Hey everyone! My name is Zachary Irvin, and I’m a Grapevine Fellow here at Hillel.
Before I get started, I’d like to share a little about myself. I was born and raised in the Valley, and I grew up an active member of Temple Ahavat Shalom in Northridge. I was bar mitzvahed in Israel at Robinson’s Arch. For my confirmation, I specialized in environmental activism and lobbied for an air quality control act.
At High Tech LA, I was the Jewish Culture Club president. I used my other roles, student body president and robotics team captain, to build and maintain a strong Jewish community in a school of 350 kids. Yes, I knew all of them.
Today I’m an accounting major at Pierce College, and I’ll be transferring to CSUN in the spring. I joined AEPi my second semester at Pierce, and it handed me a mountain of opportunities, most importantly, Hillel.
So here I am, speaking in front of you. And with all of that in mind, I want to leave you with two reminders for a healthy life.
First: don’t let politics and the noise dictate your mental state.
In this age of technology, we’re constantly exposed to everything, all at once. And it can make you feel powerless, or even dehumanized. So it’s important to find spaces of expression, clarity, and hope. For me, and I’m sure for many of you, those spaces are Jewish spaces, just like Hillel.
Second: shorten your bucket list.
When we scroll through our phones, we’re exposed to so many nuanced perspectives. It can feel like you don’t understand anything to its fullest, and that you never will. Or it can feel belittling, standing at the bottom of a mountain of information you haven’t consumed yet. That feeling is destructive. It keeps you from finding your niche and seeing who you really are.
Raise your hand if you’ve heard the phrase “jack of all trades, master of none.”
Keep your hand up if you think the world has enough jacks.
I don’t. I think there are way too many jacks in this world. A long bucket list says “I want a little taste of everything.” But look at who actually pushes our society forward: the masters. The doctor who spent thirty years on one disease. The engineer who obsessed over one problem until it was solved. Progress doesn’t come from skimming the surface. It comes from going deep.
And Hillel is built to create those leaders. In Jewish spaces like this one, leaders are shaped by deep mastery of a subject, and by caring enough to share what they know.
But here’s the part I want to be honest about: leadership can be scary. It means putting the people you lead ahead of yourself, and sometimes that feels like stepping back, even cowardly. But a great leader isn’t always the one who can do the task themselves. A great leader directs the right people to the right places and makes everyone feel valued.
That’s my goal. As an accounting major, I’m not trying to be the loudest person in the room. I want to be the one who helps others get to mastery, who opens the doors that AEPi and Hillel opened for me. In Yiddish, we have a word for that: mensch. Someone who lifts others up, and doesn’t need the credit.
So keep reaching for the stars. Pick your thing, go deep, and lift others as you climb. Don’t settle for less just because you haven’t reached your goal yet.
Thank you!