On Lag B’Omer, the last Wednesday of the semester, I snuck past a challah baking event to say goodbye to the Stony Brook University Chabad Rabbi, Adam Stein. Rabbi Adam and I danced with his children to the music from a livestream of Meron in his backyard. At a pause, I tapped my kippa and tzitzit and said, “I wanted to rub it in. You were wrong; I did stay religious these four years.”

Rabbi Adam responded with a chuckle, “You cheated. You went home every Shabbos.”

Since graduating, I’ve told this story to friends and rabbis with responses ranging from, “I agree: That’s cheating,” to “I never had any doubts you’d stay Orthodox” to “I thought I’d have to cut you out of my life after a year in secular college.”

As a Five Towns-grown, Modern Orthodox boy, the fear of assimilating, especially in secular college, has been seeded and cultivated within me from almost the beginning of my education. When I decided to attend Stony Brook University for undergrad, almost everyone (not my parents) freaked out.

One high school principal still reminds me that I was the first student from DRS, my yeshiva, to attend SBU for undergrad (I don’t think I was). My Rabbi expressed concern but left it at that. One friend tried to convince some other friends to agree not to give up on me even though I would attend a school with little Orthodox Jewish representation. Rabbi Adam told me it would be virtually impossible to maintain my religious observance.

For this reason, or because I’m all about preparation, I established a religious foundation for myself six months before attending Stony Brook. I emailed two JLIC rabbis. I learned with my rabbi in Israel while talking about challenges and solutions with others. By the time I started my freshman year, I had scheduled learning time with five rabbis in Israel, two friends, my Rabbi, and my dad each week. I made an effort to attend every Hillel and Chabad event on campus and immediately joined the Hillel student board. This, in addition to my own academic schedule.

The number I remember hearing regarding modern and centrist Orthodox Jews going off the derech secular college is one in four. I’m deeply confused about what that means. Is “off the derech” total denial of God? A shift to Conservative or Reform Judaism? Intermarriage? Does “secular college” include Yeshiva University or Touro College?

Based on what friends and rabbis taught, I expected to show up to an 8:00 a.m. college class that opened with a powerpoint entitled, “Philosophical reasons why Judaism is completely wrong and you should be a Marxist.” I expected to be invited to party after party while secular Jewish and non-Jewish classmates goaded me into drinking my weight in vodka and exploring sexuality towards orgiastic nirvana.

In real life, girls who had no problem divulging their sex lives took my being shomer negia (not touching those of the opposite sex) more seriously than I did. Students asked me about the thing on my head and the strings hanging out of my shirt. I had hours long conversation about feminism and Judaism, about circumcision and consent, about religious growth and challenges.

Of course there were difficulties, too. It’s easy to skip shacharit (morning services) when there is no minyan and you have 8:00 a.m. classes. I couldn’t keep up that freshman semester learning schedule and so had to cut it down. But small lapses in observance happen to us all no matter where we are in life. It’s up to us to work up and bounce back.

I think it’s a major misconception that people lose their religion when they get to college. In my experience, many of these people really lost their religion years prior. College is their first opportunity to explore alternative lifestyles without having their communities breathing down their necks. Someone with an unwavering dedication to Shabbat, for example, won’t cut corners once they’re in university. But someone who only kept Shabbat because their family and friends at home did probably won’t keep it through four years of college.

Reasons for leaving the fold of Orthodox Judaism can range from intellectual disagreements to the general trend towards secularization to not feeling comfortable within the system. To deride secular college is to lower the fever rather than heal the infection.

In college, I’ve found, people are generally accepting to those who can defend their practices. This is no reason to get complacent, but I feel no more obliged to fear collegiate pressure to give up my religious beliefs than the girl I meet at Starbucks who tells me she’s a practicing Wiccan. We’ve both clearly thought about and can defend our respective religious practices.

Throughout my four years, I was more likely to get, “Hey, I’m sorry to bother you—and please tell me if I’m being offensive—but what exactly are you celebrating this holiday?” than any philosophical attack.

To expect all young Orthodox Jews to only engage within Orthodox spaces is idealistic at best. Rather than express undue concern and try to pressure students to stay in Israel a second (or first) year or switch to a more “Orthodox-friendly” campus, rabbis, friends, and community leaders can offer support for young Jews’ journeys. I had enough chutzpah to bother people to learn with me but sometimes this seeming lack of support can dishearten young Jews further.

It would be better to instill a foundational understanding of our values and a support system for when we, inevitably, find ourselves somewhere Orthodoxy does not reign. For all the concerns about my leaving the “Orthodox bubble,” I’ve emerged with greater commitment than some who have remained within these four years. And I’ve been exposed to a wider and more nuanced world.

College is a time to explore and find yourself. We shouldn’t be told to erect walls and go four years without evolution of thought.

