As September draws to a close, the Tufts Jewish community is preparing for its two-day new year celebration, Rosh Hashanah. The holiday falls each year within a few weeks of the start of every new academic year, a time when Tufts Hillel, the second largest student organization on campus, can look forward to welcoming new Jewish Jumbos to its very large on-campus community. And whether you consider yourself an observant Jew or not, that community strives to provide an environment in which students can explore their Judaism and discover what it means for them.
Hillel: A Chance to Explore
"We embrace the fact that people are going to define their own Jewishness," Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, the executive director of Tufts Hillel, said. Summit went on to say that Hillel's mission — the same as the mission of the national intercollegiate Hillel organization of which Tufts' center is a chapter — is to provide an active community in which to learn and explore.
"The point of Hillel is a chance to explore what people's Jewish life could look like," he said. "It's there to provide religious and cultural opportunities for students."
Organized and run by an elected student-board, Hillel hosts programs ranging from a partnership with Repair the World, a social outreach organization, to Tufts Against Genocide, which is raising money to provide genocide education at Tufts.
According to John Peter Kaytrosh, a senior and the treasurer of Hillel's student executive board, having an active community such as this is a vital part of Jewish life.
"You cannot be Jewish without a Jewish community," Kaytrosh said. He added that Hillel is integral in maintaining that vibrant community on campus.
"[Hillel] basically always reinforces this concept of community, ‘What are you doing for your Jewish community?'" he said.
Gabriel Lewenstein, a senior who serves as president on the Student Executive Board, added that being Jewish on campus is very much about exploring how one wants to translate his passions into action within the Jewish community. "[It's about] making your own understanding of how you want [Judaism] to fit into your life," Lewenstein said.
Study and faith at Chabad
Another dominant force in the Jewish community at Tufts can be found in the campus's Chabad House, run by Rabbi Tzvi Backman and his wife, Chanie Backman. The house provides, much like Hillel, a place to cater to students' curiosity about their Judaism, according to Rabbi Backman.
"The purpose of the house is to create a space and environment in which Jews feel comfortable and welcome to learn and explore Judaism," he said. In addition to weekly Shabbat dinners and holiday services, the house also provides a variety of educational opportunities, from Sinai Scholars programming to Chanie Backman's course on "Judaism's Best Kept Secrets," a class exclusively for female students that touches on several aspects of life as a Jewish woman.
This integration of academic inquiry into Jewish life is something that the Tufts Jewish community particularly stresses. Judaism does not ask for blind belief, Backman said, but rather encourages study and curiosity.
This atmosphere is, in fact, a basic tenet of the Chabad movement. The word itself is an acronym for three Hebrew words meaning wisdom, comprehension and knowledge. Backman explained that Chabad is a description of the intellectual process, which he says is integral to Jewish life.
"Judaism teaches examining the world, questioning, analyzing and critical thought," he said. "One who wants to grow… spiritually must engage the intellectual process."
Summit agreed that constant questioning is critical in Judaism and used studying biblical texts as an example of that. "The Torah has deep truths to teach. Those truths are not literal truths. [In the story of Moses, for example,] the miracle is not the Red Sea opening up. The miracle is that there were slaves becoming free," Summit said.
Navigating the waters
As a Jew who prefers not ascribe to any denominational labels, Eugene Rabina, the vice president of religious programming for Hillel's Student Executive Board, says that he would most likely be considered Modern Orthodox.
Rabina, a senior, is a more traditionally observant Jew in that he keeps kosher and strictly observes the Shabbat, or Jewish day of rest. Rabina does not feel as though his life on campus ideologically impinges on his beliefs and observances.
"I don't find at all that that makes it harder for me to be who I am because that's not a point of difference between my home and Tufts," he said. According to Rabina, the inclusivity of the Tufts environment is no less accepting of his practices than his home in New York City. Rabina did cite some practical obstacles to his observance, however.
"I'm very limited in what I'm able to eat in the dining hall," he said. Dining Services does not currently offer daily kosher meal options and as such, Rabina is forced to provide his own food or eat out, which is not always convenient.
"It's harder on a technical level because there are certain things that are harder to find," Rabina said, noting that, in contrast, there are plenty of synagogues and kosher restaurants within walking distance of his home in New York. He went on to explain that his observances can also have a more noticeable effect on his social life while on campus.
"The limiting points of my lifestyle come to the fore more often," he said. He explained, though, that his friends are understanding. They don't have to ask "why" when Rabina is observing Shabbat and does not travel or use electricity, or when he can't go out to see a movie on a Friday night.
Kaytrosh, also a more traditionally observant Jew, faces the same restrictions and says that it requires a bit of forethought to make sure he can get done everything he needs or wants to do.
"Academically and socially, it requires a lot of planning," he said. Kaytrosh added that another challenge he's had to face at Tufts is a general lack of understanding.
"There's a definite lack of knowledge about being an observant Jew at Tufts…but there's been little to no overt hostility," he said. Kaytrosh explained that, at most, he's faced some misunderstandings.
"I have had, in the past, people make assumptions about what I believe," he said, both about his moral or political views and his Jewish observances.
"What I can always say is that I have found meaning in these observances," Kaytrosh said.
According to Summit, one of the only ideological challenges students at Tufts really have faced is deciding how they want to live their Jewish life.
"For... students, I think it's very hard to be away from family. They have to figure out what they want to do because they want to do it, not because their parents want them to do it," he said.
One of the main themes of the Hillel Center is that of student ownership, which means that students take control and choose the direction of the programming that they create for the Jewish community. In much the same way, it is up to students how they define their level of observance. Not all Jews on campus are as strictly observant as Rabina and Kaytrosh, and all of them interpret their observance differently.
"Being observant just means being aware of one's religion," Lewenstein noted.
To Kaytrosh, observation involves more a sense of duty. "It means there are certain ways I am obligated as a Jew in how I interact with the world," he said.
Rabina feels that his observance grows out of the set of values inherent in Jewish culture.
"What I do, the choices I make, are informed by this corpus of Jewish law and tradition," he said.
He explained the appeal of adhering to these laws with an analogy to the popular board game, Taboo. Achieving the game's object (getting a partner to guess the word written on a card) could be easily done if you just said the word aloud. The challenge and fun of the game, Rabina said, lies in following the rules that prevent you from saying the word and instead finding a creative way to achieve the game's goal.
"To get a certain experience, you submit to a certain set of strictures."
Defining observance
As the director of the Tufts chapter of Hillel, which actively encourages questioning and learning about one's Jewish heritage, Summit sees observance as an intellectual effort.
"[An observant Jew is] someone who take his or her Judaism seriously and is actively wrestling with what it means to live by the values of the Jewish tradition," he said.
Because Jews take so many different stances on what it means to be observant, "observance" becomes a very subjective term. Commitment to Tufts' Jewish community becomes less about how many of the traditional Jewish laws one follows, and more about the intellectual path one takes to find meaning in his or her observance and community.
"It has to be a subjective term," Backman said, stressing that all Jews observe in their own ways.
"We all try. All Jews are observant to an extent, in ways they know and even in ways they don't know… And the titles we'll leave to God himself, if he even applies them."
