Growing up, every Saturday morning I went to Hebrew school Shabbat services. Students clustered with their five or ten other classmates, leaving gaps in the rows of chairs, their teachers keeping watch at the sides of the room. A few families with small kids came, too, bouncing their toddlers on their laps. When we prayed, though we enjoyed the melodies and songs, the large room swallowed our voices.

After services, each grade split off to a different room. We sat around a single table, shared our highs and lows from the week, attacked a loaf of sliced challah and downed the cup of apple juice our teacher poured. Before we went to play Gagaball — a cherished game that involves trying to hit your competitors’ legs with a kickball rolled on the ground — we practiced reading Hebrew, learned about the Jewish holidays and talked about the Jewish values that Reform Judaism sought to instill — kindness, compassion, charity.

My classmates and I understood each other, having been in class together since we were about seven. Within the Hebrew school walls, we were a unit. Our small class size allowed me to form more personal connections with my classmates and teachers, but simultaneously, I missed the opportunity to form a larger community. At Hebrew school, I felt cramped.

Outside of Hebrew school, I valued Jewish celebrations with friends and family — Passover seders at our friends’ house, folding tables laid out end to end so that the kids always ended up sitting in the front hall; or family seders in my grandparents’ townhouse, all twenty of us stuffed into the living room while we read the Haggadah. We passed around plates of crumbly matzo, scooped sweet haroset onto our plates and enjoyed homemade macaroons and flourless chocolate cake. Later, the kids went upstairs to play games, and the adults’ conversation echoed from below. But these celebrations and gatherings were small, too. I longed for a larger community.

From fourth to eighth grade, I attended a Jewish sleepaway camp in the Berkshires. Here, surrounded by other Jewish campers from the Northeast, I found a new form of community. The counselors and camp administration folded Judaism into everyday life and infused Jewish traditions with energy and enthusiasm. We enjoyed singing at services each morning and creating hand gestures to accompany the prayers before and after our meals. Compared to the sleepier Jewish energy of my home synagogue, camp was a pulsing hub of Jewish life. My fellow campers were “my people” — we all came from similar backgrounds, understood why we referred to the dining hall as “chadar ochel” and knew all the same Jewish songs.

Yet I didn’t always feel at home at camp. While my bunkmates were nice, they were different from my friends at temple back home, and outside of Judaism, I felt we shared little in common. Despite the camp’s welcoming Jewish environment, I felt alienated around my peers. 

I didn’t want my Jewish identity to feel fragmented, experiencing a larger Jewish community at camp but only feeling at home in Worcester. Throughout high school, I continued going to Hebrew school — though now it was Hebrew high school — where our population shrunk further, until there were only ten or so of us meeting every two weeks at our temple. I loved our hodge-podge of cultural activities, like playing Jewish Jeopardy or making baskets of Passover-friendly food to send to the Jewish assisted-care home near us; and I always had fun with our Jewish cooking projects, making pickles or shakshuka — but more than ever I sought a more expansive community. I wanted to meet more Jewish people, to learn about their experiences and connect with them — both as Jews and as friends on a deeper level. 

Yale has allowed me to merge the disparate parts of my Jewish identity — a desire to feel at home and to exist within a larger group. At Slifka, I encounter people studying in the library or the lobby; on Fridays at Shabbat dinner, the dining hall is packed with friends, peers, and people I have yet to meet. Going to speaker events, joining Jewish clubs, just spending afternoons working at the high-top tables in the lobby — all of this has allowed me to become part of a Jewish community where I feel at home.