The Key to Making Friends and Kissing People: Find the Jews

A few years ago I went to England for a semester of study at Christ Church College, Oxford. I was incredibly excited for the trip until I realized I would be arriving around noon on the eve of Sukkot. I had a few hours to land, get to the flat where I was going to be living, and then find somewhere to eat for the three days of Shabbat and holiday that started at sundown. Luckily, I realized this would be a problem months before I left thanks to HebCal, a website that lets you look up the dates of Jewish holidays for any year from 1 CE to 9999. It will also give you candle lighting times for Shabbat and holidays, and you can format it to tell you what parsha it is, and what the Hebrew date is, too. Anyway, when I realized I was going to be in a time crunch, and I’d need a place to eat for my first few days I googled “Jewish Oxford” and was directed to the Jsoc (Jewish Society) of Oxford website, which gave me the names of some people in town. I e-mailed the Jewish chaplain, and he immediately responded, inviting me to eat every meal for three days at his family’s house. So just a few hours after clearing immigration I was sitting in a sukkah with a table full of other students and guests. By the end of the first chag I had a whole slew of British friends, and within a month I was kissing a British boy, gabbing to a British best friend, and had no interaction with any Americans outside of my flat. It was, as they say in England, brilliant. I’ve had similar experiences in Ireland, Vienna, Nashville, and Iowa City. Basically, I’ve found that if you make the effort to seek out other Jews before you even make the trip you can set yourself up with a full package of friends and helpers before you even arrive. Instead of waiting to magically meet people who you want to be friends with, let some rabbi do the leg work. Even if you don’t end up being lifelong buddies with the people from your new community, they’re helpful resources for everything from where to buy the best produce, to how to pay your electricity bill. Case in point: when I was hit by a car in Oxford, it was the Jewish chaplain and his wife who took care of me and checked up on me when I was recovering. Without them I would have been at the mercy of my American roommates. Frankly, if it ends up being a point of spiritual growth that’s an ancillary benefit to me. Jews are my network, and even when they piss me off, or make me cry, or generally frustrate me, it’s great to always have someone who will make me chicken soup when I’m sick, and can give me the name of a reliable mechanic when I get into a fender bender. And you never know—you might make a lifelong friend. I spent yesterday with a handsome Englishman named Jeremy, who I met at the table of the Jewish chaplain in Oxford during that first weekend in town several years back.