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Anne Young’s Compelling Story

Last month, Dr. Anne L. Young was installed as Chizuk Amuno Congregations president. Dr. Young is not the first female president of the 1,300-household-member synagogue in Stevenson. But she may hold another distinction. Dr. Young may well be its first Jew-by-choice president.

Since her conversion more than two decades ago, Dr. Young has learned to read Hebrew, light Shabbat candles, attend Shabbat services and keeps a kosher home. And weve begun putting up a sukkah, said Dr. Young, a Pikesville resident who is married to David Young, with a stepson, Daniel. A former math professor, she is the associate vice president for academic affairs and special assistant to the president for planning at Loyola College in Maryland. Her husband is a retired professor of linguistics.

Dr. Young is a vibrant 61. With her pixie haircut and trim figure, she exudes an air of confidence. As a girl in Columbus, Ohio, she said she always loved math. I loved geometry in high school. That led to an undergraduate degree from Wheaton College, a doctorate from Michigan State University, where it was rare to see a woman in the math ranks.

Dr. Young is quite comfortable talking about her conversion. She was raised as an evangelical Protestant in a family that attended church every Sunday and did not work or go shopping on the Sabbath.

But while she was in graduate school, she began to question the tenets of Christianity. There was no epiphany. It just didnt work [for me], and for someone raised in a religious home, it was a real loss, said Dr. Young, who spent the next several years being nothing. After graduate school, Dr. Young spent 11 years teaching at Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y., where she was only the second female to receive tenure as a professor. She also met her future husband, and began to attend services with him at his parents synagogue, an hours drive from the college.

I felt this void, this desire for communal worship, said Dr. Young. But she held off taking any action with Judaism for a year. I didnt discuss it with anyone. It was a personal decision, said Dr. Young, who was married in 1983 and moved to Baltimore two years later. At that point, she said, I wanted to find a shul and convert.

The path led to Chizuk Amuno and then-associate Rabbi James Rosen, with whom she studied. She took the Introduction to Judaism course given by the Baltimore Board of Rabbis. She started attending Shabbat morning services and performing the other rituals of Jewish life. She has taken several adult education courses, including the Florence Melton Adult Mini-School, a two-year program at Chizuk Amuno. But it took a while to get comfortable in her new identity. It was two, three years before I felt Jewish.It was a process, said Dr. Young, although I felt comfortable at Chizuk Amuno early on. People were welcoming and very open. A Jew-by-choice they thought it was wonderful.

Dr. Young has moved up the ranks of leadership. She served on the Krieger Schechter Day School board. She was a sisterhood officer, then chair of a committee, and finally held various shul officer positions before assuming the two-year term as president. As president, Dr. Young has plans, worked out in conjunction with Rabbi Ronald J. Shulman. We have a long tradition of multi-generational families four- and five- generation families and we have new members like myself, said Dr. Young. We are building community, making all members feel welcomed and wanted.

At the same time, Dr. Young is targeting other groups for membership, like young adults, young families, the unaffiliated who send their children to Chizuk Amunos early childhood center. For these efforts, many programs already exist, she said. Its less about new programs, she said, and more about transforming existing programs.Other items on her to-do list include encouraging socializing in informal settings among the different groups within the congregation, an examination of the dues structure and opening up leadership opportunities for the younger generation. Installed with her were three new board members under the age of 45, she pointed out.

Chizuk Amuno has given me so much. This is an opportunity to give back, Dr. Young said. Being a Jew is being part of a community and for me, that community is Chizuk Amuno. 

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