Mackenzie Haun enjoys using the word amazing to describe her experiences. As you speak with the 16-year-old high school senior and read her resume, you discover she has indeed already been on some interesting journeys in life.
“She is eager to share her experiences with her peers and younger students,” noted Marcia Rittmaster, Congregation Beth Torah’s religious school and youth groups director who nominated Mackenzie for the Salute to Youth feature.
Mackenzie notes that Judaism “plays a big part” in her life. She is president of Beth Torah’s youth group and serves as a madricha for sixth-grade students on Sunday mornings. And she shared her love of music with campers this summer as a song leader at the Jewish Community Center’s Barney Goodman Camp.
“We have a very Jewish household so Judaism has always been a part of my life and more so since I started youth group and NFTY,” Mackenzie explained.
A top student at Blue Valley High School, Mackenzie has already been accepted to the honors program at the University of Kansas, where she plans to major in political science with a focus in pre-law. Mackenzie truly enjoys learning, in school and out.
“By any definition, Mackenzie is an over-achiever. Ever since her first days in the Weiner Religious School she exhibited a thirst for knowledge. She always wanted to learn beyond what a teacher was teaching and as she matured, she began attending adult education classes with her parents in addition to her religious school classes. She even participated in the Melton Adult Education program with her grandmother at a very young age! She is a very valuable member of our Madrichim Program and the students love working with her,” Rittmaster said.
Mackenzie said all of her Jewish experiences have had an impact on her life. Even if they are supposed to be leisure activities, she finds a way to either learn something or teach something in just about everything she does. For example as president of BTTY she spends a lot of time planning events.
“But I don’t mind that because I get to help bring Judaism to the other teens at Beth Torah and make it fun for them. That’s always been my goal and I think (being president is) a good way to accomplish it,” said Mackenzie, who became a Bat Mitzvah and was confirmed at the Reform congregation.
The summer after her freshman year in high school she began honing her Jewish leadership skills at NFTY’s Kutz Camp in Warwick. N.Y. At the camp, which promotes “living an intentionally Jewish life,” she majored in Temple Youth Group Leadership. Of course she found her first sleep-away camp experience to be “amazing,” and described it as the best summer of her life.
“I got to learn a lot about how to be a good leader, specifically for the synagogue, and how to be a really good youth group member. It was really a great summer where I learned a lot and made a lot of friends,” she said.
Earlier that school year she was chosen as one of a handful of teens to take part in the Together We Remember program. Two teens are selected from each congregation and as a group they visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Upon their return home, they make presentations about the experience to their congregations and other organizations.
“It’s a really beautiful museum. I got to learn a lot. I already had read a lot about the Holocaust because of Sunday school … but it was a more hands-on experience that was definitely impactful,” she explained.
One reason the trip to the museum resonated with her so much, as well as a visit to Poland as part of the Union of Reform Judaism’s Eisendrath International Exchange Program a year ago, is because her great-grandparents are Holocaust survivors, who both had roots in Lodz, Poland.
The young student said visiting camps in Poland, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, was very emotional and strenuous for her.
“I’ve always liked learning and feeling connected to my Jewish heritage, whether or not it’s my personal Jewish heritage or our communal heritage,” Mackenzie said. “I found it very interesting, but the emotional connection came from my family as well. It’s a very emotionally charged subject anyway, but that did make it more so.”
Taking part in the exchange program, she said, was “probably the most amazing thing I’ve done in my life so far.”
“I always wanted to go to Israel and this was a really great way to do that.”
At EIE she spent three hours a day learning Jewish history, one and a half studying Hebrew and then took regular general studies classes.
“I got to really learn Jewish history from biblical times up until now,” she said.
“It was fairly in depth … but of course even that only scratches the surface of history,” she said, noting they took a lot of field trips to places all over the country and even spent five days hiking from the Sea of Galilee to the Mediterranean.”
“It was difficult and challenging but it was a way to connect with the land because we were living in nature,” she said.
As the High Holidays approach this year, she is reminded how much she enjoyed spending them in Israel last year, where she spent Rosh Hashanah in a synagogue in Jerusalem and Yom Kippur at the Hebrew Union College.
“It was very different from home but it still felt like Rosh Hashanah,” she said. “It was practically the same service but it was all in Hebrew instead of having English parts. I found that very interesting.”
Here at home she plans to read Torah on Simchat Torah. While she doesn’t read Torah often, she said she likes doing it.
“It connects me not only to the congregation I’m reading in front of but also to the greater Jewish people and to our history and to our heritage,” she said.
