By Betty Khirman
For what will be one of the last times, I sit at a table of a random coffee shop, watching the city stretch endlessly beyond the windows. Rows of buildings with offices take up space. Some people achieve their aspirations, while others robotically proceed with their daily routine.
I sit and stare out the window, caught somewhere between no longer being who I once was when I arrived and not yet fully in the grasp of who I am becoming, reminiscing on my time as a “Stern Girl.”
My hands hover over the keyboard, searching for words to hold the past three years of moments, growth and meaning. The words fall short. Each sentence feels too small, too contained. No phrase can quite carry the weight of it all. No, thank you, feels enough for what has been given to me here.
And still, I try. I try to grasp how to put into words the impact, the growth and the quiet transformation held within the walls of 245 Lexington, shaped by the faculty who guided me and the peers who walked beside me.
This is my quiet, imperfect attempt to give shape to something that refuses to be contained — to the impact that YU, this place and each of you have left on me.
I remember being a high school senior, staring at what were called the “personal insight questions” — those carefully crafted prompts on college applications meant to reveal who you are. Hours turned into days, meetings into revisions, every word measured against the quiet hope of becoming someone worthy of a dream college. I was no different. I chased it, too. Because that’s what you’re taught to chase — to fit into a version of success that was defined long before you ever stopped to ask what you wanted for yourself.
And then, I took a different path. I took a year off — or at least, that’s how we framed it — to spend a gap year in Israel. Throughout the year, Yeshiva University came to recruit at my seminary multiple times. I never attended these visits. Why would I? Why would I consider a place that, in my mind, wasn’t as rigorous as the work I had put in? A place where everyone is supposedly the same? Where everyone seemed to come from the same schools, the same camps, the same neighbourhoods, all within a familiar, closed circle?
So I stayed away.
But as the year began to close, the question started coming — again and again, from friends, from mentors, from everyone around me. The question that current seniors know too well, the one that makes your heart pause and then race: “What’s your plan next year?”
To some, I said, “I don’t know.”
To others, “I’m going home.”
The words varied, but the certainty did not. I was sure of one thing: I would not be going to Yeshiva University. I didn’t fit the stereotype. I didn’t see myself in the image I thought it represented. I wasn’t a “Stern girl.” I would be vastly different from the general student body.
Yet still, when hearing about the possibility of spending the next few years in such an environment, something unexplainable drew me to it. Maybe it was my chance to finally experience the privilege of being in a Jewish environment? Maybe it was my chance to be in a place where values weren’t just spoken about, Torah wasn’t just a mandatory class and conversations around Israel were not a secret. So I chose it.
I took the step and decided I wanted to go to a university that would allow me to experience the Jewish community I had heard so much about, and the kind of education others had the privilege to receive for years. It was my choice. Not something expected, not something automatic, but something I was actively choosing to step into. I told myself that if it didn’t feel right, I could always leave.
I remember the moment that changed it for me, the one that quietly shifted something, in the middle of a simple conversation. I was speaking to a professor about an assignment for their class, and there was a level of genuine care that went beyond just answering my question. It felt like someone was trying to know me, not just teach me. And then it happened again. With another professor, another rabbi, another dean, another student. That consistency is what made this experience so impactful.
Suddenly, I was being offered something different. A place where I wouldn’t just be another student in a classroom, but someone known and someone cared about. Someone invested in. I didn’t fully understand what being part of a community meant at the time. But I was curious enough to find out.
And during this past year, serving as Beren Campus Student Government president only deepened that realization.
Leadership forced me to see Yeshiva University not just as a place I move through, but as a community we are responsible for shaping. It meant sitting in rooms where real decisions were made, advocating for what students needed and constantly asking how we could build something stronger, more unified and more meaningful. It meant hearing the quiet voices and trying to amplify them. It meant learning that leadership is not about having control, but about creating space for others to feel seen.
And more than anything, it meant understanding what “We Are One” (BCSG’s motto of the year) actually looks like in practice.
It looks like a room full of students from different backgrounds showing up for the same event, not because they have to but because they want to be part of something bigger than themselves. It looks like friendships forming across differences that once felt defining. It looks like choosing to lean into a community, even when it feels easier to stay separate.
And maybe that is what I didn’t understand when I first arrived or chose Yeshiva University.
I thought community was something you either fit into or didn’t. Something predefined that you had to measure yourself against. But this community has not been a box I had to fit into, rather a space that stretched me in ways I didn’t expect. In the same day, I could move from a shiur that challenged how I understand my relationship with Hashem, to a psychology class that pushed me to think critically about the human mind, to conversations with friends that somehow held both depth and laughter at once. None of these experiences competed with each other. They built on each other.
Yeshiva University has taught me something different. You and I might have had a different perspective, a different journey and a different life, but at the core we share the same values and pride of being Jewish.
Community is not something you fit into or don’t, it’s something you help build.
And it is built in the small moments.
In conversations after class that go beyond simply asking questions regarding the assignments. Community is found in professors and faculty who ask how you are doing and mean it. In moments where class ends with a “have a good Shabbos.” In friends who challenge you, support you, and grow alongside you. In the decision to show up, again and again, even when it would be easier not to.
It is built on choosing to care. To care about yourself, your peers and your future.
As president of BCSG, I had the privilege of seeing that up close. Not just in the big events or visible moments, but in the quiet ways students showed up for each other. The ways people got involved, stepped in and created something bigger than themselves.
And that is what I will forever carry with me.
Not just the memories or the experience, but the understanding that what we have here is not accidental. It is something each of us contributes to. Something that only exists because people choose to make it exist.
As I sit here for one of the last times, I look out at the city full of people chasing something, and I realize that what I found here was not just a place to spend three years. Not just a place to receive a bachelor’s degree. But a place to grow, to learn and to deepen my connection to Judaism both personally and spiritually.
I’ve learned that it’s not about who you are or feeling like you originally belong. I leave knowing that belonging is not something you wait to feel. Community is not something that you purely wait to become part of. It is something that you actively choose to build.
This is a place that changed how I see, how I choose and how I show up. And ultimately, who I am. Thank you.
Photo Credit: Courtesy of Betty Khirman