Kentucky, part 2 + Dickinson

Once we had our plans and some contacts, we starting actually preparing to go - renting a van, getting food (how does one get a Shabbat's worth of kosher food in Lexington, KY?), where to sleep, etc. The Hillel adviser told us that the drive would be too long to do all on Friday (assuming we wanted to make it before sundown, which we did) and suggested we stay over somewhere Thursday night. We then had the idea (which was strongly influenced by L.E.W.) to find some other places to stop along the way. So I went online and opened up two windows - one with GoogleMaps and one with Hillel's website. I then traced our prospective travel route and found the zip codes of different cities along the way and entered them into Hillel's "College Search", which returned colleges with some semblance of a Jewish presence within 5 miles of that location. Doing this, I found 6 or 7 colleges of interest along the way - some which had 900 Jews and a Chabad (U. of West Virginia) and some with 35 Jews and not much else (Marshall University). In the end we decided on Dickenson University, for its proximity (2 hours from Penn, meaning we could get there at a reasonable hour) and its sizable Jewish community - 200 Jews and their own Hillel building.
From there, things took their normal route - we found some friends who had mutual friends there, emailed their Hillel and soon we had a Thursday night BBQ planned for Dickinson College.

So that fateful Thursday came around and we finally ended up leaving at ~8:00 PM. From there, we got to Dickinson at 10:00 and made our way over to the Asbell Student Center - their Hillel house. There was an interesting surprise when we got there, as the Chabad rabbi (and some of his kids) from Harrisburg had come in that night as well (for the first time) to run a matza baking event. That definitely made things a little weird, as he didn't know what we were doing there and we weren't sure what he was doing there. But the 5 or 10 students who were there were pretty cool and we hit it off with them After an short-lived attempt by the rabbi to get us to watch this silly video about matza baking, we starting making matzas with the Dickenson students. Which was great, because it was a great activity over which we got to speak, get to know each other a bit, have some fun. (Best part: when Amitai made a failed attempt to hit on the Chabad's rabbi's shidduch-aged daughter.) Meanwhile, Tal went upstairs to work alone on his final paper, only to be joined by the Chabad rabbi, who tried recruiting some people to learn Tanya with him.

(Which brings me to a side point: when we were trying to figure out what to do at Dickinson, we threw around some ideas - mishmar, kumzits, hanging out, jam session... I guess this leads to what was the purpose of going there? Was it to provide them with some Jewish knowledge, some educational content? I don't think so. Would that have been nice? Sure. But I think the main goal was just to engage fellow Jewish students in a positive, Jewish experience, and if some shiur wasn't the best way to do that, we'd forgo a shiur. So we suggested the idea of learning something but quickly nixed that in favor of a simple, chilled BBQ. All of this came to my mind when the option was presented to go learn Tanya upstairs, in the middle of our exciting matza baking. What do I think would have been a better idea? Not to brag, but I'd go for hanging out with us over learning some Tanya - I mean, come on, do regular college kids relate well to obscure and esoteric messages about different layers of the soul, or to eating some wings? So we chose to forgo the content, have only a little guitar playing, and save most of the time for simple bonding, a little Jewish geography, and getting to know each other. And it wasn't all meaningless conversation - we spoke about Jewish life on our respective campuses, going to Israel, being Jewish on a secular college, among other things. I think that this is the simplest and most genuine way to connect to people, and from there, the connection to a more meaningful and deeper relationship with Judaism is but a natural extension. Of course, that's a lot harder when you're not there to continue the relationship but at least the seeds can be planted and the roads built.)

Meanwhile, E.R., the student who pretty much heads their Jewish community, rounded up some more people to come and we started barbecuing outside. That also turned out well, just chilling over some good chicken wings and half-cooked matzas. All in all, we stayed for a good two hours and met over a dozen Jews. They have a pretty impressive little Jewish community there - every Friday night the 10-15 of them cook their own Shabbat meal in Hillel and make their own Shabbat; I felt bad talking about our dining staff who do everything, and I just walk in Friday night and Shabbat is made for me. At the end, we invited them to come visit us at Penn, so we could repay the hospitality and reconnect with them. They seemed willing and they just seemed satisfied with the wonderful time that we shared together. We left, energized for the rest of our journey, armed with a whole bunch of new friends. I think there's just something beautiful about that :)

