Winning Even When We Didn’t: North Shore’s Visit to Penn Model Congress

Shortly before Passover, our NSHAHS Model Congress team traveled to the University of Pennsylvania to compete in the “big leagues”. We represented ourselves across a variety of committees, including Education and Labor, Foreign Affairs and even the Supreme Court! Sessions ran from Thursday to Sunday. North Shore students rigorously prepared bills for the competition to solve key national issues that affect our country daily. As Junior Jordana Bruckheimer says, “It’s so important to understand how our congressional system works and I’m glad that we had the opportunity to simulate it at Penn.”

On Shabbat, NSHAHS skipped committee sessions in order to attend services at the Penn Hillel, gaining perspective into the OCP: Orthodox Community of Penn. At this time, there has been a growing amount of anti-Semitism within college campuses, specifically at some of the more “prestigious” schools. North Shore, as the only yeshiva attending this conference, took advantage of the opportunity to represent the Jewish community in the most positive fashion, whether through modest dress or kindness to the general public. Inevitably, we still encountered some unfortunate incidents. Students from other schools made comments like, “Ew, a Zionist,” while others were speaking, and some pointed to the North Shore Shabbat Room and accused students of being too lazy to attend sessions.

The best way of combating this anti-Semitism is through education. My personal committee chair was a Buddhist who did not understand the concept of Shabbat, and asked me if I was “seriously praying all day and can’t attend a single session?” Rather than pursuing an argumentative response, it was much more beneficial to explain the concept of Shabbat to them, and he understood. Additionally, many North Shore students spoke to students of other schools who were ignorant about various issues surrounding the Middle East, and took this time to share our viewpoints. We spent Shabbat in unity and bonded throughout the day through this time. Many committee chairs stated that missing sessions put us at a disadvantage that prevented us from winning. However, although no technical wins were achieved, NSHAHS students were proud to represent the Jewish faith in the best light, and that type of win was so much more important.