I went to Rosh Hashanah services last night. If you don’t know what that is, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur together are the high holidays, a sort of New Years and Lent all in one. It was my first time ever going to services, and it was the first time at Middlebury where I felt as though I was part of a community.

Midd’s very proud of how small and close-knit it is, and that’s one of the main reasons I picked it. I have been searching for a community for a long, long time. We’re still forming our community, of course- freshman have only been here for a week or two. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine a community as large as Middlebury. I can see it forming in classes and clubs, but not actually growing to encompass the entirety of campus and everyone inside. And if there is in fact a Middlebury community that arrives with the older students, it’s hard to imagine the freshman at anywhere but the border. I remember high school freshmen. They were the worst, and we treated them as such.

Hillel was a solution to this problem, in a way. I was expecting to be on the margins as a first-year and a largely non-practicing Jew. Instead, I found a sense of kinship. It was a small group, forty students at the most, and while for the most part they knew each other, they actively included the new students. We are in this together, their actions said. We may be to the side of Middlebury’s protestant consciousness (if there is such a consciousness), but that does not mean we are alone. We are a community at the edge of community, and you can cross the border from silent to beloved.

I have many issues with Judaism. It is not a flawless culture or a flawless people. I didn’t like many, perhaps even most of the people I met last night. I’m undecided leaning toward highly skeptical when it comes to the existence of God. I don’t support Israel, especially not in its current state. And yet, I felt the kinship I had been looking for sitting in a Christian chapel, listening to Rabbi Stillman and the cantor who traveled here just for the high holidays.

You can make of this blog post what you will. I tried to keep it as open as possible. And feel free to criticize me. I won’t be offended, and if I am, I’ll do my best to work through it. I hope everyone finds somewhere they don’t feel bordered.

–Lauren Eskra