It’s Friday night at 7 pm and I’m in the back of a room as big as a football field trying to find my father. The room has about 5000 people and 7 screens that are each so big that they seem overwhelming individually, and together they seem insane. On the stage there is a Rabbi and a cantor and a choir with a dozens of people from dozens of states and a few countries. There were graphics on the screens and words in Hebrew and words in English and pictures of temples and camps where people prayed in much smaller numbers then 5000, but still in communities. Still together.

I have a complicated and continuously evolving relationship with prayer, and this week, working at the largest conference on Jewish life in the world, I got a chance to reflect a little on the things I love about my religion and the things I don’t hold quite as dear. I feel like religion is so often painted in strict black and white. You believe or don’t. You feel an intense connection of there’s nothing there. I hate how conversations about faith leave so little room for grey, because for me, that’s where everything interesting about religion lives.

There’s a quote, I heard somewhere, and have since heard a few dozen times more, about how when you put three Jews in a room, you’ll come out with four opinions. I love that need to question and that need to debate at that need to discuss and analyze and not know and to know that you don’t know, but keep going and believing anyhow.

My religion has given me a community to feel a part of and a history to feel proud of. It has given me adventures and experiences and people who mentor me and those I can help grow. It has given me answers and questions, and the ability to feel a little less uncomfortable with the unknown. It has given me homes and purpose. Tradition and pride.

I’m growing and learning still. My religion shapes itself in new ways every day, and truthfully, I’m grateful for that fluid movement. I don’t live a life that’s stagnant, so I don’t need a faith that can’t move with me. I’m doing more and being more and experiencing more. My faith evolves to encompass that.

I’m not saying I have all the answers. I’m not saying I’m right. I’m just saying that not knowing seems like a silly reason to toss thousands of years of history and culture that my people have fought and died to keep alive by the wayside.  I’m happy in my middle. I don’t need a definitive answer on God to know that having a moral code is something that helps me be better and do better.

So I guess this is 500 words on how I’m comfortable not having answers. 500 words on how my faith is important to me, even if others don’t understand it. 500 words on how my faith is important to me even if I don’t understand it.

And that’s fine. That’s good even. That just leaves more room to grow.

It’s 10:15 AM and I am kneeling on the dusty ground clearing blood off a cut on a 12 year old boy’s leg. I’m wearing a bright pink shirt that reads “Senior Staff” on the back, cut off jean shorts, a name tag and a tie-dyed tallit that is long enough that as I kneel it brushes the ground. I’m using a tissue and a water bottle and a band-aid and a little bit of love to solve a small problem.

It’s about an hour before I am going to read Torah for the first time.

This is where my Judaism lives. In hectic moments and in reassuring words. In a sanctuary, outside, filled with rocks and benches and canopies of trees and cloth and people who all know my name. In weird dance moves during prayers and in silent applause. In the sincere joy in song and the sincere silliness in hand motions. In prayer, of course, but in community too.

I am a unit head for 62 kids, aged 11 and 12, who have spent this summer creating a community within our unit that makes the hard days worth it. Boys and girls who have waited months and years and counted down days. Campers who have called this place home- some, like me, for the first time this summer- others for years and years. I’ve spent this summer watching them grow and learn and create bonds with each other that I can’t help but feel proud of. I have seen their counselors inspire them to grow in new and exciting and different ways. They learned to speak about issues, create friendships, try activities they’ve never tried. To be brave in the choices and their decisions and their actions.

And with their bravery, they inspired me to try something new and scary too.

When I was 12 I went to Hebrew school twice a week in a temple in suburban Maryland about 20 minutes away from my home. I loved the class and the kids and the things I was learning, but the language- the Hebrew- never seemed to stick. It was frustrating and upsetting and it made me feel like a bat mitzvah was something that I could never accomplish. So a date was never set and a portion was never picked and I moved on, with the idea of reading Torah somewhere in back of my head under the nebulous realm of “maybe someday.”

“Maybe someday” came this weekend. It fell on a Saturday morning where there were more than a hundred extra people in camp and my unit—those 62 crazy kids and the 30ish staff members—was leading the entire camp in prayer. My campers and staff had been working all week. Preparing readings about prayers and choosing and practicing songs that fit our theme. I was proud of them. And I am so grateful I was able to do something that meant that they could also be a little bit proud of me.

I spent three days learning my portion and three days silently (and, if we are being honest, not so silently) freaking out about reading. I spent the morning of the service with my campers and staff. Eating bagels in the chader ochel, dancing during songs, laughing at the weirdness of camp. I spent the morning of the service feeling excited and more than a little scared.

I don’t remember much about actually reading Torah. I remember walking up, kind of shaking, and squeezing the hand of one of my staff members who was going to read after me. I remember holding the yad (pointer) in my hand and thinking about how the weight of it felt lighter than I expected. I remember looking up and seeing one of my campers—one who has been here for the entire summer—flashing me a double thumbs up. I remember consciously thinking that I couldn’t let the weakness in my knees manifest as weakness in my voice. I remember seeking out faces- my campers, my staff, my father who had come up to camp for the morning. I remember the words that I read.

It’s 11 AM. I’m reading, loudly, strongly, words I’ve almost got memorized. My knees are only shaking a little, but my heart is so full it feels like it could burst.