CLAIRE RAWSON-DANNENBAUM, 17
HIGH SCHOOL: Santa Monica High School
GOING TO: McGill University
Claire Rawson-Dannenbaum knows all too much about the challenges different groups can face in this world — as a Jew, as a young woman and as the daughter of two mothers.
“I feel like my life must be very similar and also very different to someone who is my age with heterosexual parents,” the 17-year-old said in a phone interview. “I feel like it’s similar in the fact that I have two parents who love me and care about me very much, and are hard-working and incredibly amazing role models. However, it is different in that they have had to face certain discrimination that heterosexual couples don’t face.
“I have been alive for two of three of their weddings because their marriages kept getting annulled by the state, by Gov. [Arnold] Schwarzenegger and various other laws and people, and watching them persevere through that was amazing.”
Claire refers to Lisa Dannenbaum, a film editor, as “momma” and Kathleen Rawson, CEO of Downtown Santa Monica Inc., as ema (Hebrew for “mom”). Together, they attend the Pacific Palisades Reconstructionist congregation Kehillat Israel with her younger brother, Jonas.
Claire spoke to the Journal while on a break from a rehearsal at the Santa Monica-based Pretenders Studio, where she is a member of a jazz dance company that performs showcases benefiting various charities. But mixing dance and tikkun olam is just one of her passions. Two years ago, she traveled to Israel as part of No’ar Hadash, the Reconstructionist Youth Programming Network. The month she spent there changed her life — to the point that she’d like to make the Jewish state part of her professional life.
“I would love to be the American ambassador to Israel,” Claire said.
When it comes to politics, she cited Hillary Clinton as a role model.
“I agree with her stance on Israel, and Israel is something very important to me,” she said.
Claire said Clinton also sets a good example for women and that more women need to be in government.
“We definitely need more women in our government, because at the current rate we are at, I don’t see how we could have equality in genders any time soon.”
To bring attention to the wage gap between men and women, Claire recently helped organize bake sales of Diddy Riese cookies in which girls paid 78 cents for a cookie and guys paid $1. (A recent study the U.S. Census Bureau shows that a woman earns 78 cents for every dollar a man earns.)
“We had to even the playing field a little bit,” she said.
The Venice resident is president of her school’s film club — her favorite movie is Wes Anderson’s “Moonrise Kingdom” — and she was a 2015 Earthwatch L.A. Ignite fellow, which had her working with postdoctoral students, professors and others studying how climate change has affected marshes over 2,000 years. She said she is both a little nervous and excited about trading sunny California for Canada next year when she heads for Montreal to attend McGill University.
“It’ll be a huge change. I’m apprehensive about the distance and the cold weather, but other than that, I’m really excited,” she said.
Before she begins college, however, Claire will work on staff as a counselor at the Reconstructionist sleepaway Camp JRF in the Poconos, where she has been a camper for the past nine years. This is the first year on staff for the lifelong public school student, who said camp has inculcated in her a sense of Jewish pride.
“I was not always super comfortable with being Jewish until I went to sleepaway camp,” she said, “and then I got super into being Jewish.”
