Revitalizing Princeton’s Orthodox Student Group
After years of dysfunction, change is coming to the organized Orthodox Jewish community at Princeton University.
Bound by their shared need for kosher meals and organized minyanim, Orthodox students at Princeton have long come together through Yavneh, a student group. For years, Yavneh has been strained by internal divisions and general discord. Now, a rising set of student leaders is helping Yavneh embrace a new attitude that’s less judgmental and more inclusive, in the hopes that it will revitalize the organization.
Two years ago, the mood among Yavneh members was bleak. Gregory Burnham, a junior who is the current president of Yavneh, says that the trouble started when a number of members became less religious, leaving the community. This created a perception within the Orthodox community there that “Princeton was dangerous if you wanted to keep your faith,” according to Burnham.
Following the defections, Burnham says that Yavneh lost its image as a vibrant community. He refers to this period as the “dark ages,” saying that it was hard for members to see others leave. “The community they had envisioned themselves as part of just wasn’t present any more,” Burnham says.
For students looking for an Orthodox community, the group grew unattractive. Yoni Freidman, a junior who studied at Yeshivat Har Etzion in the West Bank before coming to Princeton, says that he was disappointed to find that there were not many people there who wanted to be part of the Orthodox community.
The nature of college institutions is that they change quickly. When Burnham assumed Yavneh’s presidency in February 2008, he made key changes to the attitude of the community. Rather than draw attention to the fear of “leaving the derech,” or becoming less religious, he worked to make Yavneh’s activities more fun. One of the first rules, according to Burnham, was “that you weren’t allowed to make jokes about how no one was ever in the bet midrash” They instituted an informal weekly Judaic study session, where students gathered over pizza.
Yavneh has also made efforts to recruit Orthodox freshman to Princeton as a means of revitalizing the group’s ranks. Often many Orthodox Jews overlook Princeton, as it has the lowest percentage of Jewish students of any Ivy League school. This did not dissuade Burnham. “We were careful to have a really well put together pre-frosh program,” he said. This initiatives has been met with apparent success. There are now over ten freshman Yavneh members, compared to only four members in the sophomore class.
Rabbi David Wolkenfeld, who works with the Yavneh students through the Jewish Learning Initiative, says that Yavneh’s efforts to be open to a broad range of Orthodox Jewish students has paid off. He praises the group’s “productive interactions with the full spectrum of Jews on campus, and…its openness to women’s leadership roles.”
For some members, this new openness has led to broader perspectives on what it means to be Jewish. Miriam Rosebaum, a freshman member of Yavneh, says that since coming to Princeton she has “come to realize that there are many ways to serve God and many people have different attitudes towards religion.”
