A Young Jewish Perspective on Beth El

Besides the obvious of getting to skip my AP stats homework, the reason why I decided to spend the time to write this post for all of the visitors was to share my views on the recent Men's Club of North Suburban Synagogue Beth El candidate forum.

I attended the event last week and it was awesome. They managed to get seven of the eight candidates for Congress to come and gave them each five minutes to talk about whatever they wanted. Being that it was held a Synagogue, it was imminent that most of the candidates took their time to talk about Israel. As a person who has religious and close family ties to Israel, I was excited to hear what the candidates had to say. Instead what happened, at least in my opinion, was candidate by candidate using cheesy slogans to try to one up each other on how strong they supported Israel, without giving initiative on how they would do so.


But then the last candidate, Dan Seals, went up to speak. He grabbed the mic, moved away from the podium and into the crowd and just rocked it. I pride myself on being able to detect when people are full of it, especially politicians, but when Dan talked about Israel he spoke reasonably and didn't sugarcoat what he had to say with talking points on his dedication to Israel. When he said "Israel’s gain is our gain, and Israel’s struggles are our struggles,” I believed him. His passion is one of the primary reasons why I plan on voting for Dan in February.


Max R.
New Trier High School
Students for Seals, NT High School Recruitment Captain