Bronfman Alum? Here's a Cookie: An Introduction to the Bronfman Alumni Network

"Excuse me, did you go on Bronfman?" I was walking with my brother around Borders in the Time Warner Building in Columbus Circlewhen we were approached by a young woman wearing a green polo and plain khakis who stopped to ask if my brother had gone on Bronfman. (On an unrelated note, Borders is closing so if anyone has Borders gift certificates lying around from their bar/bat mitzvahs, they should definitely get on that.) Indeed, he had. He asked her how she knew him and she told us that she herself had gone on Bronfman in 2008 and had recognized him from some Bronfman event.

Quickly, the three of us hit it off as we started talking about our shared Bronfman experiences. I spoke about how I had just returned two days earlier and how I was still in post-BYFI/Israel shock. It turns out that when she wasn't a student in New York, she actually had a summer job working in a bakery on the third floor of the Time Warner Building. She graciously offered us to take a tour of her bakery and even bought us a free cookie.

While I know that this event is quite trivial, it served as a realization to me that I was now a Bronfman alum (or at least a partial one) and it was my first encounter with the vast Bronfman alumni network that we had heard described two us just three days ago. Although, I will admit, that when I first heard about the great benefits of being a Bronfman Alumnus, I didn't immediately think of free cookies, it was quite amazing to see that just two days after returning from Israel, I could already find older alumni who I could bond with over our respective years on Bronfman.

And even though the cookies didn't taste as good as Marzipan rugalach, it was exciting to see that this experience was in fact, as the website puts it, the beginning of a lifelong fellowship.

Shabbat Shalom,

Gabe