The black and white pictures of Jewish personalities and scenes float, shuffle, and gather across the velvet-black background as the violin-led strains of the theme from Schindler’s List plays. Albert Einstein, Eli Weisel, a street in Europe, an Israeli flag unfurled at the Kotel and then the cursive words “What It Means to Be a Jew” appear and fade. Andrew Lustig stands defiant in the “I am Jewish” video posted on youtube, proud, among sun dappled trees and proclaims his poem and his identity.

I am a bar mitzvah…

I am constantly struggling to understand my Jewish identity outside of religion…

I am the Torah and not the Old Testament…

I am a kipa and not a skullcap…

A graduate of Lawrence High School and Lehigh University with a degree in international relations and acting, Lustig grew up in Woodmere and went to Hebrew school at Hewlett East Rockaway Jewish Center. He is currently studying at Pardes, a co-ed non-denominational and apolitical school with teachers and students from varied backgrounds and outlooks. It is located in Jerusalem.

Lustig calls his presentation “performance poetry.” Lustig’s poem was filmed, edited and set to pictures and music by Tracie Karasik while she and Lustig were on a summer program at the Brandeis Collegiate Institute this past summer. “It was the happiest month of my life,” said Lustig. “I was one of 70 Jews ages 18-26, from all over the world in a program of Torah study, art and experiencing Judaism in the outdoors on a 3000 acre campus outside of LA. I shared the poem with the people there and they worked with me to film it.” The video currently has over 190,000 hits on youtube.

“I wrote the poem when I was applying to Israel programs,” explained Lustig. “They were asking questions, who are you, why are you Jewish. I was trying to write an honest essay; it’s hard to describe outside of the obvious that I have two Jewish parents.” He notes that viewers criticized his poem, that he didn’t mention G-d, prayer or halacha, but, he noted, “I wasn’t at the point where that had meaning to me. That was what I wanted to learn. I wrote what Judaism meant to me at that point in my life.”