16 days until 40: My 3D puzzle family

Ever write an email to the transportation coordinator at your kid’s school and suddenly realize that it was more appropriate as a blog post than an email?

Yeah, I’m not expecting a lot of head nods here. It’s a special level of oversharer that can manage to overshare in an email.

That’s right readers, I’m that special.

This whole process of blogging, social media—the whole thing is basically a big cry to the universe for validation.

So today, I would like the universe to validate my Big Queer Jewish Blended Family. Today I look at all the people I have loved in my life and I want more people to think—that is so beautiful. I wish I didn’t love my partner/spouse anymore so I could get divorced and my kids could have all those people loving them, too!

I used a whole white board this summer to explain how my kids were all related to each other and their birth families. I went on a bender because Sima had to do a family tree project. I got all worked up about this project and became obsessed with making sure that my son wouldn’t get negative messages about how his family tree didn’t look like a biblical lineage. And then Jacob begat Sima and...well, if we stay true to form it would be Nehama begat Sima, right? No, that’s not right. It would be #? (I don’t know how I forgot a number that used to be so important) begat Sima. Begats follow sperm lines.

Ironically, he ended up being away with Jacob at Eliyashu’s overnight camp, newly rebranded Camp Havaya (née JRF).

Next time anyone asks your kid to draw a family tree, feel free to respond with—yeah, ours is more like a 3D puzzle of people who love my kid and who love each other, and this assignment is a little too simplistic for us. How about we try to come up with a list of our special people, and tell you about each person and why they are special to us. Because reducing that narrative to a litany of begats is an incomplete picture.

And by the way, we will need a much bigger piece of paper.

—  —  —  —  —  —

Hi Jacob and Deb,

We clarified that Eliyashu gets to school before 8am when he takes the bus, so we will use school transportation.

Jacob, do you think it is fair to say at this point that Eliyashu’s dismissal schedule is the following:
Monday: carpool
Tuesday: carpool
Wednesday: bus
Thursday: bus
Friday: alternating carpool/bus

The bus driver passes our stop whether or not Eliyashu is there. Though we have always been sending the schedule as AM and PM, I’m not sure that information is as important as dismissal.

Can we all agree that the above is the default and that we will notify school of any changes on a case by case basis?

I don’t believe there are many weeks left to Fall sports. Eliyashu can go to all the remaining horseback riding sessions (we are rewarding him for some homework success) as well as soccer on the weekends that we have custody. On the Fridays of Jacob’s custody he will leave from the carpool lane and skip soccer.

Just to clarify custody, this Friday is my weekend. Deb, the alternating schedule is fixed. We don’t switch weekends and then reset the alternating schedule. So you can calendar Eliyashu to be with us this weekend and Jacob next weekend and set the calendar to every other week until Eliyashu’s graduation 👨🏾‍🎓from AIM in 2026.

I don’t want to discuss the fact that my baby will be driving himself to and from school from Fall 2023-Graduation 2026. For now, let’s just assume that he’ll be carpool Monday and Tuesday and bus on Wednesday and Thursday. 

😉 

Deb Santo, we should have coffee sometime! I’d like to be more than a horrid custody tangle to you. On second thought, let’s make it an expensive dinner. We OWE you!!

Thanks for always being gracious and generous with your email reminders. I worked at Eliyashu’s summer camp this past summer for the first time. He has been going to that camp for 7 summers alresdy! So, they know us...and the transportation coordinator casually said: I’m so glad you’re working at camp and driving the kids every day. You literally saved me from an hour of inputting to the system for just your 3 kids and their 3 houses! 

The moral of the story: I know that navigating our changing arrangements is challenging and frustrating sometimes as an institution and that it makes an already complicated jigsaw puzzle job even more complex. But let’s be honest. 3D puzzles with 2,000 are way more beautiful than you’re basic 100 piece one, right? 

That’s how I think of our family. And our kids homes. Instead of feeling fractured and complicated and hard to understand and a pain in the ass to input in a transportation rubric, I try to focus on how some unfortunate turn of events (divorces) has given our children a much more complex and rich matrix to call family.

I just realized that this email was a blog post and I didn’t need to make your job harder again by making you read my philosophical ramblings. 

Or maybe you like my philosophical rambling/ranting/writing.

If you do, click here for more:

www.benmosche.org

One the bright side, it looks like you won’t need to send us requests for schedules anymore, so you can take that off your perpetual to do list!

Hope to see you around this year.

Hugs,

Nehama 

55 days til 40: What Comes Next--Post Hamilton Road Trip

And the countdown gets real.

