel, not the specific policies of the government of Israel.

In celebration of my bat mitzvah, my family traveled to Israel and embarked upon a tour of the City of David, an archaeological site in Jerusalem that contains remnants of a typical ancient Israelite house and what is believed to be the palace of King David, who ruled in the 10th century B.C.E. We walked through the nearby Southern Excavations, where I felt the Bible come alive as the texts I had read manifested themselves in structural forms: the purifying bathing installments for the priests and temple visitors, the marketplace where sacrificial animals could be purchased, stones inscribed with biblical references written in Hebrew.