Educate young Jews to love and understand the foundations of Judaism, support them, and let them be.

Image via Pixabay

The post Could I Stay Orthodox in a Secular College? appeared first on Jewcy.

It was my sophomore year and a group of us were gathered in a dorm room, teenage bodies splayed across beds and chairs and floor. I don’t recall exactly what prompted the conversation, but someone asked a dorm mate, an Indian national, to talk about the possibility of arranged marriage.

“That’s crazy,” complained one of my friends. “To assume that the person you are meant to be with happens to be from your ethnic group. You could find him anywhere. It’s racist.”

Well, that stopped me in my tracks. Since hiding in that tiny, crowded room wasn’t really an option, I just sat still, hoping no one would notice me. And it might have worked, if not for my close friend who announced to my horror, “Leah will only date and marry Jews.” Despite all of my attempts to be seen as a left-leaning, color blind, student of the world, I had just been called out as a bigot. Awesome.

I grew up in a Jewish bubble. Day school, Jewish camps, Israel, shul every shabbat. When I got to public high school, it was in a town that was more than fifty percent Jewish. During our senior year, an Episcopalian friend described what it was like having her first non-Jewish boyfriend: “I feel a little guilty,” she said.

I went on one of the first ever teen trips to Poland and Israel, where we were constantly reminded that we were personally responsible for keeping the Jewish people alive. For some, I imagine, it was a lot of pressure. Not for me. The rules about dating in my house were clear. Date Jewish boys. Marry a Jewish man. End of rules. I was a good girl, and I never questioned them.

And then I got to college.

I found a home at Hillel and in other Jewish organizations, but in my dorm, I was one of only a few members of the tribe. For the first time in my life, most of my friends were decidedly not like me. This was no accident. I had chosen my university over others closer to home because I had watched as friends and relatives went off to Columbia or Barnard and then came home every other weekend. Or they went to Brandeis with a cohort of fifty of their closest friends from summer camp. I made a conscious decision to go where my Judaism would have to be my choice and my responsibility.

If left to my own devices, would I still choose to keep Shabbat? To keep kosher? To only date Jews? That last question turned out to be the hardest one to figure out. I was spending my time studying languages and African history, living in an International Studies dorm where diverse backgrounds and cultural experiences were the norm. I was, and remain, an unabashed liberal who prides herself on valuing difference and tolerance. How could I shut myself off in the most intimate of ways just because of religious difference? Did my Jewish commitments make me a racist?

During my senior year, I got a strange request from my Hillel rabbi. I often babysat his sweet, plump-cheeked little girls, and he knew I could hang with kids. Now he had a favor to ask of me. A family had called him. They had no connection to the Jewish community, but had suddenly decided they needed a private Jewish tutor to ensure that their children wouldn’t intermarry. Freshly returned from a year in Jerusalem, I was filled with the confidence of someone who had navigated third-year Russian classes conducted in Hebrew, long days in the Interior Ministry, and ongoing battles with an Iraqi plumber. I could handle anything.

Or so I thought. Because when I got to their big, sprawling, suburban home—which bore no evidence of their Jewishness—I was less sure. And when their little boy blurted out that he wanted to be Christian because they had presents, and Jews (in his experience) had nothing—I quietly told them I would not be their tutor, and that they needed to find a community. And I started to think seriously about the kind of parent I wanted to be someday. Why did this family even care if their children intermarried? Would they have had an answer for those dorm mates of mine, staring me down like I was waving a confederate flag?

After college I dated a number of different Jewish guys and started to hone in on what was truly important to me. A nice looking Israeli asked me out in line at the kosher bakery. After a couple of dates, it was clear that his personal religion involved serious worship of cash. Then an old friend suggested I go out with her boyfriend’s brother. He was handsome and articulate and I thought maybe it could lead to something. But then I discovered a problem: Kissing a boy who had just eaten a non-kosher burger? Startlingly unappealing.

Then I got a call from someone I had met at a party. He was newly religious, and a prominent right-wing Republican. For a few dates, I managed to avoid politics—maybe I could have avoided it for a long time. But the moment I knew we were done? Sitting in a kosher restaurant he was explaining to me how women don’t have the arrogance necessary to represent the congregation before God. And that’s when I stood up. “Really? I didn’t know you needed arrogance for that. I thought you needed humility.” And I walked out, leaving him with the check. Apparently I was more intolerant than I thought.

When I met the man I would eventually marry, before we even went out on our first real date, we found ourselves discussing what we wanted our homes to be like someday. We talked about electricity on Shabbat, day school, Israel. Not romantic? What about “love will find a way”? To me, though—to us—these imaginings were the most powerful aphrodisiac. To know, to be sure, that we shared each other’s vision of what our little bubble would look like. It was such a relief. I could feel myself exhale.

