Student steps up to lead Jewish service for Culver Summer Schools & Camps

 

Second-classman Zach Bernstein ’26 W’22 is drawing plaudits for stepping up to lead Jewish services at Culver Summer Schools & Camps when no rabbi was available.

“We were talking about, ‘Well, who is going to conduct services?’ Zach said, ‘I’ll do it,’ ” said Jerry Ney ’57, one of the Jewish spiritual life advisors at Culver.

Ney said Bernstein is the first youth to lead during the summer services at Culver that he’s aware of.

The Rev. Dr. Sam Boys, director of spiritual life at Culver Academies, lauded Bernstein.

“Zach saw the need and then stepped forward to say, ‘What can I do?,’ which is a great character strength,” Boys said. “He recognized the void and filled the void quite nicely.”

Bernstein, who has been attending Culver Summer Schools & Camps since 2015, knew when Rabbi Joshua Rubin resigned as the Jewish spiritual leader to Culver Academies in the fall that there was nobody around to lead the Jewish service during the summer. Bernstein met with Boys for lunch and volunteered to take the lead.

Bernstein said he did it because his religion is important to him.

“Because I like to feel a connection with my faith,” he said. “I feel it’s important to lead others and be a figure in someone else’s decision to explore Judaism.”

Bernstein said he was a little nervous when he first began leading the Shabbat service during the summer because he didn’t know everyone attending the service. But he got more comfortable each week.

“Once I got to meet all the people it became a lot more natural for me,” he said.

 

 

Now he feels even more confident as one of the student leaders of the service during the school year. There’s a core group of five or six students at the Indiana boarding school who are leading the services every week.

Visiting artist Stacy Joyce, one of the Jewish spiritual life advisors since February, said Bernstein is always one of the leaders.

“He is one of the students who has kept things going, who has helped organize the service and he’s always quick to sign up for prayers,” Joyce said. “He’s called to it. It seems very natural to him. It seems to be something he is passionate about. It is clearly important to him.”

It’s typical for elders at a Jewish synagogue to take over the readings when there is no rabbi. The difference is the elders here are high school students.

Another difference is that the Jewish students at Culver come from different backgrounds. Some are Reform, some are Conservative and some are Traditional. And roughly half the students attending the Friday night service aren’t Jewish.

“We welcome anybody to our service. It’s a Reformed service, you don’t have to be Jewish,” Bernstein said.

All the religious services at Culver Academies have opportunities for students to lead. The Indiana boarding school offers weekly services in guided meditation, interdenominational Christian chapel, Islamic studies, nature spirituality, philosophers’ café, Roman Catholic mass, Unitarian Universalist and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.

“We have a nice balance of professionally trained leaders and student leaders,” Boys said.

 At Catholic and Protestant services at the Culver Memorial Chapel, students can do the readings or be the greeters. In the Unitarian Universalist service, students lead the breakout sessions for Buddhists, Hindus and Meditative Free Writing with adult supervision and guidance.

With no rabbi available for the Jewish services, students there have even more opportunities. When students walk into the service, they sign up on the board at the front of the Toots Henderson Auditorium in the Crisp Visual Arts Center to read prayers.

 

 

 

Bernstein said his favorite part of the service is either the sh’ma, a prayer for God and the state of Israel, or the closing song.

“I like the sh’ma because I feel a connection with God when I pray for that,” he said. “And I like the closing song because it makes everyone a little happy at the end.”

Bernstein said the students working together to lead the services has brought the Jewish students at Culver closer together. They communicate via group chats and talk during the week.

“We’re building a very strong community,” Bernstein said.

Boys said Culver hopes to eventually add a rabbi to lead the service at least once a month.

“It would help to have a rabbi, but I think the process we’re using right now we have enough information and the power to lead it on our own,” Bernstein said. “I am hoping we do get a rabbi. We should get the right person.”