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Shabbat a SHAM in Maryland
Several months ago I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon at the University of Maryland. 
The campus was gorgeous; green lawns, classic “southern” architecture and, I happened to notice, a particularly beautiful Hillel building. It’s so nice that one would think UMD students wouldn’t want to go anywhere else to participate in Jewish life at their university. But in fact, during a Friday night this past December, students seemed to go everywhere else to share a Shabbat experience.
At JOI, we believe one of the best ways to engage the unaffiliated Jewish community is through Public Space Judaism – instead of waiting for people to come to us, we need to go out to them. This idea was recently put into practice by the University of Maryland Hillel, which sponsored “Shabbat Across Maryland”, or SHAM, a program that strives to make Shabbat more accessible to students by providing low-pressure, positive contacts with the organized Jewish community. According to an article by Richard Greenberg in the Washington Jewish Week titled “Kiddush with the Turtle,” kosher dinners were held at over 70 locations, including apartments, dormitories, fraternity houses, and even the newsroom at the campus newspaper. This was quite different from the centralized, large scale Shabbats that Hillel had organized in years past. Many students found these settings to be more intimate, including junior Megan Eckstein. She commented that the SHAM Shabbat experience “definitely felt more accessible and welcoming. It’s really nice to be around people you’re comfortable with… This gave me a chance to really feel part of the Jewish community.”
After attending a SHAM Shabbat dinner, Eckstein said she would like to hold a Shabbat dinner in her own home, allowing her friends the opportunity to connect with the Jewish community outside the walls of the Hillel building. This student, as well as an estimated 1,000 other student participants, showed that meaningful Shabbat experiences can happen anywhere, as long as the doors are open for anyone who would like to attend.
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