Two Jewish nonprofit employees walk into a Christmas store. Then what?
This isn’t the set-up for a joke. There’s no punchline here. If you’re me, you walk around feeling divided between a sense of familiarity and a feeling of foreignness. If you’re my predecessor Derek, maybe it all just feels foreign.
But it doesn’t matter what Derek and I did, because there are more than two paths to walk.
I’ve spent what feels like my whole life learning that there is no singular, right way to be Jewish. You don’t have to have a Jewish mother. You don’t have to eschew your Christian family on holidays. You don’t have to take the traditional path to religion — you can meander along the way and find yourself back at the synagogue years later. You don’t have to even be religious. You don’t have to be Ashkenazi, you don’t have to be straight, you don’t have to be white, you don’t have to be anything except Jewish.
But the younger someone is, the more their identity is in flux. And when your identity is changing and reshaping itself with every day, every firm stance you do take is eroded in the eyes of older generations.
There is room for exploring your identity and having it taken seriously — no matter what it is.
We can only benefit from sharing our unique journeys and beliefs with each other. We can only benefit from listening to students and taking young people seriously.
I learned this during my five years at Queen’s University (in Kingston, Ontario — not Queens, New York). I didn’t get into journalism until fourth year, but just as I’d discovered a new passion after declaring a Jewish studies minor, I fell wholeheartedly for reporting and editing. I went from one of the Queen’s Journal’s assistant news editors that year to staying for a fifth year to work as the news editor and finish the credits for my minor.
The Journal focused on campus and area news, but during my time there I took every chance I could to marry my interests in journalism and Jewish issues, from writing an editorial about #JeSuisJuif to covering a rally in solidarity with Gaza during Operation Protective Edge. I also wrote about Queen’s-specific issues, like the slow development of an administrative sexual assault policy.
One of the complaints we Journal staffers made — to each other, and anyone who would listen — was that we felt like the administration didn’t take our work seriously, or students seriously.
In January, Queen’s made national news when a health professor’s lecture slides suggesting that vaccines cause autism went viral. After I wrote about it for the Journal, a former student emailed me to say that he’d complained to people at various levels of the faculty and administration before — in 2011. He said no one had taken him seriously. Others echoed the assessment that the administration didn’t take student complaints seriously.
I can’t imagine that there are any universities in North America where students don’t think they’re being taken seriously by adults, but here’s the thing: student voices are powerful. Student journalism in particular, because journalists know their campus and their issues better than any member of the administration possibly could.
At the Journal, I saw the power of student journalism. I believe in student voices, and I believe in the power of Jewish student voices to shape the discourse of our community.
As the editor of New Voices, I’m looking forward to showing you why.
Chloe Sobel graduated from Queen’s University two days ago and is editor in chief of New Voices.
