Big Tent Judaism

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.

Spinning Toward a New Record

Here’s one for the record books – literally! The University of Maryland has recaptured the Guinness World Record for having the most dreidels spinning simultaneously for 10 seconds. They previously held his record from 2000-2005, then lost it to a synagogue in New Jersey.

Open to the wider university community, the Hillel hosted 603 dreidel spinners in the Ritchie Coliseum, in order to accommodate for the large number of participants and to lower the barrier of location for those who may not be comfortable entering the Hillel building, but still wanted to participate. Maryland Hillel also utilized this event as an opportunity to partner with other campus student organizations (a JOI Best Practice) including Jewish, pro-Israel and business groups, as well as several sororities and fraternities. Rabbi Ari Israel, executive director of Maryland Hillel, was particularly touched by the involvement of the mixed university community. Writing in an opinion piece titled “Spinning Toward Success” for the university’s paper The Diamondback, he said:

“Jewish university students who participated took a few moments to reconnect with a rich heritage and tradition that informs Jewish identity and purposeful journey. The non-Jewish spinners showed the strength of community that exists on the campus.”

This event truly provided students, faculty and community members a low barrier opportunity to engage with the Jewish community and it gave the Hillel a chance to strengthen its ties with the greater-campus community. JOI congratulates the University of Maryland Hillel and the 603 participants in capturing this new World Record.