For many Jewish students living on college campuses, it can be difficult to celebrate the High Holidays with a busy fall semester. Many students this year will be away from home for the very first time and will have to balance their schoolwork with Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur falling on weekdays.
Fortunately for these students, living on campus doesn’t mean observing the holidays alone. Campus Hillels prepare different events throughout the High Holiday weeks that work around students’ schedules.
“Many of our students have never experienced High Holidays away from home before,” Rabbi Alex Salzberg, the executive director of Towson Hillel, said. “We always want to make sure that everything we offer is accessible, that everything that we offer is engaging and gives [students] a sense of the variety of a Jewish life that is open to them as they enter into adulthood.”
Campus events for the Jewish High Holidays include several different services, meals and fun activities for students to participate in.
At some schools’ Hillels, such as the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, the students run the show. The programming to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and observe Yom Kippur is created by them.
“For all of these programs, we help students with the material and help them with any setup that might be necessary or with procuring items. But then the students go forth and run it on the day of,” said Aliza Silverman, executive director of UMBC Hillel.
Silverman said the students will lead a Rosh Hashanah dinner and a Rosh Hashanah Cupcake and Learning Program. The cupcake tradition, where students eat cupcakes and do text study, goes back a few years, when one of the students brought the practice from their home synagogue in Carroll County.
Having a safe space for students to observe the Jewish holidays isn’t just about providing services. Silverman said it gives them a sense of community on campus.
Silverman explained that Sukkot is a big holiday at UMBC because students build a sukkah every year and work with organizational partners like the campus food pantry. She added that it draws attention from students walking around campus and is a great educational opportunity for non-Jewish students to learn about the holidays.
“Whether or not students are going to class or going home, it gives students a chance to just be together in community and have some Jewish joy together and celebrate the holidays,” Silverman said.
Rabbi Josh Snyder, executive director of Goucher Hillel, said that a unique element of his Hillel’s services is through an intergenerational connection students get with residents of the nearby Edenwald Senior Living community. Snyder explained that the school has been developing a close relationship with Edenwald for several years, and he finds the experience to be positive for everyone involved.
Salzberg said that the High Holiday campus events are essential.
“This is a chance for [students] to connect with their community. It’s a chance for students to experience something new,” he said.
Salzberg added that he hopes to offer an accessible and engaging experience that can help students see the variety of Jewish life as they enter adulthood.
For many college students, however, it can be a challenge to miss class. The campus Hillels want to ensure that having to miss class for religious observance doesn’t make them fall behind.
“We’ve worked with the administration to ensure that the university policies are very clear that students are permitted to miss class for holiday observance, and to ensure that they can make up work after the fact as they need to,” said Salzberg.
Snyder said that they’ve worked with the university chaplain to create a religious observance form that covers all Goucher students across religions. The form lets teachers know a student will be missing class, and puts the responsibility on the student to make up any missed work. Salzberg mentioned that he often helps students email professors about missing class by providing them with a template.
“It takes some of the stress off of students needing to directly approach professors and ask if they can get off for the holiday,” Snyder said. “It makes it a little bit easier for both parties. That’s something that we feel is important: for students to be able to balance their academic life and their religious observances as they’re in college.”
There are other ways that the chapters can support students with their holiday observance. Silverman said UMBC Hillel reaches out to local synagogues to assist students in getting tickets for services. It also offers free transportation to the events.
All the Hillel chapters stressed that the services and events they provide are important to provide a Jewish communal connection for the campus communities. Snyder said that having events on campus gives Jewish students a feeling of acceptance and an opportunity to share their identities with their peers. He said that students will sometimes bring their non-Jewish friends, and it becomes a great learning opportunity.
“I think it resonates with people deeply, because these are age-old rituals and ways of being able to think about the deeply important things to us — our sense of regret, our goals, what we want to do in the next year, how we want to think about who our community is,” Snyder said.
