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When the 2016 Summer Olympics open Friday, we'll of course be cheering the American athletes — all 555 of them — and we'll be rooting for Israel, too. But we're saving a special shout-out for some of the Jewish-American Olympians who have given the Tribe extra reasons to be proud this year.

From conversion-related controversy to conflicts over access to the Kotel, it seems nary a news cycle in the life of the Jewish people passes without a story about intra-Jewish conflict. However, far less discussed are documented instances of intra-Jewish cooperation, particularly those in which Reform rabbis had leading roles in bringing the Jewish world – in its totality – closer together.

Garrett Weber-Gale, who has broken four world and eight American swimming records, went home from the 2008 Beijing Olympics with two gold medals. Last year, the 30-year-old athlete from Wisconsin was inducted into the International Jewish Sports Hall of Fame. A proud Reform Jew, Garrett received his Jewish education at Congregation Shalom in Milwaukee and at the Olin-Sang-Ruby Union Institute (OSRUI), a Reform summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, where he remembers spending five “idyllic” summers. Today he lives with his wife, Kara, in Austin, Texas, where he founded Athletic Foodie, a business that makes snacks specifically designed to help athletes perform at their best.     

Unfortunately there are people in this world who look upon the LGBTQ community and see it as a threat, a scourge to be wiped off the earth, a people whom God has cursed. But if they were to look closely, to speak with people, to get to know this community up close and personal, surely they would see that, in fact, it is a community God has blessed.

Something historic occurred last week. It was more than a simple nomination. It is nothing less than a challenge to all of us: to acknowledge our diversity and to see the Divine in each and every human being.

In their new book JewAsian: Race, Religion, and Identity for America’s Newest Jews, scholarly husband/wife team Helen Kiyong Kim and Noah Samuel Leavitt examine the intersection of race, religion, and ethnicity in the increasing number of households that are both Jewish American and Asian American (like theirs is).

I have always believed that here in the United States, anti-Semitism couldn’t possibly be as entrenched as in other parts of the world. In 35 years of life, I had never directly encountered anti-Semitism – until last week.

Recently, together with new Israeli friends who joined them for a week, participants in the URJ’s NFTY in Israel program learned the story of the modern state of Israel. There are so many amazing parts of this country that are connected to living in a public culture that is Jewish and so many ways that Jewishness shapes the realms of language, literature, film, TV, social media, and more. In Israel, public space is Jewish space, and having a public culture that reflects this reality is one of the most important reasons the Jewish people needs its own country (like all other peoples). However, our young people also have learned about the challenges of needing a Jewish sovereign state so that we can control our own political destiny (again, like all other peoples), and why Zionism was the liberation movement of the Jewish people.

Nearly 40 years ago, I stood on the bimah as a bat mitzvah, the first young woman in my family to celebrate my Jewish coming of age. Its significance was totally lost on me, however. Having been raised to believe that both boys and girls could pretty much do anything they wanted, what was the big deal, I wondered.