Name: Mike Boxer
Major: Music and Business Administration
Future Plans: Pursing an MBA at Binghamton University

They say that behind every fire there is a spark. I was pretty textbook out of high school. I had had a Jewish identity instilled in me by my family, kept the house kosher but ate treyf, had a Bar Mitzvah, had family Seders and Rosh Hashanah dinners, went to Shabbat services here and there. Always took pride in being Jewish but never really took it all that seriously after age 13.
Had I continued along that path, I would have assimilated completely; I know this. I had nothing to "latch onto". I came from a small, quaint conservative congregation whose median age I undercut by about 35 years, and the few Jewish friends I had at my public high school weren't really very into their religion or heritage either. I knew that holding on to Judaism was "right"... but there was no motivation. It seemed such a lonely cause.
About a month into college I took up an invitation by two suitemates -- "NJB's" who I was more than fortunate to have been thrown in with, to come with them to Chabad House on Friday night. And only in looking back so comprehensively at the total, four-year picture, is it so incredibly obvious that this is where things were set ablaze. It was amazing to walk into that room and see hundreds of people, my own age, davening, breathing in Shabbat, sharing the bond that they have just because they're Jews. It was here that I finally felt like I belonged. It was here that the ways and feelings of the status quo of segregated factions in Monsey, New York, which I live just outside of, were melted away by the warmth, friendliness, caring and support of one unforgettable Rabbi and Rebbetzin, their unforgettable (indestructible!) family and associates and every single Jew who smiled at me that night.
A few weeks after what would be my first of many regular visits, I was asked by a friend to try out for this "Jewish a cappella group" he was crazy about. Without the spark to make me feel so much more at home with Judaism and the Jewish community, it would've seemed almost outlandish, and I never would have even considered it. Four years later, some people would tell you it's my life.
And through Kaskeset I was able to discover how good it feels to enrich a love of Judaism through an everpresent love of music, and vice versa — not to mention just how great Jewish music itself is. It was through Kaskeset that I met my first and only true love, the person I'll spend the rest of my life with. (She'll kill me for publishing this, but if you had told me a few years ago that I'd not only be with such an amazing person but that she and I would toss Hebrew baby names around, I'd have laughed.)
It was through Chabad that I was offered the unimaginable opportunity to discover the Holy Land, where I will live someday, and the strength to face my fears (and my family's) and take them up on it. I played "Acheinu" with my soulmate at the heart of the people who inspired it. I stood atop ancient civilizations, lived my people's history and for the first time ever, felt a spiritual feeling grow so huge as to become literally physical. On Shabbat, feet from the holiest site in the universe, I gripped my basheret for dear life, and cried my eyes out because I knew that never before had the phrase "my entire life has been leading up to this moment" been so entirely true. Everything just kind of made sense.
These days I still may not be one of the more involved or religious Jews you'll ever meet but possibly one of the proudest. What once seemed like a part of my life that was drifting away is now something that can never depart from me because of a flame in my being that will always burn. And while there are possibly thousands to thank for fueling it, I hope that the people at Chabad House who sparked the embers know that it never went unnoticed.
And just think... I'm only one person out of 200 or more in that room every week.