And the summer of dancing and my full time job comes to an end.

And my 2 week family Hamilton road trip is over.

And this weekend, I officiated the first of three weddings in a month--the third of which is in Barcelona. I know, not a bad job if you can get it, right?!?

And then my birthday. 4 decades of existence.

And then...?

For years I said that I never wanted a full time job.  I don't need to have one, thanks to my dad's hard work and luck through his career.  I have always thought that the work/life balance in American culture is awful.  I heard the title of this TED talk once--Work, Family, Exercise, Hobbies, Friends, Healthy Eating--pick two.  Or something like that.  The good ole fucked up American dream.

So this summer I fell into this crazy full time job of dancing outside in the heat of Philadelphia summers, which was pretty insane, and my family was in pretty good shape, I was getting a shit ton of exercise, I made some new friends and sometimes I even had some healthy eating habits.  But mostly I ate camp kid food--and even great camp kid food doesn't qualify for that last one there.  I lost some weight, but didn't get too obsessed about it and now I am staring into the abyss.

I mean, not the abyss.  More like the great open road of infinite possibilities--but no fucking clarity on which path to take because they all seem totally reasonably good for lots of different reasons.  And differently hard and enjoyable.

Do I launch into my Benmosche Project pile and start any one of the 10 different visions I have been imagining over the last two years?

Do I get another Jewish job because it is something I am good at and what I trained for all those years and tweak it to be a little more of what I want, but mostly just something someone else is looking for?

Do I get a totally simple job at a restaurant or a coffee shop, just to have a place to go and some cash in my pocket at the end of the day? Maybe I could go help at the middle eastern place up the street or the cafe in the woods down the hill.  Those both felt like options and stepping stones toward learning more about a business to decide if it's worth taking that route, even if there is a huge rate of failure in that direction.

What makes me want to get out of bed in the morning and feel like I am doing something? I know this much is definitely true.  The last few weeks weren't great.  I believe that depression is a real and debilitating illness that affects people regardless of economic ability.

But being a little rich girl who doesn't have to go to work is definitely a recipe for making my depression worse.  I had a much better 2 months while I was working than I have had in years.  I don't think I am strong enough for a start up.  It is my dream.  I am not kidding when I say I have at least 10 different really great ideas to start that could get transformed into solid and realistic business plans with real potential for success.

And I know that me and this keyboard at my desk in my bedroom is the worst choice I can make right now.

So, I have no fucking clue what comes next.

But, I know how to set myself up to succeed and that means needing to work for someone else while I build the dream on the side, for now.

On that note, I have a wedding to finish writing.  Thanks for listening.  Some people must read this and think--what a fucking millennial.  Why do you publish your journal on the internet?  You'll regret this one day.

Fuck that.  Life's too short.  And every once in a while, I say something that someone else can relate to and it makes them feel a little less alone when I have the courage to share my truth.

80 days til 40: Dancing your ass off

Picture it. Chestnut Hill Coffee ☕️, upstairs at a little table. It's March, maybe April 2017. I sit down with Elana Rivel, the director of Ramah Day Camp in Philly to talk about the possibility of working with/at camp. I was really excited about this new program--Hebrew immersion at camp and Ezra was the right age for their pilot. Elana mentions to me that she's hoping the staff will be an American with strong Hebrew skills and and an Israeli.

I'm pretty sure I fell in love with her a little bit in that moment. You know what I mean...starstruck by a leadership move that aligns with the vision you always wished was out there. Finally someone who acknowledged that spending pretty much my whole academic career and a few years living in Israel, all working on learning Hebrew wasn't a total waste of fucking time. (Ok, truth, she's also pretty adorably dykey looking with that shaved head that makes you wonder ;)

For those of you who don't live or work in the Jewish world, a quick background note. You can basically only get good jobs working in the Jewish community if you are Israeli, frum (Orthodox) or a rabbi. It took me a while to figure that out--hence the graduation from ran school at the ripe old age of 33...instead of 25, like some of my savvier colleagues (Isabel, Shayna) I know you were 26...blah dblah ;)

But I digress (Every fucking time...Mazel tov to those who are still reading. Email me at benmoscheproject at gmail dot com if you made it this far. Validate that insecurity of mine. Go ahead. You'll feel good about yourself, too. Plus it will get you an invitation to our parties 🎉!!)

So back to dancing my ass off. Today's topic. After talking about all the consulty rabbi crap I could do for camp, she tells me that the staff week is pretty planned out already. And I remember the other reason I'm here.

