By Rabbi Micah Greenland
NCSY International Director
Dear NCSY Family,
Yesterday, I had the heartbreaking experience of speaking at the levayah of Chana Krupel, a 16-year-old girl from my community who passed away suddenly.
Chana was my neighbor and NCSYer who participated in NCSY Midwest, NCSY GIVE, and NCSY 4G Euro. Her passing has left her family, friends, and community grieving an unimaginable loss.
As I prepared to speak at her levayah, I found myself thinking about a beautiful teaching from Rav Meir Shapiro, zt”l, the founder of the Daf Hayomi.
In Parshas Lech Lecha, Hashem tells Avraham Avinu, at the time known as Avram, to go outside and count the stars:
הַבֶּט־נָא הַשָּׁמַיְמָה וּסְפֹר הַכּוֹכָבִים אִם־תּוּכַל לִסְפֹּר אֹתָם
“Look toward the heavens and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” (Bereishis 15:5)
Rav Meir Shapiro asks us to consider what we would do if someone gave us that assignment.
“Go outside and count the stars.”
Most of us would dismiss the task immediately. There are simply too many stars to count. Why even begin something that we know we cannot finish?
But Avram did not respond that way. He went outside and began counting.
And it was then that Hashem told him, “כֹּה יִהְיֶה זַרְעֶךָ.” So shall your descendants be.
Rav Meir Shapiro explains that Hashem was not only promising Avram countless descendants. He was describing the character of those descendants.
Just as Avram was willing to take on a seemingly impossible task and begin anyway, so too would his children. They would dream big dreams, take on extraordinary challenges, and pursue what others might consider impossible.
That was Chana z”l.
At her levayah, Chana’s father spoke about the extraordinary way she approached life. Chana lived with epilepsy, and she understood that it brought challenges and uncertainties. But she was determined not to let those challenges prevent her from living fully.
As her father recalled, she would tell her family, “I choose to live and I will enjoy my life.”
And that is how she lived. She dreamt big dreams and wouldn’t take no for an answer. She challenged herself and others and found ways to push through barriers and obstacles that would have stopped less determined individuals.
Chana was just 16 years old, but she understood something that many of us spend a lifetime trying to learn: We cannot always control the challenges before us, but we can choose how we respond to them.
I believe there is a lesson here for all of us, including in our work at NCSY.
We each constantly face challenges that might indicate that our goals, either spiritual or material, are out of reach. We may aspire to study Torah better, to approach our davening better, or to act more generously with friends and with strangers – and we may experience distractions or impediments in achieving those goals.
Further, as an organization, we are on a mission to reach every Jewish teenager, to help thousands of young people connect to Hashem and to their Judaism. The scope of that mission can seem overwhelming, and its full impact is impossible to measure.
But in each of these examples, like Avraham counting the stars, we begin anyway. We must believe in our own spiritual potential, as well as in the extraordinary possibilities within every Jewish teen, and we must pursue those possibilities even when we cannot see where they will lead.
Chana z”l set an example for all who knew her as to what setting big goals looked like and what it meant to be undeterred.
In the face of such a profound loss, we may find ourselves wondering what we can possibly do.
Chana’s friends from both CTeen and NCSY have offered us a beautiful answer.
They have launched a campaign whose goal is not to raise money, but to raise mitzvos in the zechus of Chana’s neshama.
It might mean saying Shema, putting on tefillin, lighting Shabbos candles, learning Torah, checking in on a friend, or doing an act of chesed that we otherwise might not have done.
Each mitzvah is a way of expressing our love for Chana and honoring her memory. And through a special website, her family will be able to see the mitzvos being undertaken in her zechus.
I encourage you to visit onemitzvah.org/chanakrupeland take on a mitzvah in Chana’s memory.
We cannot begin to make sense of a loss like this, and no action can take away the pain of her absence. But we can begin with one mitzvah, one act of kindness, one moment of connection to Hashem. And in Chana’s memory, we can carry forward her determination to believe in what seems impossible and begin counting the stars.
May Chana’s neshama have an aliyah, and may her family find comfort among the mourners of Tzion and Yerushalayim.
