By: Isaiah Yolkut
The Leffell School invites speakers for a few different reasons. Some teach the student body important skills, some share personal experiences, some spread new perspectives, and some are there to speak about their journeys to become successful.
Shabbos Kestenbaum did it all. When he visited our school earlier today, he maintained a persona of maturity while keeping his words light and humorous. The jokes made his story even more meaningful, but in my mind the most important thing was that he told the truth as he himself saw it.
He wasn’t open to interpretation. He made direct claims and shared straight evidence. He allowed students to do some self-reflection about their beliefs.
People react to Kestenbaum. At the beginning of his talk, he said he spoke extremely fast, which was true, so you had to listen carefully if you want to catch every word. But as he began sharing his opinions, and experiences, I knew I had to focus, because I was hearing something remarkable. One highlight for me was when he told the story of when he was speaking in Miami, and of course this story was jammed packed with slightly offensive jokes to Miamians, like how they are all old, or that the audience he was speaking to was slightly deceased. The story was about a 100+ year old audience member who stood up and proclaimed that she had survived two concentration camps, Bergen Belsen and Majdanek, along with fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. He then explained how when he had the chance to speak with US President Donald J. Trump and Israeli President Isaac Herzog, hers was the story he told. He told them how this woman represented the Jewish people’s resilience, strength, and longevity. We broke out into applause when he finished the story.
I had only heard his name once in passing before he spoke at our school, but I know others follow him on social media, or heard about his Harvard lawsuit in the past.
But It was clear to me when he came to our school that he wasn’t afraid. He’s willing to be loud about what he believes in. He showed his Judaism bravely, and proudly told us that he constantly wears a kippah. He knows that everyone might not agree with his beliefs. He tells us what he thinks anyway.
I don’t know if what he says is right, and I certainly don’t agree with all of it. But I do know that he is incredibly passionate in his own beliefs, and I think because of that fact, it’s fantastic that the school brought him in.
On the surface, he was brought to speak about his experiences with antisemitism on college campuses, and his experience standing up for the Jewish faith. But as I listened to him speak, I found a deeper meaning.
Most of us as teenagers are growing up in a world where opinions are filtered, softened, and checked for controversy before they reach us. While swiping and scrolling, it’s not often we encounter ideas that seem risky. So when someone stands in front of a room of students (and teachers) and speaks bluntly and without apology, it wakes people up. It seemed like most of the student body was extremely engaged. The room wasn’t alive because everyone agreed, but rather because people wanted to listen. They wanted to disagree, they wanted to think, and they wanted to be struck with new ideas and inspiration.
Even while saying things that could be deemed inappropriate for a schoolwide lecture, he kept his tone clear, and managed to stick in some signature Shabbos jokes.
The Leffell School isn’t just your average place of learning. Here we wrestle with ideas, confront disagreement, and think for ourselves. It’s becoming easier and easier to be handed a pre-approved script of what the right opinions are, especially with the rise of AI. As Shabbos said, we’re lucky to attend such a special school.
If schools only host speakers who make everyone comfortable, they aren’t educating, but curating a select passive mindset. But Shabbos Kestenbaum was the right choice because he didn’t come to hand us answers, something I thought he might do before I heard the lecture. He came to challenge our tendency to yield to ideas. As I’ve said, whether you agreed with him is beyond the point. What matters is whether we choose to take ownership in our beliefs instead of conforming. His visit may have ended with applause, cheers, and laughter, but I hope it also ended with students who are willing to think bravely, speak honestly to themselves, and refuse to be silent.