I need to get a small part-time job somewhere. Something I can do for a few hours a day, on a regular basis, out of my house. The kind of thing that I would feel bad about bailing on to stay in bed. i.e. planning to go for a walk in the park after bringing Ezra to the bus stop every morning didn't fucking cut it.  My marching orders came from Taliba--my life saver/psychiatrist. I was starting some new meds which would hopefully help break up the two week long depression cycles I descended into every 4-7 weeks. I would happily keep most of my hypomania--I can seriously catch up on some Netflix and blogging on the nights when my body only sleeps for a couple of hours.  At a recent session, I got a whole lot of "yes"es on her Adult ADHD screen and I became the proud owner of an actual legal Adderall script. I would not sell one single pill for all the money in the world.  Probably helps that I don't need the money...but I have learned that I definitely need this medication.  

So I say to Elana--well, do you have any open positions? I can't be a counselor. I'm definitely too old for that. And I am pretty sure that being a counselor in your own kid's bunk is a disaster for anyone.

So she says, well, we need someone for the office. Really the most important thing is that you're the smiling face and happy voice that our families encounter. Would you want to do that?

Yeah, so I don't tell her at this point that I've only had a full-time job for one year of my life. 2000-2001. The Davis Academy in Atlanta, Georgia.  For the middle school's Jewish studies department. For those of you confused about the seeming contradiction with statements made above about how I need to be Israeli, Orthodox or a rabbi to get a teaching job I should let you know that Davis is a Reform day school (reformim...chuckle all my frum friends) and I was hired in August. This is the "desperate for a warm body/any port in a storm/Hail Mary/Oh shit" move made by many people who hire staff, close their eyes and hope for the best.

And P.S.--teaching 6th, 7th and 8th graders is the opposite of a desk job. There was no fucking way I could sit at a desk all day.

Oops, did I say that out loud? (I would learn later that Elana walked away from that meeting hoping I would somehow say fuck less/NEVER in front of children...and most parents ;)

We also have an opening in the bishul (cooking) staff, she says optimistically.

I think they heard that guffaw all the way in NYC. I can hear my mom's favorite story in my head. Nehama, I told you how to make the matzah balls, but do you know how to make soup, honey?

Seriously Mom? Boil some water and throw some bouillon cubes in. How hard is that?

Umm, anything else Elana? I'm cringing...literally, at this point.

We need a Rosh Rikud, she says. I mean, who says that job should always go to one of the Israelis? I'd rather use one of the Israeli staff somewhere more useful, honestly.

And that's when it happened. This light turned on inside of me. I'm pretty sure I said--now that sounds like an awesome fucking job, but sadly I don't actually know any of the dances. But I love the idea. So she says, 20 year old Israelis don't know them either. I'll set you up with RakDan and we will send you the videos from the last few years.

I haven't blogged all summer because I have been so busy. Dancing my ass off. I loved it so much. It just kept getting better.

I blew my Fitbit and Apple Watch out of the water. I sweat several gallons a day. I was outside. I was listening to fun music and dancing with these awesome kids who were totally learning and loving dances. I met all of these amazing staff members and even came away with a couple of folks who I would now consider friends.

Reality check. And sometimes the kids didn't listen. And sometimes I was so tired I couldn't move. And one day I got so annoyed at the kids who wouldn't stop messing with and sitting on a broken picnic table that I had my little inner Hercules moment and flipped the whole thing over so they couldn't sit at it. And a few minutes later one of the kids walked off to look at the ants and worms from under the place the legs of the table had been.  That day was really special.

It was real life.

I haven't been able to participate in real life for a long time. That's for a different post. This one is just about appreciating and honoring that I found something to love. It connected me back to the Jewish work that I burned out from after 2 decades.

And now I understand Eliyashu better than before. Ramah is my favorite part of my year now, too. And I can't wait til kayitz (summer) comes again.

I drank the kool-aid, and it turned out to be the nectar of the gods that I don't believe in.

127 days til 40: Learning to say goodbye

Yesterday my journey toward healthier took me to a goodbye event at my community, Machar: The Washington Congregation for Secular Humanistic Judaism. It was a lovely event. One of my b'nei mitzvah students put together a video for me of images from my years at Machar. Members came up and publicly thanked me and shared ways that I made a difference in their lives. They also gave me a beautiful Miriam's cup, a symbol of the creativity, innovation and outside of the box thinking that I brought to them.

Here are the words I shared with them.

