Sure, it’s practically Tuesday, nearly two in the morning at this point, but I want to return to this weekend, to Friday night in particular. I’ve written about this issue before, but too long ago to hyperlink it (sorry). Anyway, my thoughts have started shifting.
I’m thinking about how college students approach Shabbat for a few reasons: I haven’t written about community in a while, and I experience a nice sense of it this past Friday; and, one of the Hillel interns approached me today about the idea of hosting Carnegie Mellon students in my home for a Friday night dinner. She assured me that Hillel would provide all of the food, cups, napkins, cutlery, every last detail I could think of — Hillel would take care of it. At this point, I’m nodding, because it seems like a neat idea.
To give a bit of explanation: The Hillel-JUC is shared by all of the universities in Pittsburgh, but mainly used by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the University of Pittsburgh (affectionately, “Pitt”), and an increasing amount of Duqesne students. However, the CMU numbers have been dwindling at Hillel ever since I got here over two years ago. There have been numerous efforts to try to bolster the CMU Jewish community, and it seems like this new idea, Shabbat-in-a-Tartan’s-home is one of the newer solutions to this “problem.”
On the other hand, I wonder how many students want to schlep the 1.3 miles to my house in Squirrel Hill (the Jewish heartbeat of Pittsburgh) for a so-so meal, when they could schlep to the Chabad of CMU house (a mere block from campus) and have a delicious meal full of singing? I’m not sure how many students fall into each camp. A lot of my “Jewish friends” go to Pitt, and most of my “friends that are Jewish” go to CMU. The latter group wouldn’t really want to do the whole Friday-night-dinner-thing. (Hence, the rephrase of “friends that are Jewish”).
So, I turn this over to you, before you get sick of reading about Steel City issues. What do you (and by you, I mean college student of any year) do on a Friday night? Are you happy with your current practices? Do you wish there was more offered at your school? Are you faced with too many choices? Let’s open up the dialogue.
