“Some of the closest friends and connections that I’ve made at Stern were all because I stayed in for Shabbat,” Shayna Kayla Lis, a senior, confessed.
It’s wonderful to note that cultivating meaningful relationships becomes more prevalent as more students stay in for Shabbat. Shabbat is that shared experience which strengthens the ties among students – something almost impossible to replicate during the hustle and bustle of the week. That being said, various student councils are planning to implement new changes to improve this year’s Shabbat experience on the Beren Campus, to make it one in which every student wishes to stay in—a feat worth celebrating.
The Shabbat Enhancement Committee (SEC) is a specialized club whose purpose is to maintain and enhance the Shabbat atmosphere on campus. One major concern students have brought to the SEC’s attention is the club-sponsored Shabbatonim. This type of programming has been the default mode in which Shabbatonim function.
There is definitely a great benefit to having a club-run Shabbaton: they create a big pull and attraction for many students who know what type of activities they can expect from a certain club. On the other hand, explained SEC president Aliza Katzin, if a student does not have any attraction to the club running the Shabbaton, she loses interest and may even feel unwelcome staying in for Shabbat.
Amanda Esraeilian, TAC president, shared her vision for what Shabbat on campus—”Shabbat@Beren“—should look like. She stated the commonly overlooked fact: “We [the student body] all share something profound in common: we are all Jewish.”
But the buck stops there. The student body is also vibrantly diverse, and is blessed with wide interests and a breadth of clubs that promote their ideas with the hope to share them. While clubs do bring people together, on such a large scale, it’s hard to strike the right balance.
Amanda continued, “The goal of the TAC board is to create the sense of community which caters to every type of student…to find a niche within Shabbat.”
She also explained that instead of a club taking control of an entire Shabbat’s activities, it will instead choose a certain component to be responsible for, and in that way, still impact that Shabbat in a meaningful way.
Malka Sigal, president of the Stern College Dramatics Society (SCDS), explained how downgrading the club involvement may actually hurt the number of students who stay in for a given Shabbaton. This is her fourth year on campus, and her involvement in both SCDS and the Fantasy/Sci-fi clubs is valuable testimony to the evolution of Shabbat programming.
“I stayed in [for Shabbat] for clubs that I was actually a part of, and other random clubs that I wasn’t a member of because I don’t have time to be a part of all of these cool clubs [on a regular basis]…and so it would be great to see what they had to offer on Shabbat, in a non-committal way to explore new things,” Malka shared. She has run fantastic Shabbatonim in the past with both SCDS and Fantasy/Sci-fi, and hopes the clubs will have the same opportunities to run exciting programming this year. “It might also be harder for less well-known clubs to break into the scene”, Malka added, referring to smaller clubs that do not run as many events during the year.
Aside for this major change in club programming, Shabbat@Beren hopes to keep some things the same. The downtown campus is proud to host the men from uptown for Shabbatonim, and has been trying to smooth out any issues with getting them here for Shabbat. The student body can agree that coed Shabbatonim are a nice time to interact with the other students. Financially speaking, the only change may be different ratios of students from YC coming downtown than in the past, but nevertheless, there will always be a minyan for davening.
Overall, the most important message to impart to students is that YU is their home, and student voices are always heard: student council organizations are making an effort to make Shabbat on campus a more dynamic experience for the diverse student body here at YU.