The Only Orthodox Jew in the Room

I was 10 years old, standing in my father’s family backyard at a lobster bake, surrounded by food my family and I could not eat. While everyone feasted on shellfish, we unwrapped our kosher tuna fish sandwiches.

No one made a scene. We knew who we were, and we knew why we ate differently. But we were still there, still family, still part of the laughter and conversation around us.

That image captures something essential about my childhood: I learned early that having firm boundaries did not require building walls around myself.

I learned early that having firm boundaries did not require building walls around myself.

While my mother was born Jewish, my father converted and became observant through Aish in the late 1970s. He soon married my mother, who attended Aish’s seminary for women. His decision changed the course of his life and shaped our family. But one of the most powerful things I witnessed growing up was not only his commitment to Torah and Jewish observance. It was the way he maintained a loving and respectful relationship with the family he came from.

No Touching the Pepperoni Pizza

I grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, in a small Jewish community and Jewish day school. Many of my classmates did not keep kosher or Shabbat like I did. At Chuck E. Cheese birthday parties, I could play the flashing arcade games with my friends, but I could not touch the slices of pepperoni pizza on the table. I could be in the room, part of the party, and still know that my life had different boundaries. And yet, those children were my friends. We shared a childhood, built memories, and belonged to the same community.

Jonah Halper

Looking back, I realize how formative that was. I did not grow up believing that difference had to create distance. I grew up seeing that people could have various levels of observance, families, and priorities, and still be part of the same Jewish story.

The Baltimore Community

In my high school years in Baltimore, I saw that same lesson play out on a communal level.

There was a major debate over whether the Owings Mills JCC should open on Shabbos. The Orthodox community rallied against it, so it stayed closed. At the time, it would have been easy to think the rally itself was effective. But years later, a mentor of mine in the Baltimore Orthodox community explained that the community’s influence was not due to a single public protest.

It was because Rabbi Herman Neuberger, one of the founders of Ner Israel Rabbinical College, had spent decades building relationships with Federation leaders and with the broader Jewish community. He helped create a culture in which the Orthodox community did not show up only when an issue affected them directly. They had been involved in communal issues over many years, including issues that were not specifically Orthodox concerns.

So when something did matter deeply to the Orthodox community, they had credibility and relationships. They had earned the right to be heard.

That idea followed me into my career.

A Bridge Between Two Worlds

I have often found myself as the only Orthodox Jew in the room, sometimes explaining my community to the broader Jewish world, and sometimes explaining the broader Jewish world to my own community.

In many ways, I became a bridge between two worlds that too often misunderstand each other.

I knew, early on, I wanted to serve the Jewish people. But I was not interested in serving only the Orthodox community. I wanted to serve the Jewish community at large. That led me into the Jewish Federation system as a fundraiser, where I encountered a familiar point of tension.

In one of my first meetings, a major donor told my boss and I that he did not want to increase his support for the Federation. He said he felt the Orthodox community benefited from communal resources but did not participate enough in supporting the wider Jewish community.

The Halper Family

My boss, who was not Orthodox, pulled out what was known as the Eruv List, essentially the white pages of the Orthodox community in Baltimore. He flipped through it, put his finger about halfway down the list, and said, in effect, “This is the percentage of families in the Orthodox community who support the annual campaign.”

It was a visual answer to the donor’s concern: Orthodox families were not only benefiting from the broader Jewish community. They were actively participating in it.

This moment taught me that even when people disagree with you, they respect the fact that you are part of the communal fabric. You are not standing outside the system, asking only for your own needs to be met. You are invested in the whole.

Too often, communities wait until they feel threatened before they engage. But influence is built long before the crisis, through trust, participation, and shared responsibility.

If we want to be taken seriously by the broader Jewish community, we have to show up as part of it.

That does not require compromising our values or pretending our differences do not matter. It requires something more powerful and meaningful: staying committed to who we are while remaining responsible for one another.

Shared Mission

I see this in my work today with Jewish nonprofits, where people from very different backgrounds often accomplish meaningful things together. This only happens when they are willing to trust one another around a shared mission.

A former member of my major gifts coaching team was a platinum-blonde Reform Jew and an exceptional fundraising professional. When my team suggested assigning her to an existing client, a Hasidic girls’ school in Monsey, New York, I hesitated. On paper, it looked like an unlikely pairing: a coach with a very different personal and religious background working closely with a Hasidic rabbi on the school’s fundraising strategy.

But my team believed the alignment was right, so we made the match.

It turned out to be one of the best partnerships we could have hoped for. They genuinely clicked. I started receiving WhatsApp messages from the client telling me that she was the greatest thing that had ever happened to his fundraising efforts.

When there is mutual respect, professionalism, and a shared mission, those differences become part of the strength of the partnership.

That experience reminded me, yet again, that different backgrounds do not have to be obstacles. Sometimes, when there is mutual respect, professionalism, and a shared mission, those differences become part of the strength of the partnership.

Respectful differences can make us stronger.

There are real threats facing the Jewish people. Antisemitism is rising. Jewish institutions need to be more sustainable. Communities need better leadership, stronger infrastructure, and deeper resilience. Our schools, shuls, camps, Federations, social service agencies, outreach organizations, cultural institutions, and advocacy groups all play a role in the larger Jewish ecosystem.

We do not have to agree with every choice another Jew makes to care about their future. We do not have to erase our differences to support a shared institution, campaign, or communal need. And we do not have to become less committed to our own values to treat other Jews with dignity.

I believe the opposite is true. The more grounded we are in who we are, the more capable we become of engaging others with respect.

If we only show up for the parts of the Jewish world that mirror us back to ourselves, we will miss the opportunity to build something larger than ourselves.

When we choose to serve the Jewish people beyond the borders of our own comfort, we do more than strengthen others.

We strengthen all of us.