The people heard from me one last time ;) (Hamilton reference)

June 4th 2017

As I thought about what to do or say leading up to today, I started thinking about this as the “so long, farewell, aufwiederzehen, goodbye” event.

Just like the children saying goodbye in The Sound of Music, my process of saying goodbye here at Machar has been multifaceted.

In rabbinical school, we used to talk about the “rabbi/congregational relationship” so I regularly use relationship metaphors to talk about the experience of being a rabbi. Thus here I am, ending this relationship and wishing you well as you forge a relationship with your new rabbi.

I’ve realized a flaw in this idea. This isn't a single relationship. What I’ve actually learned in the last few months is that I have over 300 relationships here. Starting in December, when I first announced my decision not to renew my contract with Machar, I have slowly said goodbye to many of you. Today is the formal moment of goodbye, but I haven't yet had the opportunity to have an individual goodbye with many of you. Each goodbye is a chance to remember our relationship. And the memories of the experiences we have shared together will stay with me, as I hope they will also stay with you.

What's nice about having multiple ways of saying goodbye and multiple opportunities to say goodbye is that it gives us the chance to say auf wiedersehen, or in Hebrew, l’hitraot. Until we see each other again.

There is a saying from Pirkei Avot, which is one of the central places to go if you're looking for a good Jewish aphorism.

עשה לך רב וקנה לך חבר
והוי דן את כל האדם על כף זכות
Make yourself a rabbi, acquire yourself a friend and judge each person meritoriously.

There have been many interpretations of this text. Some of the traditional commentators seem to separate this into three distinct pieces of advice.
Make someone your rabbi by choosing to let someone be your teacher.
Acquire a friend by investing in the relationship and making it valuable to you.
Judge each person on their merits and give them the benefit of the doubt by assuming they have the best intentions.

I had always learned the first two together--make yourself a rabbi and acquire yourself a friend. The liberal interpretation and experience of a rabbi opens up the possibility of a causative link between the two halves.

When you make someone your rabbi, you're investing and trusting in a relationship. What you end up with, when you invest in that relationship, is a lifelong friend.

The most heartbreaking part of leaving Machar has been the reality that I won't be the lifelong rabbinic companion for all of you. Through my years here I have been there for much of the regular life of our community--JCS, adult ed programs, holiday celebrations--at especially the high holidays. And of course who can forget our infamous board meetings.

But the chances to really get to know families better have been around lifecycle events, particularly the b’nei mitzvah ceremonies and also the baby namings, weddings, and funerals of the last three and a half years. As we have gotten to know each other better, those lifecycle events have been even more moving and meaningful for me.

So, as I move into new adventure, which has changed form from synagogue, to family foundation work, to food truck and plenty of fantasy pipe dream visions in between, I hope to weave what I have learned here into my next chapter.

My mussar teacher, Rabbi Ira Stone, taught us about character development and spiritual practice. One of the character traits we worked on throughout our studies was humility. He defined humility as approaching each person you meet as a teacher. The word rav, or rabbi, in Hebrew is most simply translated as teacher. In that way, you have each been my teachers, as I hope to have been yours.

עשה לך רב וקנה לך חבר
והוי דן את כל האדם על כף זכות
Make yourself a rabbi, acquire yourself a friend and judge each person meritoriously.

I made many teachers here at Machar, and acquired many friendships, and I have always seen each of you for your merits and the ways you can each bring so much value to this community.

I hope that each of you will engage in this same process with your new rabbi, Jeremy Kridel. I have been lucky enough to have already made him one of my rabbis and one of my friends at our Association for Humanistic Rabbis meetings and at the teen conclaves and I look forward to the ways he will share his teaching, his friendship and his merits with the Machar community.

I printed these cards to give out today so that each of you can have a link to your old rabbi in your pocket. I hope that we stay in touch with each other's lives and that our paths cross often. Maybe by the next Machar field trip to Philadelphia I can invite you all to lunch. And if I don't have a food truck, we can just meet at my home.

Thank you.

Israeli Independence Day?

I saw an article yesterday.  The title was Israel lost its independence in 1967.  Ironically, when I tried to open it, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz's app closed on me.  And since I have the attention span of a goldfish, that's all I can tell you about that article.  If I was a diligent writer, I would go back and read it before I wrote this.  But then I wouldn't write the post.

Welcome once again to the inside of my brain.

Let me digress for a second to answer your burning question.  Why are you blogging about Israeli Indepence Day, aka Yom Ha'atzmaut, on your blog that we have all labelled in our brains in the category of fat positive, self-help, wellness blogs?  You're kinda fucking up our whole filing system by getting into the political stuff here.  You did it with that #taxmarch post on April 15th and now you're doing it again.

