Gabbi Stein,19, became the first Orthodox Jewish girl to earn the Eagle Scout rank, Forward reported. She made history last month when she presented her Eagle Scout project via Zoom from Israel to the Los Angeles board of certifiers and won the highest award the scouts have.
The first girl to earn the prestigious badge, with the insignia ‘Be Prepared’ embossed on it, was Isabella Tunney in October, Rubicon online reported at the time. Stein is the first orthodox-Jewish girl to win it, making her a member of a unique group which includes not only Tunney but also, among others, documentary filmmaker Michael Moore and former US State Secretary Rex Tillerson.
Stein was encouraged by her parents, Kira and Michal, to give the scouts a go and quickly earned badges for robotics and pioneering, eventually earning 29 badges. Her latest project was to compile a COVID-19 handbook to help people in her community deal with the various aspects of the pandemic. From mental health to working out during lockdown, the impressive guide can be found on the Congregation B’nai David-Judea site.
Stein told the Jewish Journal she wouldn’t have been able to spend a year in Israel without the training and encouragement her scouts experience gave her.“I found scouting is a great place for me to connect to people and make new friends,” she said. Her mother said that her daughter tended to be a little overlooked when she was younger and the scouts gave her a chance to shine and live up to her potential, the Journal reported.
Scoutmaster Noah Blumofe stressed the wealth of Jewish ideas scouting can serve, beginning from Tikkun Olam (Healing the World) by being healthy and fit and help others and ending with showing young women they can be in the same madrega (spiritual level) as the young men are. No matter if it’s about learning religious texts formally reserved for male scholars or taking a hike in the woods.
Just as some Jewish institutions had to change their outlook on the roles of women, the boy scouts needed to adapt to these modern times after refusing to allow girls in until 2019.