When our eldest son was in third grade, he was obsessed with religions. Next to the computer, he left a stack of notecards with facts about Zoroastrianism, Islam, the Navajo. It was really incredible to watch. Walking to shul on Shabbat, as he asked his eleventh question about the Baha’i, his siblings rolled their eyes. I worried a little that all his studies would pull him to explore those exotic other cultures from the inside. Now that he’s approaching his Bar Mitzvah, his interests have continued to expand. He pushes and strains against the bubble we have created. But recently, his answer to the question, “When have you felt God’s presence?” was telling. “When we daven Kabbalat Shabbat together, as a family,” he said.

But what about that worried girl, desperate to disappear from that dorm room confrontation? A racist? I didn’t know what to say. I sat, tongue-tied, as each face in the room turned toward me in horror. I was saved, though, by my knight in shining armor—the very friend who had exposed my Jewish dating habits moments earlier. He was a newly-out 19-year-old, always on the lookout for subtle (and not so subtle) homophobia, and by extension, all kinds of discrimination. I really couldn’t have anticipated what he was going to say next.

“Have you even met Leah?” he practically shouted, “Have you seen how she never misses Shabbat services? Do you realize that she always offers to be responsible for the food for our parties so she can make sure there will be something for her to eat? How she made endless batches of latkes for the entire dorm on her single electric burner? Who should she choose to make a home with?”

I very much want that to be the dream for my own kids as well. But I don’t tell them that they need to marry a Jew to replace the people who died in the Shoah, or so our grandmothers don’t turn over in their graves, or to bolster our survey numbers. It feels like staying Jewish on a dare. All I can hope is that they continue to find flashes of the divine, enveloped in the bubble we call home.

Leah Bieler is a freelance journalist, teacher of Talmud and mom of four. Follow her on Twitter @LeahBieler, or on her blog radicallyconventional.com.

(Image via Shutterstock.)

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The post Did My Commitment To Dating Only Jews Make Me A Racist? appeared first on Jewcy.

If your American alma mater didn’t make the cut in the 2013 Academic Ranking of World Universities, you might want to consider taking your talents to Israel because three of the Holy Land’s institutions made the Top 100 this year. Hebrew University of Jerusalem came in at 59th, Technion at 77th, and the Weizmann Institute of Science at a modest 92nd place, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“I’m proud to see the prominent positions of Israeli research universities in these important international rankings, and I’m pleased that once again Hebrew University has been recognized as Israel’s leading university,” Hebrew University president Prof. Menahem Ben-Sasson said.

The ranking, conducted annually by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, is based on serious criteria, like the number of staff and alumni who’ve won the Nobel Prize, and the number of regarded research that’s been published and cited from the institution.

Looking back on years passed, however, it seems Hebrew U dropped six spots, coming in at 53nd place in 2012. Let’s hope for the Top 50 in 2014.

Next year in Jerusalem.

(Photo by Grauesel/Wikimedia Commons)

The post Hebrew U Ranked 59th Best University In the Whole World appeared first on Jewcy.

If I could choose my job title, I would be a Professional Conversation Starter. I want to start awkward conversations with Jews who are looking for an outlet to speak. I want to discuss the scary and judgment-filled topics that drive individuals in Jewish communities to silence. I want to talk … I want to talk about shomer negiah.

Shomer negiah literally means “guarding one’s touch.” It refers to the practice of refraining from physical contact with members of the opposite sex outside of marriage. It’s a choice reflecting the decision to reserve the intimacy of physical touch solely to be experienced with one’s spouse. The practice manifests itself in an incredible variety of ways for different people. Some individuals who define themselves as shomer negiah struggle with whether to shake the hand of an opposite-gendered professor or whether to give a friendly hug to an acquaintance at a party; others struggle with drawing the line between kissing and more intimate acts.

I have watched my fellow Jews navigate the delicate field of negiah observance throughout my life, but my interest in this institution and Jewish sexuality in general really started in college. I grew up attending Orthodox day schools, where the extent of my sex education was a single class in sixth grade during which a teacher told me that getting my period was my body’s way of practicing for childbirth. As a senior in high school, we girls were pulled aside for a week of classes about the laws of nidah while the boys had study hall. I entered Brandeis University a prototypical clueless, sheltered Jewish girl.

I applied to join an organization that provided counseling and educational programming about sexual health and sexuality. I was accepted and received a 70-hour crash course each fall on every aspect of sexuality, from birth control options to sex toys. The field quickly became my passion.

I taught educational programs to campus groups and first-year halls and held one-on-one counseling sessions in the office. My sophomore year, members of the Orthodox community began discussing relationships and sexuality with me when they learned that I’d grown up in an Orthodox community. I began holding workshops specifically geared toward Orthodox girls and answering their questions. These conversations and my workshops led me to realize that Orthodox girls wanted a venue where they could discuss negiah and how it impacts relationships, intimacy, and sexuality. Like me, they did not grow up with an outlet to discuss these topics in a safe, non-judgmental setting and clearly it was something they wanted to discuss.