Let me address the question that I am assuming--rather, let me address the judgement from my readership that my brain has concocted in an attempt to sabotage me from writing this post.  I am not going to fit neatly in any boxes.

Ever.

It's also why this blog is posted on my website www.benmosche.org. Right now it's the only thing up there, but I am hoping to get some information about my work as a rabbi for wedding couples and other life celebrations and then the blog will just be a page.  My writing  about my personal journey toward healthy IS relevant to the organization I am developing--The Benmosche Project: inspired by Jewish traditions, open to the mosaic of humanity.

There is no boundary between my personal self and my professional self.  And I get shit for that all the time from professionals who have tried to teach me to be more professional.  There's nothing that I want to hide in a closet or be protected about.  Just the other day my old friend,
Aviva, said--you know, you might want to edit out the word "fuck" from your posts because (I don't remember exactly what she said, but improvise the rest, end with some hysterical laughter and you'll get the point). No, I don't want to, I answered.  This is me--take it or leave it.  Fuckity fuck fuck.  If you don't want your rabbi to say fuck--don't hire me for the rabbi job. I can live with missing out of a job for people who would want me to be smaller, quieter, more polished.

But I digress.  Always.

And now you kind of understand why this post is completely perfect for today.  It's Israel's independence day.  Palestinians call this day al Nakba, which literally means "the disaster."  I usually equate Nakba in my mind with Holocaust.  Yes, the word has a technical literal definition, but now it primarily refers to an historical moment.


I got a text from my friend Susan who said she would try to call me later because she was running in and out of meetings today, "interspersed with Yom Ha'atzmaut parties, interspersed with actively avoiding yeshiva boys holding flags and chanting." Her text made me so homesick.  It also made me realize why I had a deep craving for a burger last night (the hallmark of secular Israeli celebrations of today is grilling--sound like 4th of July anyone?).

I'm not good at politics.  One of my best friends, Michal, lives in the West Bank.  She's an Orthodox Jew, and as she said at my first (actually second) wedding, our relationship is proof that parallel lines do meet.  We run in COMPLETELY different circles.  You would never know that we knew each other if you looked at the stereotype of us.  But we do. You can also find the beginnings of our blog at this site: http://www.therabbiandtheskirt.org

I miss being in Israel for Independence day the way I used to be proud of being out of the country for the 4th of July, but still went to watch the fireworks at the beach in Tel Aviv.  I grew up in America.  I hate the idea of white supremacist Trump America, and yet--even if I actually ex-patriated (is that a word?), every one would know I was an American. You can hear my accent in my Hebrew, even though I learned to speak Hebrew when I was 4.  You can hear it in my Spanish, even though I learned Spanish from my mother when I was a baby.  You can hear an American accent in my mother's Spanish too--because she spent her first 5 years in Yonkers before they moved to Venezuela and then she came back here for high school. Because her mother tongue is English (despite the fact that her mother's tongue was actually laced with a heavy German accent, and her father grew up in Poland speaking Yiddish).

Israel is my home. I leave you with the most inspiring speech I have heard in years--the keynote from this year's JStreet conference, Mika Almog, the granddaughter of the late former President and former Prime Minister of Israel, Shimon Perez.

She speaks the words of my soul more eloquently than I could ever say them. Please watch this. Michal--you, too ;)

https://youtu.be/I6EpId7w1kk

I love Israel because it is mine. Because I want to make love with my eyes open.  Because I love Israel the way I have loved the women in my life, and the men, of my life. I look at its roses even as they prick my fingers. Because we are ALL living such unlikely lives. Because the stuff I am made of is the future.



Thank you/not you #g!dnotGod for creating a homeland for the Jewish people.  Let us all work for tikkun olam. Somehow we have this beautiful mess of a Jewish homeland in the world.  I want to help make it better.  Today, I do that by writing this post.

And that passion makes me healthier today.

#lovematters #jstreet #g!dnotGod #69 #happybirthdayisrael #israelishome #yomhaatzmaut

My half birthday!: 182 days until I'm 40

As Jewish people are engaged in a ritual called counting the Omer--counting the days between  Passover and Shavuot (Pentecost), counting the days since I started my blog started to make a little less sense. I started 2 months ago, as I was mourning my dad, and here I am 2 months later and a little shaky about how much healthier I am.

