Reviewing Scott Aaron’s “Jewish U” from the University of Maryland
In “Jewish U,” Scott Aaron is juggling fifty balls at once. No matter how good he is, he just cannot keep them all in the air. “Jewish U” is Aaron’s unsuccessful attempt to advise incoming freshmen on how to create and maintain a meaningful Jewish experience while in college.
At the University of Maryland, where I am a senior, there are Orthodox and Conservative Jews, Reform, Reconstructionist, Lubavitch and Humanist Jews; there are non-, post-, trans-, quasi- and multi-denominational Jews. And those are just the ones that attend Hillel.
With so many different makes and models of Jews, Aaron has no legitimate hope of advising all of these students on a personal level in a way that will substantially affect their religious experience at college.
Despite this clear impediment, he tries. The book advises students on everything from the Jewish value of late night studying to how to make drunken sex kosher. So how does he address “Jewish college students” as a group? Aaron fills his pages with the words “some students”: Some students will observe the laws of Shabbat; some students will never have eaten a Shabbat meal; some students’ families will have kept Shabbat at home, but the student will not while at college; some students will not even know what Shabbat is. A handy definition of Shabbat is…
The “Jewish college student” is as nebulous a concept as any, and Aaron’s hope to define it through the “some students” mechanism falls short. And it probably angers the angsty kid in all of us who narcissistically thinks, “No one can define me.”
Aaron also seems out of touch with the lives and needs of his audience. This shows in the specific advice he gives students. While some of his suggestions are sound, other tips are so impractical that devalue any authority he had otherwise mustered. Some of “Jewish U” makes me doubt whether Aaron – a supposed former employee of the Hillels of New York University, Ohio State University and the University of Chicago – has ever met a college student.
He tells students, for example, to post flyers around campus before Passover so that other students interested in having a seder can be in touch. This may be a nice idea – maybe – but who is actually going to do that? I got made fun of by my friends for putting up flyers saying I had a room to sublet for the summer. Maybe my friends are just jerks, but I still can’t imagine the grief someone would get if they put up posters saying they’re looking to find meaning in a Jewish ritual. Perhaps people should not be embarrassed about wearing their Judaism on their sleeves, but that is irrelevant; students are self-conscious.
But Aaron’s advice does succeed when, instead of getting specific, he stays broad – thus remaining able to speak to a wide range of Jewish college students. He recommends, in one instance, that students should try out Shabbat and holiday services on campus because they are probably different from the ones students attended at home. This tip is simple, mind opening and doable.
Rabbis in synagogues across the country are undoubtedly planning to distribute copies of “Jewish U” to graduating high school seniors. This will ensure they will not have to have real conversations with peers and elders about what the collegiate Jewish experience might entail. “Jewish U” may unfortunately take the place of these legitimate and crucial talks about religious growth during a formative life experience. But while there may be a place in those conversations for a book like this, “Jewish U” is too broad and too unrealistic to be of any real help during those important years.
