Is there a Jewish community at Hampshire? All I could find was a bit about JSU, but it didn’t tell me how large the Jewish community is, how active it is, or how “traditional” (I dislike using that word, but I have yet to come up with a better one) it is. Anyone here know anything? I have also emailed Ellen Bernstein, and we plan on meeting by phone after Yom Kippur (Wednesday, 9/23), but I wanted to also see what people say here.
My daughter was fairly active in the Hampshire Jewish community. My impression from her was that there was a relatively small group of observant Jews, numbering in the 20s or 30s. I think that they were getting more than that for High Holy Days services. As you can imagine, most of those were Reform or Reconstructionist. My other impression was that some students were not enamored with the guy who served as the Rabbi prior to Ellen Bernstein. She sounds wonderful, so perhaps things are different now than they were a few years ago.
@ALF this is obviously a hard question to answer, but when you say that there are 20-30 observant Jews, what do you call observant? When you said, “most of those were Reform or Reconstructionist” did you mean that most of the Jews were, or that most of the observant Jews were?
Observant = a core of between 20 and 30 students could be depended on to show up for Shabbat services. Of that core, the majority came from Reform congregations, some from Reconstructionist, a few from Conservative. My daughter could tell us more, but by her last 2 years, she was not much of a participant anymore and chose to observe Shabbat individually.
I also sent you a private message.