Yardena Gerwin is an incoming junior at the Abraham Joshua Heschel School, a pluralistic Jewish day school. She is the co-president of her school’s Interfaith Club and a Teen Advisor for Girl Up, a campaign of the United Nations Foundation. She spent two years living in Israel but now lives on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with her parents and sisters.

Yardena initially developed this essay as a participant in the Interfaith Center of New York’s Learning Together youth fellowship program, working with a diverse group of New York high school students to explore the role of religion in city schools.