Brian Blinder ('20) first connected with the Schapiros when Shaindy was getting her teeth cleaned in the dental office where his mother worked. She mentioned that she needed some Matzah, and of course Shaindy made it happen! Soon enough, 6 year-old Brian was a camper at Gan Israel.
Brian grew up in the North Shore and went to Maple Dale, but when his family moved to a different suburb, he was one of very few Jewish kids at his high school. In addition, as a Russian-speaker, “I knew it would be harder to assimilate…people didn’t understand where I was coming from…”, and he felt some isolation amid the casual antisemitic jokes and comments from his classmates.
In CTeen, he “did a lot of picking at Avremi’s brain, asking questions, learning, challenging, and Avremi would push it but do it right.” Highlights of his CTeen experience included going on the New York Shabbaton his senior year, even though it meant missing a Travis Scott concert, because he wanted to support a friend running for Teen Leader of the Year. He called it “silly, inspiring, and jaw-dropping” to be in Times Square “with thousands of other teens, staring at the billboards, feeling proud.”
Brian graduated from UW Madison in 2024 with a degree in computer science and is currently back in Milwaukee working for Northwestern Mutual as a software engineer. He still loves going to Shabbat dinners at the Schapiro house, and is excited to be a founding member of the Alumni Chai Club and the CTeen Mentor Network.
Ariel Lotman wrote...