Brandeis has fundamental origins within the fight against religious and ethnic segregation, as it was founded by the American Jewish community in 1948, when higher education was limiting the entrances of those in minority ethnic and racial groups, as well as women. Part of that comes from their established policies and mission statement to support religious and ethnic pluralism. And that support comes from roots within Jewish history and said experiences, as the Our Story and Our Jewish Roots tabs of the Brandeis Website state, respectively.
You’ve probably read blurbs about all these things from before the beginning of your time at Brandeis. But the most surefire way everyone on campus has experienced this has to be within the academic calendar.
There are an assortment of days each semester that are marked as days off, specifically for Jewish holidays. While the Gregorian date changes every year, the first semester has days off within the range of September and October for Rosh Hashanah and Sukkot, while the second semester has within April and May for Passover and Shavuot.
This is a true benefit to those who observe these holidays to their fullest command, as it involves not participating in aspects of everyday life, similar to Shabbat.
As such, Jewish students who do participate in this manner would be unable to keep up with studies on the same day as said holidays, or at least with much difficulty. It’s a familiar struggle to all that know what it’s like to have to miss a day or two of school and instead of enjoying their time off, they feel the dread of all the missed work that piles up on them afterwards. That stands true even more so for college, especially when the school year is split into two independently graded semesters.
But of course, this doesn’t benefit the majority of students. There are many Jews that don’t observe the holidays as strictly, and while the Jewish at Brandeis tab under the Student Life page lists an approximation of 35% Brandeis students identifying as Jewish, that is not the majority. The majority of people become confused with an ever changing shifting calendar of breaks. The majority of people go home before everyone else has their spring break and comes back when everyone else returns from college. Almost everyone has to deal with a schedule that sometimes has midterm and final sessions too close together for comfort. And yet Brandeis employs this calendar similar to the ones reserved for Yeshiva University or Jewish private schools, where everyone would be fully benefiting from the divergence from the norm. Why is that?
In fact, Brandeis describes itself as Nonsectarian, meaning that it isn’t affiliated with or solely restricted under a specific denomination. But what they do say is that they accommodate all religious sects in hope for balance and equality within the community. This is why there are spaces for multiple religious groups to keep observance, that being the Berlin Chapel (Jewish), Bethlehem Chapel (Catholic), Harlan Chapel (Protestant), Muslim Prayer Room and Dharmic Prayer Space. (This is all from the Spiritual Life page). Yet these aren’t aspects of campus life that get in the way of student life … unless they do.
I can only speak for myself in this area, but the Brandeis Orthodox Organization hosts daily prayer services that students might have to miss in order to make it to early morning, afternoon and evening classes. Rushing from services to class is something some students decide to do to keep a religious presence within their day-to-day college life. So why doesn’t Brandeis make accommodations for this as well?
Because Brandeis can’t. It can’t help every student on an individualized and personal level. Some choices you make have to be your own. But what Brandeis can do is find ways to accommodate those areas where it would benefit the group that needs it the most. Brandeis could not call itself a truly balanced place for people of multiple religions to congregate if it didn’t accommodate for some of the most common struggles in the college world, like accommodating schedules and providing food for said religious sects.
And if Brandeis has to change to become more balanced, then maybe people need to change to become more accommodating of Brandeis. There is the thought that Brandeis itself doesn’t make the transitions from break to school well, but that is not my experience as someone who has always needed to accommodate for this shift in break and work. It’s the same as it ever was.
That’s what makes Brandeis fascinating. It will damn well make sure that the time you spend here will be unlike anywhere else. However worldly that time makes you become will matter on how adaptable you are, and become.
