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Matthew Bussy
Courtesy of Matthew Bussy
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
M atthew Bussy is the program director for Philadelphia
Jewish Film and Media. He started working for the non-
profit organization when it was still just the Philadelphia
Jewish Film Festival — and part of the Gershman Y — in 2016.

Yet when he took the job, he was not actually Jewish. The Temple
University graduate and film major just needed a job.

And what started as a practical decision ended up changing his life.

Six years later, Bussy, 31, is very much Jewish after converting in
2020. His immersion in the Jewish film festival and other Jewish movie
events, like screenings at the Weitzman
National Museum of American Jewish
History, gave him an appreciation for
Jewish culture and history. When he
started reading more about Judaism,
he told his father, Gregory Bussy, who
informed him that, by the way, his
grandfather and great-grandfather
were Jewish themselves.

“It was like a lightbulb going off in
my head,” Bussy said. “I remember this
feeling of joy kind of overcame me.”
It hasn’t left, either.

Bussy attends Jewish events in the
city, honors the Sabbath by lighting
the candles and saying the blessings
and celebrates the Jewish holidays. He
calls dating “impossible” right now, but
when he does settle down with some-
one, he wants to raise a Jewish family.

He even gets the jokes and understands
what it means to make Aliyah.

“I had no idea what aliyah was
before,” Bussy said.

The 31-year-old grew up in Media
and graduated from Penncrest High
School. His childhood home was sort
of Unitarian Universalist, though his
mom was not religious. When Bussy
was 8, though, he started whining about
going to church on Sunday mornings,
so the family stopped.

As his childhood continued, Bussy
celebrated Easter and Christmas every
year with his parents, but he said “it
was never really religious.”
“It was like, ‘Oh, this is an American
thing — we have to do this; it’s tradi-
tion,’” he recalled. “But we didn’t say
prayers or anything.”
The program director’s next encoun-
ter with religion came in his mid-20s
when he got the job with the film
festival. At first, his connection with
Judaism felt like just that. But around
the time he turned 27, it got deeper.

Bussy’s friends were getting into
relationships and leaving the city.

Suddenly, he was alone with little to
do on weekends. He drank and tried to
deny what was happening. But eventu-
ally, he “hit a wall,” he said.

“I don’t like where my life is going,”
the millennial added. “What can I do?”
Bussy began reading about Judaism
and about “what the Talmud teaches
us,” he said. The lonely young adult
appreciated the emphasis on commu-
nity and family, so he started attend-
ing services at Congregation Rodeph
Shalom on North Broad Street.

It was around this same time that he
told his dad about what he was doing.

Just as Bussy was becoming Jewish, he
learned that he already was.

His paternal great-grandfather,
Bernard Bussy, left Europe because he
was tired of pogroms and antisemi-
tism. But then the elder Bussy settled
in a Pennsylvania town where “it was
taboo if you were Jewish,” Matt said.

Bernard stopped practicing, had a
son, Robert Kenneth, and never raised
him Jewish. Yet despite that, Robert
Kenneth understood his roots.

“My dad told me all these stories
about how my grandfather was really
into Judaism,” Matt Bussy said. “He
went to Israel a year after it was declared
a state.”
In 2019, Robert Kenneth’s grandson
made it back to their Holy Land on a trip for
young professionals through The Chevra,
a community center in Philadelphia. Matt
saw the culture, the history and the food,
and he felt something.

“Judaism was stopped in my family
lineage,” Bussy said. “I said, ‘I want to
bring it back and celebrate it.’”
The younger Bussy started his con-
version process in 2020 before the pan-
demic through Rabbi Eli Freedman at
Rodeph Shalom. Even after COVID
broke out, he continued with his intro-
duction to Judaism class and his one-
on-one meetings with Freedman.

The rabbi, 42, is in his 12th year at
Rodeph Shalom and regularly works
with converts as part of his job. He
said Bussy showed a unique amount of
enthusiasm. “He had a broad range of knowledge
and was already really connected to the
Jewish community,” Freedman added.

Bussy recalled that there was a
moment during his conversion, after
COVID broke out, when he doubted
whether he should continue. But then
he would attend a Zoom service and
see congregants coming together, sing-
ing and even dancing.

“People who are Jewish are not giv-
ing up. They’re still celebrating,” he
said. JE
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