As I stood on stage at the recent JSU Presidents Conference, launching the NCSY JSU digital media project Shalom Shalom to reach and engage Jewish teens globally, I kept thinking about one thing: the time I passed out after being electrocuted in a pile of mud. High praise, as you will soon see.
In 2013, I reluctantly participated in a Tough Mudder, a 12-mile obstacle course. During the course, I fainted after getting electrocuted, nearly got hypothermia plunging into a dump truck filled with ice, and almost burned myself jumping through a literal ring of fire, an experimental obstacle I inexplicably volunteered for. In 2014 and 2015, I reluctantly participated again. Why? Because of what it stood for, both as an event and for me personally. As the sign at the starting line reminded us, “This is not a competition; it is a challenge.” And challenging it surely was and the only competition was with my former self.
As ToughMudder.com puts it, Tough Mudder is “a community of normal individuals with an abnormal commitment to overcoming challenge. We create some of the world’s most intense obstacle courses, designed to test your physical strength, mental grit, and aptitude for camaraderie.” It is a challenge that requires all of that and a profound amount of teamwork. You cannot do it alone. You do it together.
It wasn’t until my third Tough Mudder that I finally scaled Everest, the thirteen foot greased quarter pipe. I would have failed again if not for the hand that grabbed me as I leap forward, hand extended fearful I will likely slide down again with knees torn and bleeding as I have before. We pushed each other, literally and figuratively. We encouraged each other. We struggled and we struggled some more, and in the end, we crossed the finish line together: smiling, cheering, crying, and laughing. Six Jewish men from Valley Village, California, completing one of the hardest physical challenges of our lives.
I share this story not to impress you—trust me, if you had seen me kvetching my way up a mile-long, 45-degree incline or screaming louder than a newborn as I submerged my head in ice, you would not be impressed. I share it because, as I once taught during an NCSY West Coast ebbing years ago, challenge is opportunity.
That ebbing connected my Tough Mudder experience with the far more difficult and incomparable story of the Jewish immigrants who arrived in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Many would sigh, “Es iz shver tzu zayn a Yid” (It is hard to be a Jew) a phrase Rav Moshe Feinstein z’l warned could lead to the downfall of American Jewry.
In Tradition Online, Rabbi Moshe Kurtz explains:
“R. Dovid Feinstein was asked to share the most central lesson his father wished to impart. He replied that it was the necessity to perform God’s commandments with joy… R. Feinstein observed how the mentality of ‘it is too hard to be a Jew’ would be the downfall of Judaism in America… Even after pogroms, the loss of manuscripts, the murder of family, years of poverty—he insisted that es iz a mekhaye tzu zayn a Yid—it is a blessing to be a Jew and to fulfill every edict of the Torah with exuberance.”
Many Jews entering through Ellis Island faced a harsh reality: a country that didn’t understand them, jobs lost weekly for keeping Shabbat, and a culture indifferent to their faith. Yet countless others met the challenge head-on and built families, communities, and legacies that endure to this very day. Yes, challenges are synonymous with difficulties but they are also invitations. Invitations to opportunities to accomplish, to create, to grow into something you were not before or create and grow something that did not exist before.
I have the privilege of running the newly launched NCSY/JSU social media channel Shalom Shalom, unveiled at this year’s JSU Presidents Conference. Reaching that launch was anything but simple. It took more than two years of obstacles, setbacks, false starts, visioning, revising, and trying again. But each challenge became a doorway to a new idea, a better plan, or a stronger team.
Creating something new is never easy. It demands vulnerability, persistence, imagination, and the willingness to try things that might fail before they succeed. But that is precisely what makes it exhilarating. The resistance we face isn’t a signal to stop. It’s evidence that we’re building something worth creating. Challenges shouldn’t discourage us; they should energize us. They are proof that we’re stepping into new territory, expanding what’s possible, and shaping something that didn’t exist before.
Two years of challenge became two years of opportunity; opportunity to innovate, to collaborate, to dream boldly, and ultimately to bring Shalom Shalom into the world. And if there’s one thing Tough Mudder taught me, it’s this: the most worthwhile finish lines are the ones you reach together, muddy, exhausted, joyful and forever changed by the journey.
So thank you to Rabbi Derek Gormin and Raquel Arakanchi for being part of the Shalom Shalom team, for helping us reach this finish line, and for beginning a new starting line together. Thank you to Rabbi Micah Greenland and Chana Adlerstein for supporting this journey. Thank you to Yoni Colmen, who took on the challenge and created opportunity in this space first. And thank you to all the staff and Jewish teens who are building this project with us. With this team, we will cross many finish lines together.
Es iz a mekhaye tzu zayn a Yid!