Macie Clawson, a KU grad, KU Hillel alum and former participant in Jewish Federation’s Leadership Tomorrow internship program, recently had her first essay published on HeyAlma.com. Hey Alma is a popular online publication that publishes pieces on Jewish identity and culture.
Clawson’s piece told about her experiences with antisemitism as a middle school student in Hastings, Nebraska. Although the school administrators took the bullying Clawson faced seriously and helped stop the harassment, it wasn’t until she was in college that Clawson reconnected with her Judaism.
“It took a Jewish community to bring me back to my faith. I found Hillel at a club fair during my first week of school at the University of Kansas. I fell in love with Judaism and its overarching call to seek justice and to understand the “other.” I went on Birthright to Israel and then went back to Tel Aviv for a semester and ended up graduating with a double major in Political Science and Jewish Studies,” she wrote in her essay.
Clawson is now a Springboard Innovation Fellow at Hillel of Buffalo in Buffalo, New York.
You can see the full essay at www.heyalma.com/this-is-what-happens-when-a-school-takes-antisemitic-bullying-seriously/ .
