Jewish Enough to Share My Voice with Joy and Pride
It is hard to believe that my four years as a college student are now over, and I am starting the next step of my journey. Before I arrived at the University of Michigan-Dearborn in 2022, I carried a quiet insecurity with me: that I was never quite “Jewish enough.” But when I stepped onto campus in Dearborn, that fear inverted almost overnight. Suddenly, I was “too Jewish” in almost every room I walked into — both the first Jewish person my peers had ever met, and a representative of a people they did not understand.
When you are the sole representative of an entire people to your classmates, the responsibility to engage can feel incredibly heavy. I often spoke up alone on issues confronting the Jewish people and Israel. At first, I was terrified that speaking against the hate that I experienced could carry consequences. But after I confessed to a fellow Hillel of Metro Detroit student that I was considering pulling out of a meeting with professors about an anti-Israel seminar that had been held on campus, his response, rooted in Jewish wisdom, shifted my resolve: “If you do not show up, who will?”
That single conversation with my friend two years ago has fueled me ever since. It became the core of how I understood Jewish advocacy on campus: to show up even when I did not feel fully prepared or confident, because just showing up sometimes makes all the difference.
That conviction was strengthened when I attended the Hillel International Content Creators Forum this past spring. For so long, I was advocating just for myself, as the only visible Jewish student on campus. Then suddenly, I was surrounded by students anchored to the same goal: humanizing, highlighting, and uplifting the vibrancy of Jewish life.
I sat with TikTok creators, a Holocaust educator, news correspondents, an incredible Olympic athlete, and over 100 Jewish students whose voices belong in rooms of national leadership. For the first time in a long time, I was with people who inspired me, and who I know are working together to build a better world.
It was also there in New York that my understanding of advocacy deepened in a new way. During a plenary speech, creator Eliana Jolkovsky (@thatkoreanjew) shared a lesson that struck a chord with me: “If I do not speak, someone else will speak for me.”
Eliana’s words helped me realize that choosing not to speak up actually hands the microphone to someone else. Silence creates an opening for others to define Jews and Jewish experiences for us. And I want to hold the ownership of my own story.
Every student at the Content Creators Forum had a different story to tell and a different medium through which to tell it. But together, we shared the same drive to show up, speak honestly, and create space for Jewish stories to be heard. And hearing those stories, along with the years of community and belonging that I found at Metro Detroit Hillel, finally silenced that insecurity that I was not Jewish enough.
I was Jewish enough to speak up for myself and my community. I was Jewish enough to build friendships with Jewish student creators across the country. And I am Jewish enough to take the lessons that I learned at Hillel with me as I head out into the wider world and continue sharing Jewish stories, including my own, as far and wide as possible.
Tessa Hewitson is a graduating senior at the University of Michigan-Dearborn, and a Hillel International student leader.