Bonus: in case you wanted proof that we were there, here you have it:

A Shabbat Meal to Remember

Here's a story from a Shabbat meal a few months ago. My roommates and I decided we were gonna make a meal - a "Heart to Heart" meal. So we each thought of some people we could invite and set out to invite them. There was this one girl who I had run into once last year, with a very interesting relationship to Judaism. She went to a Jewish school growing up but for some reason, left there totally hating Judaism, religious Jews, and anything associated with it. So much so that, now in Penn, when a Jewish friend of hers once asked her if she wanted to work on homework together in Hillel, she firmly refused to step foot into the building.

This girl happened to be lab partners with my roommate, and we decided we had to invite her, which he did via facebook. We were sure she'd say "This is so weird, stop trying to convert me" or "I hate Shabbat and Jews so don't talk to me again" but to our surprise, she responded that she'd love to come! We called the meal for 6:30 and by 7, most of the guests had arrived - except her. After conferring with each other, we decided to start without her, thinking "Okay, she got scared away, or intimidated, or never really wanted to come in the first place". Either way, there were other people at the meal for whom this was an important experience and we began, explaining the Shabbat rituals, getting into interesting conversations, etc.

At 8:30 there was a knock at the door. I went to answer it and there she was, rushing to blurt out apologies for being late, she just got back from a trip, etc. I brushed off her apologies, introduced myself and welcomed her to the meal, getting her a seat and offering her a plate of food. The truth is, I don't even think she ate anything - maybe she already ate, or maybe she didn't trust the kashrut :) The meal went on for maybe another hour - we chatted, laughed, ate, and by 9:45 everyone had left. Before she departed (she had to go run off to meet a friend), that girl came over and thanked us for a wonderful time. Afterward, when we were cleaning up, my roommates and I congratulated ourselves on a Shabbat meal well done and satisfied that at the very least, we provided a bunch of Jews with a positive Jewish experience.

After Shabbat, my roommates and I received the following email:

"Thank you so much for an incredible Friday evening. I don't know if you realize, or if I can begin to express, the extent to which dinner with you and your friends affected me. I was surprised by how familiar your Shabbat table felt; it was exactly what I needed to finally feel at home and anchored in a community, for the first time at Penn. Maybe I'll even run into you at Hillel one of these days :) I hope that it suffices to simply say thank you and I hope you understand what I mean by that."

I literally almost started crying. I don't want to say too much, as this speaks for itself, but one thing I noted was that she had actually missed the whole Shabbat part - kiddush, shalom aleichem, some explaining - nor did she eat much of the food. All we actually had were some good, fun conversations, about classes, fun things in life, Ice Cube, ya know, nothing too special. But in that simple, intimate, experience lies a powerful potential and somehow, it helped make her feel comfortable. It really doesn't take much, other than building up the courage to invite them and for them to come.

When I saw her at Shabbat dinner a few weeks later, she said, with a smile on her face: "Hart - this is all your fault that I'm here!" What can I say, I'm just a messenger ;)

Kentucky!

Oh man - this is a crazy story. Where to start... Well, it started with Amitai, a grad student in physics (he's really smart) winning some essay contest in Jewish thought sponsored by the Jewish studies department of University of Kentucky. The prize included them bringing him in to give a lecture and receive his award. Amitai and I started talking and, after checking some demographics on Hillel's website, thought of planning a Shabbaton to Kentucky, or specifically the University of Kentucky in Lexington. According to Hillel, UK has 200 Jews out of a student population of 20,000, which amounts to 1% of the population. They have a Hillel there but it is not much more than a name - no building, no room, no paid staff and barely any programming; we heard they have maybe two event per year, which amount to a handful of Jews going bowling together or going out for (non-kosher) pizza. So Amitai and I emailed their 'faculty advisers' and asked if, while he was down there anyway, he could run some Jewish programming there, maybe with an experienced friend too. They responded that they'd be more than happy to have us come and even offered to fly me down there too. After a few exchanges, they ended up agreeing to paying for a van and seven of us driving down for Shabbat.

