Coming Sunday, December 13... 

FAMILY FUN SKATE &  

PARENT-ALUMNI HOCKEY GAME!

 

MEET HARRISON FREEMAN:

A HILLEL ALUMNI PROFILE 

"Life is a series of misunderstood redundancies. But with a bit of elbow grease and a college try, you can understand the non-redundant. All you have to do is get involved."

       

Of the many enlightening and unorthodox sayings Mr. Wilson would relay to our Grade 7 class, this quote has always stuck with me. For those who attended Hillel Academy, and had Mr. Wilson as a teacher, they would understand that these types of sayings were commonplace. I'm still not fully sure what it means, but I have taken it to convey that the first step in making things happen is getting involved, and putting in a serious effort. Having this type of outside-the-box thinking surely stimulated the classroom discussion, and was one of many reasons why Hillel Academy was an amazing place to go to school.

 

My name is Harrison Freeman and I am 23 years old. I grew up in Centrepointe and attended Hillel Academy for 11 years. I graduated in 2006 and attended Yitzhak Rabin High School for one year. I attended McGill University, and I currently live in Boston, Massachusetts studying at Boston University Law School. I interned at the Massachusetts Securities Division last summer, and will be working at the law firm Brown Rudnick Berlack & Israels in the summer of 2016. I have been living in Boston for slightly over a year, and while it has been a great experience, it is still strange living out of Canada, and particularly, living away from Ottawa.

 

Hillel Academy shaped the person that I am today. The school gave me many opportunities that I undoubtedly took for granted. I had the privilege of being taught by award-winning teachers such as Rabbi Simes, play on the school's sports teams, and work on the student council. Aside from the great education, engaged faculty, and array of extracurricular activities, what I gained most from attending Hillel Academy was a sense of community. The friends I made at Hillel are still my closest friends today. Many of them have even come to visit me - Michael Rosenbloom and Brody Appotive have come down from Queen's Law School to visit; Michael Levine has taken time off from work at the start-up company, Gymtrack, to take in a Red Sox game with me; and Alex Goldfarb has made plans to come visit during his Reading Week from Western Medical School. It is really great to still have these relationships with my former classmates, and it's astonishing to see what we all have done since graduating from Hillel. The friends I made, the memories we created, and ultimately the community that I became a part of, were what differentiated Hillel Academy from other schools in Ottawa.

Hillel '06 alumni Harrison Freeman (left), Michael Levine, Adam Ublansky and Michael Rosenbloom at the Yitzhak Rabin Fashion Show in 2007.

 

Growing up in an intimate Jewish community such as Ottawa was unique. After spending time in Montreal and Boston, I began to understand just how different Ottawa really was. In big cities, it is tough to know the entire Jewish community. In Ottawa, if you are involved in Jewish life, in almost any capacity, you seem to know the entire community. This is something I seriously took for granted. I now understand how special an intimate Jewish community can be. The love, support, and companionship you can get from the city is something very special. It is all there for the taking in our wonderful Jewish community, and in the words of Mr. Wilson, "All you have to do, is get involved."