I’ve been asked to give a speech on the most serious day on the Jewish calendar. Now being serious is not impossible for me, but it is not my default. I’ll give an example. In my role as Jewish Student Association Co-President, I was recently bestowed with the honor of being appointed to the Hillel Board — a serious responsibility. At the first meeting, board members were asked to draft a six-word Jewish memoir, a concise description of our call to Jewish leadership. Mine: “Been painfully aware since day eight.”

Today’s prompt was similarly open-ended, though perhaps the context of its delivery begs me to resist co-opting it for humorous effect. I was asked to deliver on the premise: “what does being Jewish at Stanford mean to me?” It’s a question I didn’t have an answer to a year ago; and even now I struggle to land on a cogent summary in my loose five-minute window. I’ll try my best, and I might succumb to my facetious tendencies, but hopefully I’ll land on something worthy of the holiday.

I attended a Jewish day school in the suburbs of Boston from kindergarten through eighth grade. For good measure, I attended a Jewish boys sleepaway camp during the summers. Jewish was the only kind of friend I had. When time came for high school, I made the decision to attend an all-boys, sports-forward preparatory school in another Boston suburb: i.e., WASPy. Judaism went from the basis of my relationships and the guiding force of my education, to a unique element of my identity. A defining element, yes, but Judaism was no longer the anchor of my social and academic life.

In my first year at Stanford, I made friends from around the world: hailing all the way from Northern to Southern California. I attended my fair share of Shabbats throughout the year, but didn’t get to know too many people there. I joined the Jewish fraternity in the Spring, an experience I enjoyed, but, for whatever reason, by the end of my freshman year, I didn’t feel I’d found my place in the Stanford Jewish community.

On October 7th, 2023, I woke up to a New York Times notification and an email from Rabbi Kirschner. If there was ever a time for an anchor, it had arrived.

As much as I appreciate the friends I had found at school up until that point, I was unable to convey to them, and to myself, what had changed. I spent the next month in a state of emotional isolation. I began to attend more Jewish events; Shabbats were crowded, vigils showed me I wasn’t alone. It was nice to be around people to whom I didn’t need to explain how I felt, or feel pressure to justify those emotions when I didn’t have the words. Still, the milieu of this togetherness was tragic. I began to wonder where my place at Stanford was. And if it even existed.

In early November, I began texting with a leader in the undergraduate Jewish community. She had met my far-more-involved mother at a Hillel board meeting and set out to get me more involved with campus Jewry. In the midst of scheduling a Coupa-chat over text, the subject abruptly changed: “daniel. Would you like to join for the event of a lifetime tonight. Do you know sardines.” I was intrigued, and aside from finishing my load of laundry, had nothing to do at 10PM on a Wednesday. I arrived at Green Library to find a collection of students, some Jewish, some not... mostly Jewish, prowling the library in search of the “stinky sardine,” a peer predetermined to find an enshrouded spot amongst our campus's largest literary collection. Those who found their hiding place would pile in, à la sardines, until the last person to discover the group became the subsequent week's sardine. If I’ve ever had a religious experience on campus, Sardeens was it.

Being Jewish had been a Friday-night appointment, it had been a venue for consolation in a time of crisis, but then, in the bowels of Green Library, I found a home.

Concurrent to the Sardines saga, I was challenged with preparing a stand-up set for the Adam Sandler-themed Comedy Shabbat. I was soon enlisted to aid in writing witty emails for JSA’s weekly Coupa meet-up, Jewpa. In a quarter’s time, I would be asked to consider running for JSA Co-President.

That may sound like routine college shenanigans, but they were set against the backdrop of the most existential period of my Jewish life. To the uncool, unspontaneous sophomore Daniel, that invitation was so unexpected, and in the kindest way, so unnecessary. I was an aimless Jew in the desert, and I was led to the land of milk and honey that is Stanford Jewish joy. Wrong holiday, I know.

To answer the central question: Being Jewish at Stanford is a community where people’s strengths are valued and celebrated. Being Jewish at Stanford is an unplanned late-night infiltration of the neuroscience building with a new friend. It’s being compelled to put off your finals to write a funny email in Hillel until 3 AM. It’s New York meet-ups. It’s ducking in-and-out of Kabbalat Shabbat services in Mexico City as you and your friends try to assemble enough pesos for a sick compatriot to see a doctor. It’s dancing in front of Buckingham Palace. It’s celebrating a Bar Mitzvah Boy in the last weeks of his senior year. It’s a friend bringing you Immodium before you run an event during your undiagnosed bacterial infection. It’s a JSA rollout to your production of The Spongebob Musical. It’s a home-cooked Passover seder out-back of a row house. It’s making a raunchy Rosh Hashanah rap song. It’s an impromptu horah at your 21st birthday party. It is fast friends and it is motivating mentors. It is a miracle of miracles.

Being Jewish at Stanford is also stressful. (Now I’m getting serious.) My rise to Jewish leadership was somewhat abrupt. In the face of all those joyous things this community offers, I was confronted by a shocking development: my responsibility to it. It was an adjustment, and one that friends tried to guide me through; guidance I often failed to appreciate. It was a struggle to reconcile that something so effortlessly beautiful could also be so much work. When a community is as close as ours, friction is inevitable.

On Yom Kippur, we contend with the moments where we’ve come up short. In a year of so much personal growth, I have accrued those in spades. I don’t mean to editorialize, I embezzled no JSA funds, there have been no shady dealings nor gross negligence, but I have let my stress get the best of me. I’ve said hurtful things to friends and family. I’ve failed to follow through on promises. The more you love a community and its people, the worse the transgression when you let them down. A week ago we celebrated the year that has just begun, as well as the simchas of the one we left behind. In the new year, remember what has made your life at Stanford a blessing. Returning to the central question: being Jewish at Stanford is passing that blessing on, just as it was to me on a fall night of my sophomore year.

G’mar chatimah tovah, may we all be inscribed in the book of life.

​