Campus Hillel: Will this be the place where your teen ‘does’ Jewish?
What is the college campus like today?
How does it differ from when you attended?
Even more to think about are the challenges your Jewish teen will face once there.
A recent article acknowledged what most already know: “64% of those currently enrolled in a traditional four-year institution reported a decline in religious service attendance….”
For Jewish students, this statistic is probably understated, if based on my own recent anecdotal interactions with college freshmen.
Here’s the reality you might want to think about:
1. Having a Hillel on campus is not a guarantee of a Jewish connection. Inclusiveness is not always the name of the game. Each Hillel takes on a different culture based on the campus where it is located. Students may be over or under-represented from a particular Jewish denomination, perhaps causing other students some discomfort. Students I spoke to were not comfortable going to Hillel based on the above reasons.
2. Even if the denomination leanings are a match, students active in that Hillel might not hang in the same crowd as your teen, making it just as hard to participate as any other activity where like-minded teens are sought. Just because it’s “Jewish” doesn’t mean that participation is a given. Students sometimes labeled Hillel participants as people they wouldn’t ‘hang out with’.
3. Many groups compete on the college campus for your teen’s attention, some of those groups represent other faiths. Peer pressure is stronger on campus than you’d imagine, students tend to ‘go with the flow’, especially in the early years of college. Some students attend functions sponsored by other faith groups on campus, if the activity was perceived as ‘cool’.
4. Colleges are becoming less ‘religion-friendly’, not more. It’s a challenge for Jewish students to take time off for holiday observances, and colleges that used to have days off to accommodate are stopping that practice in favor of being more fair to all religions. (Though more Jewish holidays occur in the fall, and students mostly have off during ‘other’ holidays, Ramadan excluded).
5. Both Hillel, by offering programs out of the typical Hillel building, and Chabad, by reaching teens through a variety of programming as well (some controversial), are trying to involve Jewish students as much as possible. The reality however, by recent studies of Jewish college students, points to the fact that students just are not ‘organization joiners’ in the traditional sense. Affiliation is just not that important to them.
One message you might take from this?
Don’t wait until your teens gets on the college campus to ‘do’ Jewish. Chances are not great that a Jewish connection will suddenly flower. What about Birthright you say? Read a future post about that one.
Photo credit: Wikipedia
Related articles
Selling Tomorrow Today to Parents of Jewish Teens (ruthschapira.wordpress.com)
A new plan for Hillel looks beyond its traditional pale (timesofisrael.com)
Chabad Forced Off Campus Due To Underage Drinking (failedmessiah.typepad.com)
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