As another Friday evening approaches, I think, as a typical college student, what’s going on tonight? What are my friends doing? My thoughts turn to Hillel, because that’s where a lot of students gather on Friday nights, for services and dinner. Hillel claims to be ‘the foundation for Jewish life on campus’ but I wonder about the truth of this statement—because in Pittsburgh, the story is slightly different. There are nine colleges and universities in the city, and essentially, we all share one Hillel. However, the main benefactors of the building, its resources, and its programs are the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, although there are a few stragglers from Chatham University, Duquesne University, and Point Park University.
Jewish life at the University of Pittsburgh is thriving, with several student groups under the umbrella of Hillel and a sizable Jewish population. The opposite is true at Carnegie Mellon University, the school I attend. Tartans for Israel, more of a learn-about-Israel group than a combat-anti-Israeli-sentiment group, has recently dissolved. And the student-run executive board for CMU underwent felt the same exhaustion of senior leaders and dissolved.
This is not to say that every Jew at Carnegie Mellon is gone, having packed their bags for Cornell or the University of Chicago, where Hillel’s resources abound. A lot of the Jewish energy at CMU comes from Alpha Epsilon Pi, the fraternity conveniently situated on the corner of two main roads that run through campus. Although they host lectures and run programs, the real bulk of programming and community should come from Hillel.
But we do need to give serious thought to the restructure and rejuvenation of Jewish life at CMU. This may seem irrelevant to most readers, but I think the underlying issue of creating a sense of Jewish community in college is a universal one. There’s not a whole lot of press on the issue, perhaps because it varies so much by school. Some universities seem to import hordes of the tribe from a few select places, namely New York and New Jersey (see Emory). Other schools may have a more diverse group of Jews, geographically, but they may lean toward the uninvolved. Every case is different.
But there are concrete ways to build this community organically, as challenging as that may seem. For example, the University of Virginia’s Hillel hosts ‘Bagels on the Lawn’ every Wednesday, right in the middle of the day. Although it took years to build up this tradition, now it’s the place to gather in the middle of the week.
How should we build our community? Out of bagels and schmear, or out of a lecture series from Jewish faculty? How do you get students out of the dorm rooms, away from their textbooks, and into a gorgeous building that is less than two blocks from campus?
How do you build your Jewish community? This is the question I will continue to ask other students, as well as myself, as college continues. Because the question won’t become less challenging as we all mature and leave school—it will become more challenging.
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