Student Stories at Brown RISD Hillel

“Judaism has always been a huge part of my life. My mother grew up orthodox, my father grew up reform and they kind of met in the middle when my sister and I were born. We never had a stable shul growing up, but I did go to Schechter for elementary school. The quintessential part of my Jewish experience, though, has been summer camp. I went to Camp Ramah for 10 of the last 11 summers and if someone asked me, ‘what kind of Jew are you?’ I'd say I’m a Ramah Jew. Ramah for me is a steady culture that I can relate to. It has defined the parts of Judaism that I value and the parts that I love, like community, singing and dancing, and Friday night services. Coming to Brown, I never thought Friday night services could be as good as they were at camp with the sun setting over the lake, but coming to Chavurah at Hillel freshman year, I was amazed that they were. I always knew that Judaism would be a part of my life in college. My first day at Brown I went to Shabbat lunch at Hillel, and then the next day at the Orientation BBQ I met people who would become some of my best and strongest friends for the next four years. The weirdest thing I’ve done in my life was definitely joining Wubappella... seriously who joins a dubstep a cappella group? But I think a lot of my interest in that was shaped by the quirkiness I learned to embrace at camp. When the group started it was mostly Jews, so that was a fun thing that we shared. I think in a lot of ways Hillel faces the struggle that Judaism does today in that many people are looking for different things and Hillel only has a limited ability to provide those varying experiences to everyone. There were times when Judaism was part of my everyday life at Brown and times when I wasn’t getting the fulfillment I wanted. Hillel is a place for me to engage my Jewish self however I can, and do it in a way that allows other people to engage as well; that’s really special.” 

Next year Judah will be a Software Engineer at MongoDB in New York City.