Hometown: Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania, USA

High School: Private Judaic school, 37 students in graduating class

Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male

GPA: 4.0 out of 4.0

SAT: n/a

ACT: 34

SAT Subject Tests Taken: Mathematics Level 2, Chemistry, Literature, World History, Modern Hebrew

Extracurriculars: Slam poetry captain; Jewish Youth Group president; music—two bands and three instruments; workshops in innercity working with refugees (volunteer); lead writer for qualitative research paper

Awards: Harvard Book Award, Jewish Philosophy Award, National Honors Society, Strength in Humanities Award

Major: Psychology

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“Not everything is black and white.”

My mother tells me this almost every day. But my piano begs to differ. On its 88 keys I can see the ghostly imprints of perfectly aligned fingerprints. I’ve played classical music for years, where wrong notes are wrong, and right notes are right. But everything changed when I discovered jazz. Now jazz . . . jazz tells a different story. When I play “Have You Met Miss Jones,” I improvise, as I am the one scripting the music, creating a conversation between two lovers. My fingers no longer imitate, they create.

My best friend Noa ran over to me, red-eyed and breathless. Her face was grim as she handed me a copy of the Jewish Exponent. In it was an article with snippets from our city-wide poetry slam final competition. I remember that the night we performed, our words were beautiful. They questioned gender roles and normative narratives delegated in our culture, and won us second place. The problem was that Noa and I live in a tight-knit, traditional Orthodox Jewish community. To the rabbis in our community, our beautiful words were vulgar and profane. That week, our school ended our participation in the slam league.

But I couldn’t accept that thousand-year-old ideas should dictate my own values and the meaning of my Jewishness. So that night, I rebelled in the only way I could. I watched hours of online slam poetry, violating the Sabbath for the first time in my life. That’s when I started to spend my school’s daily prayer time huddled in a bathroom stall, reading writings by the excommunicated Jewish scholar Baruch/Benedict Spinoza, and listening to my jazz favorites, Red Garland and Bill Evans.

Since then, I’ve found my own rhythm. I’ve done my best to foster diversity and acceptance within my Jewish community. I’ve worked with rabbis to create a Jewish philosophy-reading option at my school, as an alternative to praying with traditional liturgy. When I was elected to be the president of Bnei Akiva (our community’s Jewish youth group), influential parents in the community demanded that I be replaced because I was not Orthodox. But I convinced the professional leadership of the program that there is value in exposing children to different points of view. In the end, I stayed.

Today, when the rest of my family leaves for Sabbath services, I stay home and play the piano, even though it’s forbidden on the Sabbath. As I start the solo to “Have You Met Miss Jones” the notes speak about my love for slam poetry, and my pain when it was taken away. They sing about my illicit poetry-watching and my heretical reading during prayer. But just because I’m not at synagogue doesn’t mean that I can’t pray in my own way. It turns out that my mother was right; life isn’t black and white. For me, these are the right notes. They’re mine. And my Judaism is exactly that; it’s my own.

REVIEW

Razi’s essay synthesizes many personal achievements into an engaging narrative about defining his own Jewish identity and overcoming adversity within a traditional Orthodox community. He begins by dis- covering his passion for jazz, and its creative freedom, after years of playing classical piano. This scene simultaneously frames the essay’s body and reveals another side of him. In the next section, he talks about being a Jewish slam poet, scholar, and youth leader. While Razi is not shy about his many accomplishments, he shares them tastefully by layering each personal fact into his stories. When his community’s conservative Rabbis deemed his slam poetry too profane, ending his school’s participation in the league, Razi was forced to reflect on his values and read more into Jewish philosophy.

Ultimately, Razi helped create a new prayer option for his school, and became president of the local Jewish youth group. This provides a sense of Razi’s maturity and critical capacity. He concludes in the present, as he breaks Sabbath to play jazz piano at home. Linking the two proceeding sections is an excellent way to conclude. Although Razi’s essay is chock-full of events, he ultimately avoids sounding clunky and remains engaging as each detail folds into a compelling central narrative.

From 50 Successful Harvard Application Essays, 5th Edition edited by the Staff of the Harvard Crimson. Copyright (c) 2017 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Publishing Group.