By Brooke Kohl
“I’m an in-towner — but don’t worry, I stay in for Shabbos.”
I’ve said this countless times in order to justify… the place I live. Doesn’t it sound absurd when I put it like that? That there is something deficient in me because of where my family lives, and I feel the need to defend myself through the somewhat arbitrary fact that I enjoy spending Shabbos at Stern.
Of course, this isn’t merely about where I or anyone else spends Shabbos. If it was, I would point to the in-towners I know who don’t go home for Shabbos, but instead spend their weekends visiting friends or working at Shabbatonim, giving up their own day of rest for something larger than themselves. If it was only about where we spend Shabbos, I would point to all of the out-of-towners who rarely stay at Stern for Shabbos. I would know — I’m here most weekends. If this was only about Shabbos, I would write about how spending Shabbos in Stern has been a highlight of my Stern experience: how I get to bond with friends old and new, how meaningful it is to spend time with the Fines and the Tropps, how the food this year is better than last year even though it means no more pickles or cupcakes, how the couches in 245 Lexington feel more inviting on Shabbos than during the week…
But this is bigger than Shabbos. This is about our community and the divides that we have created in it. This is a call for unity in the face of so much hatred from without.
In Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, which my friends and I read over Shabbos at Stern, students are welcomed at the start of term by a song about the school’s history. The ending is sinister: “we must unite inside her or we’ll crumble from within.” With danger on the outside, it becomes ever more important to be unified inside.
This is a lesson that we here at Yeshiva University need to take to heart. Of course, I’m not advocating for uniform opinions and no open dialogue — on the contrary, I think it’s extremely important to have a spectrum of ideologies within our community. Rather, what I’m advocating for is an end to the prejudice that I think is widespread in our school. I’m advocating for an end to the sweeping categories of in-towner and out-of-towner and the assumptions that are made based on them. When has any good ever come from assigning broad labels to people and making character judgments based on those labels?
It can only be damaging to assess people based on where they live. Sure, you can say that in-town and out-of-town create certain mentalities in people — but there are so many factors in each person’s life that contribute to who they are today. When we try to define someone based on where they live, we risk stripping away so much of who they are in favor of one facet of their life that gains outsized importance in our minds. We take away that person’s individuality; we take away their background, their life experiences, their likes and dislikes and struggles and triumphs and goals and dreams and pet peeves and, and, and. Each person is an amalgamation of so many tiny pieces. And when we say “oh, he must have a lot of caf money because he’s an in-towner” or “she must be stuck-up because she’s an in-towner” or “why are they in Stern tonight, they’re in-towners,” we’ve boiled people down to a singular quality that somehow becomes their entire identity. Conversely, but similarly, I’ve heard people praise out-of-towners in a way that feels tokenizing and belittling, stripping people down to one trait that makes them “cute” or “fun” rather than complex human beings.
It is extremely dangerous when one quality gets singled out as someone’s defining characteristic and used to disparage or assume things about them. Why do we use in-town and out-of-town as a way to define people about whom we know next to nothing? Why should a classmate you’ve never spoken to be the object of your judgment merely because she brings a suitcase to class on Thursdays? We know nothing about each other, and yet we assume that because we know where someone is from, we know everything important that there is to know about them.
Sure, you might laugh this off. It’s just a joke; it’s a coping mechanism for out-of-towners. It’s just the way things are. But jokes have truth to them, too, and since when did we accept the status quo if it was damaging? And I’ve seen this be damaging. I still remember an incident from over a year ago on a very public group chat, in which someone insulted in-towners in a way that I felt bordered on bullying. This person felt comfortable making comments on such a public forum because thinking like this is the norm, and there are people who agree with her. But as an in-towner — even as an in-towner who stays in for Shabbos — I was behind my phone screen reading the comments, feeling hurt and attacked.
To be clear: I am not innocent in this. I am part of the problem when I say that even though I’m an in-towner, I stay in for Shabbos. This article is addressed to myself just as much as to anybody else. I make jokes and comments about this divide. I pretend that I’m “better” than other in-towners because I don’t go home every week. I don’t know where to properly draw the line — when is it okay to joke, and when does it cross the boundary into hurtful? There’s no good answer, but I hope that we can at least begin to address the question.
This issue is worth addressing for its own sake, but it is all the more important today as antisemitism is on the rise. We live in a world where it often feels like everyone is against us. Within our own communities, isn’t it more important than ever not to create more divides? We don’t have to be homogenous, but why can’t we be accepting of differences? “We must unite inside her or we’ll crumble from within” — I think we need to learn this lesson. As long as we create artificial divides based on where we live, we will never truly unite.
I urge all of us to take the time to truly get to know each other. Next time you start to assume something about someone based on where they’re from, pause to actually speak to them. Get to know them. Find out what makes them smile, find out what makes them sad, ask them where they’re spending Shabbos and then ask them why. I won’t go so far as to ask us not to judge each other — judgment is human and normal. To quote Brandon Sanderson in his book Warbreaker: “She had to stop judging people. But was that possible? Wasn’t interaction based, in part, on judgment? A person’s background and attitudes influenced how she responded to them. The answer, then, wasn’t to stop judging. It was to hold those judgments as mutable.”
When we create immutable personality traits based on where a person lives, we judge people in ways that they don’t deserve. Instead, let’s understand that where a person is from is only one tiny aspect of who they are. We each contain multitudes, as Walt Whitman famously wrote. Let’s work to uncover those multitudes in others, uncover parts of other people that we didn’t know existed and work to unite inside the walls of Yeshiva University. That way, we can present a more unified front to the outside.
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University