So that was our crazy plan - to drive down to Lexington, Kentucky and make Shabbat. With the plans in place, we started arranging - getting Penn people, the car, food (we had to bring most of the food, as there's not much kosher food in Lexington), and logistics. The big questions was: would anyone come? The advisor at UK's Hillel thought we might 5-10, but wasn't too sure. So we started asking around - mutual friends, group contacts, gchat statuses, whatever. Once when I was talking about this and someone overheard me, they said: "University of Kentucky? I think I know someone who knows someone who goes there who is Jewish!" Sure enough, after some 'mutual friend' searching, I found and contacted her and after receiving an excited message in return, we had found our first Jew in Kentucky.

New story: a few weeks later, I was searching on facebook for 'shabbat dinners' (isn't that what everyone searches for when they're stalking people on facebook?). Why? - Just stam, for no particular reason other than to see what was out there, as I was thinking about how to spread Shabbat dinners at Penn. A simple search returned over 200 hits - groups, events and friends' whose profiles included Shabbat dinners. I randomly clicked on one group on some page and arrived at a group called "Shabbat Dinners" which consisted of 4 members in no specific networks. So I clicked on their names: the first person was some high school senior from somewhere random, the second was a freshman at some college, the third was some guy who happened to have a random mutual friend, and the fourth was a freshman girl whose networks were 'Transylvania University' and 'Lexington, Kentucky'. Lexington Kentucky!?!?! My jaw dropped in total shock and I just began laughing- how the heck did I happen to find someone from Lexington, Kentucky a week before I'm supposed to go there? If it weren't that week, I wouldn't have even noticed that, let alone known where Lexington, Kentucky was. Then I got worried - maybe she's originally from Lexington but now goes to University in, I dunno, Romania? I quickly looked up Transylvania University and was happily surprised to see that it is a small, liberal arts college right next to UK! My next instinct was to see what kind of religious life they have there, whereupon I saw that their website spoke of "its ongoing affiliation with the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)" and offered religious organizations such as 'Campus Crusade for Christ', 'Disciples on Campus', 'Transy Episcopal Fellowship' and 'Transylvania Catholic Organization'. By now I couldn't stop myself from cracking up - how in the world did I happen to find this girl who loves Shabbat dinner in the middle of Lexington at some Christian college?! Truly random, and with no logical explanation, this discovery was for me a clear portrayal of the Hand of God.

I decided that if I had gotten this far, I had to do something more, and so I facebook-messaged her. I told her the story of how I found her and how I was coming with some friends to Lexington in two weeks; "Would she want to join us for Shabbat?", I asked her. I also said she could tell other Jews in Lexington, to take some of the pressure off of her. She wrote back soon afterwards: "Hey. Uhhhh haha this is a little weird but its fine. Are you coming here for Keeneland? I guess I'm kinda interested, I'm not a native of Kentucky and I don't know that many Jews here (considering at my school there's only 4 Jews and they don't practice) and I miss it."

Wow. First of all, you're probably asking yourself "What's Keeneland?" For all you uncultured Americans out there, Keeneland is a preparatory race for the Kentucky Derby, and is the finest and highest-ranked thoroughbred racetrack in the country. Turns out, opening day of the spring races and free-admission-for-college-students day was the Friday we were due to arrive. Second of all, to think that there are 5 Jews there and somehow we found the 1 who cares - and she misses Shabbat or Judaism or something! Anyway, I went to her facebook profile (when someone messages you, you can see their page) and I see the following as her 'quote about myself': "If someone gave a me a blank check and a plane ticket for anywhere in the world I would leave everything, go to Israel and never ever come back. Because that is where my heart is, and that's where I belong"

Whoo. Wow. Not one of my Orthodox, Zionist, gungho-on-aliyah friends (nor myself) have a quote anywhere as powerful as that. And she's in Transylvania University?! We were excited, to say the least to spend Shabbat with her, and some other Kentucky Jews. When I told her we were excited, she said "What? Excited for what?" Excited for what?! To meet her, and to spend Shabbat in a new place with new people which would hopefully give us a fresh look on Jewish life and hopefully provide the same for them.

Part two to come. Hopefully there can be many more parts in the future as well...