By Madeline Burns CSJO is my community. It is my assurance that no matter where I am, I am connected to the people who make me feel Jewish, my friends, my family. It is the community that supported me when my mother was sick and passed away. It was the community who gave my sister and me our Bat Mitzvahs when we never thought we'd get one. It's the community who not only allowed, but encouraged and welcomed, my family to join because my father's church wouldn't accept my mother and my mother's synagogue wouldn't accept my father. It is the community that showed me that being a strong person is what you should strive for. It is the community that showed me how to be Jewish in a way I understood and accepted. It is the community that I could never live without. From my first conference when I was 13 years old, it has been my community, my home.
