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Strengthened not weakened: Celebrating the High Holidays at WashU
If you walked past WashU’s Chabad house the night of Oct. 4, you may have smelled the sweet scent of honey or seen students shuffling in and out of a small opening to a fenced-in yard. You certainly heard the excited chatter of over 400 Jewish students.
They flocked to the Chabad house to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year and the first in a string of important Jewish holidays lasting roughly a month, known as the High Holidays. Four hundred students returned the following week to break the fast of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and repentance. Similar festivities took place in the WashU Hillel house, in dorm rooms across the South 40, and in apartments lining Washington Avenue and Kingsbury Boulevard.
Such outward displays of Judaism have become increasingly less common on college campuses across the U.S. In the past year alone, the percentage of Jewish students nationwide who said they feel comfortable with others on campus knowing they are Jewish dropped by almost half. A plurality of Jewish students no longer feel physically safe on their college campuses.
Talk to Jewish students at WashU, however, and you will find a community strengthened, not weakened, engaged, not discouraged. Brazenly proud. As this year’s High Holidays have come and gone, WashU students reflect on celebrating the year’s holiest days in a troubling national environment.
Junior Lauren Eckstein, Chabad Student Board Co-President, transferred to WashU from Pomona College last year to avoid antisemitism. “It was incredibly hostile … Here, administration has gone to our events, reaching out to different student groups to make sure everyone feels safe and comfortable, which is very different than what I’m used to,” she said.
Junior Noam Karger, president of the Jewish Student Association (JSA), looked towards the future, as well as to the past, during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
“It changed the perspective from only focusing on ourselves and our own actions — whether socially, how we interact with people, or also religiously — to more of a communal mindset. We’re really thinking about what the Jewish community looks like, how the Jewish community may have fallen short in previous years, and how we can try to play into that larger story of a more positive year for the Jewish people,” he said.
Karger believes the High Holidays provide a unique opportunity to strengthen WashU’s Jewish community.
“The reflection of the High Holidays spurs on more ways to support the WashU community. It’s hard to imagine, on such a large scale, how we can contribute to the entire global Jewish community, but on a smaller scale, it’s pretty easy,” he said.
Sophomore Jonah Porth, JSA’s Outreach Chair, appreciates the fostering of togetherness. “What’s really amazing about the High Holidays is that it brings together Jews of all different religious backgrounds … It’s very enjoyable,” he said.
Sophomore Matthew Isaac, Chabad Student Board Co-President, celebrated the High Holidays on a college campus for the first time this year after transferring from the University of Richmond. He said, “There were some incidents on social media [that] I don’t think the school [University of Richmond] handled well, and [I] heard nothing but good things about WashU.”
He continued to describe how it differs from his past experiences on college campuses. “You can lean into it … It is very wholesome and nice to be able to celebrate with the Jewish community and not be on the receiving end of hate,” he said.
As shame and fear have dominated campus Judaism nationally, WashU’s Jewish community runs in the opposite direction. Jewish students at WashU overwhelmingly feel that they have a privilege that is increasingly rare: the right to be unabashedly Jewish in college.