Apple picking, round challahs, brisket and community-building are all on the menu for Jewish college students in the DMV this High Holiday season.
Local chapters of Hillel and Chabad allow students to celebrate Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with various styles of services, group dinners, campus festivities and other activities.
“Our goal is to give Jewish students the opportunity to celebrate their Judaism,” Rabbi Ezra Wiemer, the co-director of Chabad at George Mason University, said.
Chabad at GMU will serve as a “one-stop shop” for students to celebrate the High Holidays, Wiemer said. His wife, Bracha Wiemer, will cook a large brisket dinner at the Chabad house, then Rabbi Wiemer will host services that night and the following day.
He also spends a few hours on campus meeting Jewish students and blowing the shofar for them.
Rabbi Ilana Zietman, the director of Jewish Life at Georgetown University, a program that operates much like a chapter of Hillel, said she tries to help Jewish students “feel at home” during the High Holidays through programming.
Continuing a 50-year tradition, Jewish Life at Georgetown offers services for students, faculty, alumni, families and community members.
“It’s a really lovely mix of people and services,” Zietman said. Students and faculty can also pick up High Holiday meals on campus: “very traditional and nostalgic foods that we like to eat around this time of year, from matzo ball soup to brisket, round challahs, kugel, sweet potatoes, all the yummy fall dishes, as well as fun things like candy apples.”
Zietman also hosts a community dinner. Students who want additional meals are matched with local families for “a whole host of experiences,” Zietman said.
Celebrating the High Holidays away from home for the first time can feel nostalgic or sad for some students, Zietman acknowledged, but these four years can be a time to expand one’s horizons.
“I start Shabbat services in the beginning of the semester talk[ing] about how doing Jewish things at college is going to be different in some ways from how they’ve done it before,” Zietman said. “Some of it will feel familiar, and it’s a unique opportunity while they’re in school in such a diverse community to experience different tunes, different recipes, different traditions. Also, it’s a chance for them to take initiative and bring their own, the ones they want to share.”
Rosh Hashanah falls weeks after students settle into a new semester.
“They’ve just gone back to campus. They’re excited to see each other,” Zietman said. “The freshmen have a lot of nervous excitement about being part of the community, and we always make sure that our upperclassmen are inviting them, making sure they’re coming, that they know where they’re going. It’s a really lovely, sweet experience.”
Rabbi Daniel Novick, the executive director of George Mason University Hillel, wants to connect Jewish students at GMU to one another and make accessible the “richness of the Jewish tradition.”
Mason Hillel partners with three local synagogues in northern Virginia so students can attend morning High Holiday services at no charge.
“We want our students to know that there’s a larger community to support them beyond the boundaries and walls of our campus,” Novick said, expressing appreciation for the wider Jewish community.
Novick also hosts on-campus services as well as social and cultural opportunities for the GMU community. Mason Hillel student leaders are planning an apple-picking excursion to a local orchard, followed by an apple pie baking contest.
Like Zietman, Novick knows that the High Holidays may not be an easy time for students adjusting to being away from home. He’s spent the past few weeks meeting with students and building relationships so that those new students already know some of their peers by Rosh Hashanah.
“[Hillel’s relationship-based engagement and programming] is an open invitation for students to experience something new and to be OK with the discomfort of not being in their home community and to experience other traditions that everyone brings to the community,” he said.
Dawn Savage, the assistant director of student life at the University of Maryland Hillel, aims to foster meaningful connections for the nearly 600 students who participate in programming for each holiday.
“When we have meals, we encourage people to sit with new people,” Savage said. “We have staff going around introducing ourselves and meeting new people, seeing how we can connect them to other new people who are maybe just joining us for the High Holidays.”
Maryland Hillel will provide apples and honey stations around campus, a challah bake, a Yom Kippur break fast, a sukkah for Sukkot and an evening of singing and dancing for Simchat Torah.
Jason Benkendorf, American University Hillel’s executive director, said AU Hillel kicked off the High Holidays with Apple Fest on the quad, a fan favorite for the entire community. Students had apple-themed treats, a candy apple sundae bar and apple cider mocktails.
Similar to Mason Hillel, AU Hillel partners with neighboring synagogues: Adas Israel Congregation and Washington Hebrew Congregation.
”It’s been a nice balance in that it creates opportunities for students to celebrate and observe on campus with a peer community of only students, but then also share the holiday with the broader, vibrant D.C. Jewish community of which we’re a part,” Benkendorf said. “It’s really the best of both worlds.”
Just down the road, Gallaudet University, a college for Deaf and hard-of-hearing students, is also celebrating the High Holidays as “one big family.”
Gallaudet’s Jewish community will gather for a Rosh Hashanah luncheon of brisket, salmon and chicken schnitzel. The program includes a service, storytelling about the meaning of the Jewish New Year, blessings and the history of Rosh Hashanah, all celebrated in American Sign Language, according to Gallaudet Hillel’s program director, Sofia Seitchik.
Seitchik said she gears programming toward Hillel students who can’t go home for the High Holidays. This year, she invited members of the Washington Society of the Jewish Deaf to campus to help build community.
“We provide a space where Deaf people can connect, celebrate and bond — especially Jewish students who often don’t get to experience holidays in their own language,” Seitchik said.
