Weighing the Balances

By Sheridan Gayer
Columbia / JTS

When school starts there is only one thing every student wants to do: settle in.

Be it buying books, registering for classes or simply remembering where you packed away those picture frames with reminders of summer sun and fun, reorienting yourself to life at school can be tumultuous and time consuming. You know the drill: gathering up old names and matching them to new dorm phone numbers, squeezing in time for coffee and schmoozing with old friends and trying to meet some new people too.

We expect nearly everything about the start of a semester to be hectic. As the work starts piling up, so does the social agenda, and then comes the sleep deprivation… so when your parents ask you that question – "Are you coming home for the High Holidays?" – all you can think is, "OY."

Last year, although I went home for Rosh Hashanah, I simply had too much work to do to return home for Yom Kippur the following week. I couldn’t spare the hours of train rides just to fast and walk nearly two miles to services, only to rush back to campus immediately after breaking the fast. Instead, I stayed on campus. My decision was slightly last minute, but with fellow students who were also sans family for the day, I found out when services were and figured, "I do this every year, it will come naturally!"

Unfortunately, life was not that sweet. The hours that I should have spent preparing for Yom Kippur were my first setback. I thought that all I needed to do was make a dent in my history paper before getting ready for services and I had to eat something before the fast too, but then there were phone calls to return…and the ever-present glow of the computer screen with Instant Messenger was quite distracting. College life doesn’t stand still at the sounding of the shofar.

When Yom Kippur actually began, the computer and the phone ringer both got turned off and even without these vital tools of communication, I had plans forming in my head to read more of my sociology book. While I should have been considering my actions, both with my fellow humans and with God, I was making sure I could make full use of my downtime between services.

While it is true that Yom Kippur is not the most enjoyable of Jewish holidays, the opportunity to spend it at school seemed really good to me. The day would be entirely at my pace, I’d only be walking a few blocks to a minyan in which I felt comfortable. I wasn’t obligated to entertain family or friends and instead I could spend the day in contemplation.

It seemed pleasant. True, services would still be long and emotional, but even they’d seem less tedious when there was no parental gaze trying to convince me not to go to the bathroom. Ultimately, I did appreciate these and other aspects of freedom at school, but I missed the "year in review" conversation that goes on at home with my family and our discussions about bettering the world, our relationships, and ourselves.

I know now, if I stay at school again for Yom Kippur, that I need to create a new family around me, so that those important aspects of my observance can remain a vital part of my tradition, regardless of my location. Those are a few of the personal issues to be considered with regard to staying at school. It’s not just about planes, trains and automobiles. Logistics are far easier to figure out than deciding how you are going to observe, and "if I knew then what I know now" (read: what I recommend to you) I would have done a lot of things differently.

First, what Jewish friends of yours will be staying around? While you can use Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur as opportunities to teach your non-Jewish roommate about Jewish holidays, I think everyone craves some of that familiar feeling that can be created a little more easily with the people who will be sitting with you at services. Once you’ve figured out who is going to be on campus, get in touch with them.

Next, even if you’re not the type to ordinarily do it, put together a program. Pick a topic that interests you – whether it’s a laid-back discussion on Rosh Hashanah over apples and honey, to discuss upcoming social action projects, or a grand- scale post-Neilah communal meal with a panel of student speakers where you break the fast and discuss different types of family rituals together. Most topics will interest other students too and make being on campus feel more like being at home. KOACH and Hillel are there to help us make this happen.

So what am I doing this year? As of now, the decision is still up in the air. But when Rosh Hashanah rolls around, regardless of the ZIP code in which I’m attending services, I do know that I will have ensured a comfortable environment for myself, be it surrounded by my family and platters of home-cooked goodies, or inside a dorm room with the incredible friends I’ve made at college.