Where has the time gone!?
What a month it has been! Students returned from winter break or J term and began classes on Monday, January 24th. With the Omricon variant raging all manners of chaos across the country the preceding month, the Hillel at Miami team prepared for yet another semester of attempting to build community while navigating the COVID 19 crisis. I remember getting an email from another Hillel on the west coast with the subject line: “New year, same virus”. If that didn’t sum up exactly what we were all feeling as we head into year 3 of this pandemic, I don’t know what would.
While the pandemic has put a damper on our plans time and time again, what we do know as we head into year 3 of navigating our lives and our work amongst this pandemic is that we know how to shift when it comes to rethinking our plans.
In order to keep our community safe, Hillel invested in KN95 masks for all our staff and any student who walks through our doors. We also took a 2 week hiatus from hosting any indoor meals so as to mitigate any immediate risk after the whole campus returned to Oxford. On top of the pandemic, however, we had 2 snow days that ended up resulting in the cancellation of our first shabbat back on campus. And while we’ve definitely had our fair share of setbacks and situations that required us to shift our original plans, here are just some highlight of what have happened in the last 3 weeks:
Matzah ball soup, hot chocolate, and tea were given out to all students who passed by the Hillel table outside of Armstrong the first week back on campus. Hillel staff were outside in 10 degree weather handing out warm fuzzies and connecting with students as they made their way to classes.
A visit to the Hillel building from Randi Thomas, Vice President of ASPIRE - Advancing Strategy Partnerships, Institutional Relations, & Economy and his colleague, Nicole Hoyer, Assistant Director of ASPIRE in order to talk about State funding to help improve our Hillel house building.
A meeting with Ohio Department of Higher Education Chancellor Randy Gardner and Hillel at Miami Springboard Fellow, Avi Dave, and Hillel: AJS President, Hannah McCarren to discuss issues of antisemitism and anti-Jewish sentiment on college campuses. Avi and Hannah were proud to speak to the group as a representative of the Miami Jewish community, and brought up the need for a functional bias reporting process in universities, as well as the importance of academic institutions adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Association defintion of Antisemitism.
Ice skating at Goggin Arena with Yonadav Grossman, Hillel at Miami’s Israel Fellow
Over 70 students participated in our first ever Shabbat 2 You experience, which was our way of keeping our community safe while giving them a way to celebrate shabbat. Students were able to host up to 10 students at their shabbat dinner. Each host received a shabbat bag filled with challah, grape juice, shabbat prayer cards, tea lights, and Oxford 2 Go gift cards totaling $10 per student in each group.
These are just a few of the highlights from the last 3 weeks. We are so thrilled to be welcoming students back in the building for our first in-person shabbat dinner of the semester, taking place tonight. We’ve got our signature apricot chicken prepped, matzah soup made, and brownies ready to be eaten.
Hoping you and your have a wonderful and restful Shabbat,
Whitney
