I’ve just started a JSO at the UW-River Falls campus. It’s been an interesting journey in the few weeks it’s been alive, but the readiness for community is the biggest thing I’ve noticed. Starting out with the group, I was unsure we’d even find the minimum required students to start the group. However, after starting a webpage (ok… a Facebook page) I found I had many more interested and willing Jewish students then I had anticipated.

As the President I have to pull off Jewish holidays and Jewish activities in a town that has more churches then bars. While I like River Falls, the hardship has been to get the faculty to work alongside me. Knowing very little about the customs of our people, they are reluctant to get involved. Lucky for me, however I have found a wonderful advisor who is willing to fight these battles along side me.

My next battle will be to get the University to recognize Jewish holidays and their place in a Jewish student’s life.

I have thought about becoming affiliated with Hillel’s small and mighty, but fear losing the independence we have without the affiliation. I’m also afraid that through the affiliation our organization will be grouped along with the bigger Hillel of U of M instead of standing strong on its own and having a great deal of different needs then those on the bigger campus.

As a new president of a new group I want to give my group the ability to be proud of their Jewish heritage, being active and at the same time gaining the due respect from the University and their peers. I have only begun down this road, and there is a lot of ignorance to battle, but also quite a bit of understanding. Hillel is a great organization for already strong campus’ but I don’t know yet how much it could help a campus trying to thrive in small numbers.

If you have more info about these things please let me know.

However, my involvement with Chalutzim – the Jewish Student Organization at Grinnell College – was certainly an overwhelmingly positive experience. I write that knowing that if my college friends read this they might laugh. For four years they heard me complain, cry, celebrate, scream, debate . . . ask me in my 4th year how I felt about being Jewish in Grinnell, IA on our campus and I might have had little positive to say. I just wanted to get out.

But now, that was a long time ago. What I learned from a college with no exclusive organizations (no greek system, no group that could exclude others) is that as hard as it can be sometimes, it really is possible for a black-hat Hungarian Jewish guy to daven in a minyan with a Lesbian Reconstructionist would-be rabbi and a Conservative guy who always wanted the long(est possible it seemed) version of birkat hamazon – so we all learned it. It really is possible for Purim to be THE JEWISH HOLIDAY the entire campus knows the most about. It really is possible to sleep, and eat, and study in a sukkah in the middle of Iowa – even when there are snow flurries!

These days, there is rabbinical leadership at Grinnell, and I don’t know how that has changed things. I do feel fairly confident that for those of us at Grinnell in the 90s, our experience was not dependent on the professional leadership, but rather on each other. And, not just the Jewish students, by the way. Our allies in getting test dates changed were the folks involved with Christian Fellowship. At Grinnell, as much as anyone else, maybe more than most, they really got what it meant to be a religious minority.

Ironically, since being in Minnesota, I’ve learned what I’ve always called “a Grinnell Jew” some folks around here call “a Duluth Jew”. I know when I’m up there visiting, I’ve always felt right at home.