Shomer negiah poses challenges for both women and men. Individuals interpret its exact boundaries differently, which can lead to judgment between friends about the legitimacy of others’ practices and choices. A friend once explained to me that she and her friend both wanted to discuss a change in how they practiced being shomer negiah, but neither one brought it up for fear that the other would judge them.

Inevitably, people’s shomer negiah statuses—the particular way they choose to practice, including how strict they are and from whom they permit touch—become known within their community. This means that, in addition to thinking about the personal implications of the practice, individuals must be prepared to respond to others’ assumptions about their level of general observance based on their shomer negiah status. A person can find his or herself judged for being “too” shomer, not shomer enough, or for making exceptions that are not to the judging party’s taste. Furthermore, members of an Orthodox community frequently keep tabs on one another’s shomer status as an important factor in choosing whom to date. Dating somebody who feels differently about the observance of negiah within a relationship can create questions and complications for otherwise-compatible couples.

All of these phenomena are evident just from sitting on the kosher side of Brandeis University’s dining hall. Upperclassmen scrutinize freshmen to ascertain their shomer negiah status. Opposite-sex friends give each other “shomer hugs” (a hugging motion that stops just short of contact). A table discusses whether the couple two tables over is “shomer” behind closed doors—the Orthodox equivalent, in some ways, of questioning whether a new couple is having sex, except that the judgment that accompanies it impacts a person’s social and religious status in the community.

The combination of my experiences as a student and a sex educator made me want to learn more. I floated the idea to friends of starting to collect people’s stories. I asked people who were shomer negiah if they thought it was a good idea, if they thought people would contribute, and if they thought it would be a helpful outlet to discuss these sensitive issues. The answer was a resounding yes.

So, I started The Shomer Chronicles. People either email stories to theshomerchronicles@gmail.com or submit them through an anonymous form on theshomerchronicles.com. I then post the stories on the website’s blog. I want to give people an outlet to speak to an audience that understands them. A contributing storyteller (who gave me permission to use her information), Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs, a master’s student in English Literature at NYU, explained the premise best when she said, “There has never before been an outlet where the readership understands the issues without having to preface the piece with, ‘Well, in Judaism we do this weird thing where we don’t touch each other until we’re married.’”

The stories have come from both girls and guys with ages ranging from 18 to 30. My biggest fear is that people will interpret my posting stories about people’s struggles as an effort to unilaterally discourage or bash the institution of shomer negiah. A friend, for example, asked me whether the site would be just a bunch of angry girls posting about how terrible shomer negiah is. That is not my goal. My goal is to give people an outlet to discuss their emotions openly and without judgment. I will not downplay people’s experiences or censor their stories to preserve a certain image of shomer negiah, or go out of my way to highlight negativity.

The stories illustrate the vulnerability and questions that come with being shomer negiah. One storyteller discussed the difficulty of explaining her decision to become shomer negiah, to her friends. “Almost instantly,” she wrote, “I noticed a change in our friendship—I was perceived as the naïve and innocent one. It was spread around, naturally, and while I was usually comfortable discussing it, I noticed that people began trying to talk me out of celibacy.”

Another wrote about the struggle to reconcile her beliefs with her desire for intimacy. She writes, “I lace my fingers through [your hair] until I reach the yarmulke at the top of your head and feel its threaded, circular edges. You wear it, like the others do, as a reminder of your duty to God. … Sinners, they call us? What kind of covenant am I breaking in loving a man of God?”

Related: Feeling Out My Post-Shomer Negiah World

(Image via Shutterstock)

The post The Shomer Chronicles: Talking Honestly About Shomer Negiah appeared first on Jewcy.

Another day, another fratty stunt gone viral. Today it’s a member of a University of Maryland fraternity who wanted to help his brothers out in advance of a Greek Week mixer with a Jewish sorority. You know, because an encounter with this foreign species requires a tutorial.

He wrote up a list of do’s and don’t’s for what to say to the women, including conversation tips like “If you are Jewish, say yes. If you look somewhat Jewish but aren’t … just say you are,” “Make up a camp you went to. Say it was in upstate PA, NY, or Maine. Say it starts with ‘Timber’ or ends in ‘Lake,'” and the forward-thinking “You want to ‘do something with business, maybe finance’ or start your own business.”

“This is funny, but also serious,” the bro clarifies early on, but he couldn’t be more wrong on the first count. Sure, the email is immature and insensitive and will probably offend lots of people, but the worst part, frankly, is how uncreative and stale it is. And if he really thinks the only way to get with Jewish girls is to talk about getting drunk, going to electronic music festivals, and being from New Jersey? Good luck after college, dude.

By the way, “If you wear a cross on your neck, don’t wear it.”

***

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