Therein lies the trick of my mind. Because the truth is--I'm definitely healthier. I have started attending a queer fat support group and met 4 other people who have had a lifetime of American childhood and adulthood thrown at them. There are moments when our stories are all so painfully similar. Growing up fat left its mark on each of us and continues to be part of who we are becoming in beautiful and sometimes challenging ways. Learning about fat activism is amazing. I knew it existed but maybe shame or just plain being out of the loop left me in the dark all these years. (that may be a touch overly dramatic)

I have stopped many of the disordered eating behaviors that were running pretty intensely through my system 2 months ago. I am working with different doctors to be accountable for the levels of my cholesterol, Hemoglobin A1C, and taking some new medications to move me toward healthier.

And guess what? I had plenty of days when I didn't want to get out of bed. I had days when I didn't  even leave the house.

And I'm still healthier.

I ran in the Hot Chocolate 15K on April 1st with my friend Sarit. It hurt. I was exhausted. But it was also an exhilarating accomplishment. Sarit and I trained to do the Dublin Marathon together after my dad died in 2015. I didn't end up making the trip for a lot of reasons, but most importantly, I wasn't ready. A marathon is an intense physical endeavor. I knew from my first and only marathon in 2007 that I needed to be better trained than I was. I enjoy the challenge of distance running, but like I said when I started this blog:

Sometimes I'll write and sometimes I won't. Sometimes I'll exercise and sometimes I won't.

And today I know with greater certainty than I ever have before that sometimes is all I can expect from myself. It's all any of us can expect from ourselves.

Our society of 24 hours a day/ seven days a week/ always open/ always on is debilitating and we all need sometimes when we are off and not on. And it isn't going to be the same for all of us. Some of us will need more than others. One of my best friends is able to maintain a high level of functionality on 4 hours of sleep. Almost every day. When she splurges, she throws in an hour long nap putting her kid to bed. I can only pull that off a few days a month. And today, I'm ok with that fact.

I was flipping through Instagram and found my a new gift to by myself at www.tinytimemachines.com
Maybe when it arrives I'll try taking this new watch with me on a run or to the woods and I'll leave my Apple Watch at home for a change.

#NOWmaste

#g!dnotGod

Day 48: Taxes

Sometimes standing in front of thousands of people is the encouragement needed to take a stand, to get up and to speak my truth. It took a lot of courage and I wanted to share it here:

Tax March
April 15, 2007

Sh’ma Yisrael, im kol shonuteinu kol ha’adam echad.

Listen, you people who wrestle, in all of your diversity, all of humanity is one.

This week, the Jewish community is celebrating the holiday of Passover. It is the story of our liberation from slavery and oppression.

It is not just a story about supernatural intervention in history. It is the story of sending a message to the Pharoah through demonstrations of just how powerful people can be when they join together and demand change.

It is not just a story of how God intervenes in human history to redeem the enslaved Israelites. It is a story of people who stood up and made the change happen. The rabbis taught that it was an Israelite, Nachshon ben Aminadav, who stepped into the sea. That it was his faith in the possibility of redemption that caused the sea to part.

I stand here today as a representative of different facets of that story. My great grandfather was a rabbi and he immigrated to this country and changed his last name to Benmosche--son of Moses, literally his father’s name, but also implying he was of the people who struggle and travel to find freedom. I inherited both his last name and his passion for service in the Jewish community. A passion to seek out injustice and to work for those who need support.

There is a repeated mandate throughout the Bible to care for the widow, the orphan and the stranger. As American citizens, we fulfill that mandate through the social services that are available because of our taxes and philanthropic efforts to support non-profit organizations dedicated to this work. We want to know that our leaders support those efforts.

But I don't just stand here as a person who has taken on a legacy of service. I am also the daughter of the late, former CEO of AIG, Bob Benmosche. When my father passed away in 2015, I inherited the financial legacy of his work as a corporate executive. It feels especially important to share that fact because I am the “rich” who benefit from unfair tax systems and loopholes. And I am standing here and standing with you to say: it is wrong.

I also understand personally that taking on public roles in leadership takes away the right to privacy that other citizens enjoy. When you chose to make your life public, when you choose to represent the tax paying American citizens, you have a responsibility. Transparency in your business endeavors and in your personal life in multiple arenas IS the work of gaining the trust of the people you are leading.

We stand together today demanding that work be done. We stand here declaring that we care about creating fair systems of taxation that support our communities, especially those with the greatest need.

Kulanu na’avod l’taken et ha’olam ha’zeh

Let us work together to repair this world.
Through truth.
Through transparency.
Through a fair system for all.