Meet the New AHA Interns: Gabriella Cohen and Daniel Schechter-Saavedra
Learn more about the AHA’s summer Education Interns!
What drew you to humanism?
Gabriella Cohen: I think the seeds for engaging in Humanism in a formal sense were planted when my family attended a Humanist Jewish service early in my childhood. I never really identified with the Jewish God my religious school taught us under, but I loved how it brought the community together. Today, I appreciate how Humanism sees humans as we truly are in the present—loving, adaptive beings who need community, care, and advocacy—without tethering our worth to an afterlife or higher power.
Daniel Schechter-Saavedra: See the next answer 🙂
Did you grow up in a traditional religious faith? How did it impact you?
Cohen: My dad worked as a Reform Congregational rabbi throughout my childhood, but as I had very early skepticisms about God-centered religion, he was my biggest supporter and conversation partner as I began sitting with the big questions that surround religion and spirituality. He always encouraged me to disentangle the Jewish values I identified with (many of which I now see as Humanist values) from the concept of God itself; so, Judaism has been my semi-incidental springboard towards Humanism. As I participate in Jewish programs and worship, I come to understand the warm, colorful feeling my soul feels in these moments as the power of human connection itself.
Schechter-Saavedra:In the past, I’ve struggled with feelings of guilt, apology, and redemption. I think the best way to understand my journey toward humanism—and the role of traditional religious faith in my life—is to process my cultural and ethnic background a bit. My dad was born in Santiago, Chile, and while he was baptized, he never identified as a Christian. For him, the baptism symbolized the continuation of something more cultural, I think. Truly, I’ve known my dad as a Zen practitioner and as an agnostic, more at wonder with the awe of everyday experience, and the joy of relationship. When I was a kid, for a little while, I loved the idea of myself as a secular Buddhist and gravitated toward its quite humanistic tendencies. What I found was that I apologized and felt guilty for things I shouldn’t have, especially among my friendships. I thought that by taking responsibility, I’d be able to heal others and myself. This is definitely true, and a lesson I’ve learned! However, the problem was that I didn’t understand how integrity is a critical part of honesty, responsibility, and setting healthy boundaries. Of protecting my narrative, my story. So instead of healing through relationships, I ended up going into a place of insecurity, a personal mirage of authenticity. The quasi-spiritual, although secular, just hadn’t worked for me. It took time, and a deeper, more humanistic understanding of “no”, of affirming my story, my narrative, in order to grow holistic boundaries. I’m ethically and culturally Jewish, secular, and Jewish, something my mom passed on to me. She is one of the most resilient, compassionate, and intelligent people I know—and she’s my mom! The practice of resilience, of affirming human value, has become my own journey. I learned to carry strength, to hold my ground. And I think that sums up my journey pretty well: learning the power of listening, the need for compassion and forgiveness, and cultivating as healthy a relationship as I can with growth and owning up to my shortcomings—at a pretty young age. Truly, I’m still working on it. There’s so much joy to be found in others, in people and their stories. What humanism is for me, truly, is about meeting people where they are, holding the particular and the collective, and allowing others to feel safe and joyful in embodying their full selves. To be human, and to relish in the human experience, in our narratives.
What are you studying?
Cohen: I am a rising Junior at Yale University, where I study Anthropology and Education Studies. I love how my areas of study allow me to be creative and center real-world relationships while getting into the intricacies of policy and practice.
Schechter-Saavedra: I’ve technically finished my BA, I’ll be done at the end of the summer! But I studied Philosophy with a minor in Jewish Studies & Social Justice at the University of San Francisco.
What book has influenced you the most?
Cohen: If someone I know wants to shake up their worldview and learn to look at themselves and others with more grace, I always recommend Lulu Miller’s Why Fish Don’t Exist. The book is multilayered and hard to describe—it acts as part science-situated biography of fish taxonomist David Starr Jordan and part indulgent memoir of Miller herself—but it pushes one to question and consider the synthetic origins of the categories and hierarchies that we often limit ourselves within. It is vulnerable, scientific, and transcendent while still being super accessible and relatable to anyone who is a little confused with life!
Schechter-Saavedra: Oh wow… I think The Trial, by Franz Kafka. There are books that have definitely been more emotionally impactful, but something about the imagery, its themes and its ideas have just stayed with me. I read it on the way too and from Santiago. Chile. The scene in the courtroom, of long lean figures hunched over, the judges of a secret court… powerful stuff.
If you could have dinner with any three people in the world (living or dead), who would they be and why?
Cohen: 1. Maggie Rogers – I feel lucky that her songs have acted as backdrops for so many incredible moments in my life; from Alaska being my tent’s wake up alarm every morning of sleepaway camp to Fallingwater punctuating an incredible ferry ride I took on a backpacking trip along the Los Angeles coastline, I want to understand the personal moments that informed her own artistry and relationships to music and spirituality.
2. Timothée Chalamet – Specifically the Complete Unknown press tour version.
3. My dad — We truly have the best time together, and I love how easily our conversations flow between politics and music and life and religion.
Schechter-Saavedra: I think I’d love to have dinner with my grandma on my dads side, and my grandfather on my moms. I never met either of them, but I’ve heard amazing stories. To play chess with my grandfather, Robert, and swim (she was apparently a monster at butterfly stroke) and talk with my Grandmother, Anna Maria. Also oooh, you know I think it would be pretty cool to talk with James Baldwin, the way he writes is extraordinary, and the book The Fire Next Time just blew my mind when I first read it in high school. It’s one of the great American essays.