New Hillel chapter to open at Loyola College in Baltimore
Tess McLaughlin, The Greyhound - Starting this year, the Loyola community will have a Jewish organization featured on campus. The Hillel group is “the foundation for Jewish Campus Life” and was brought to the Evergreen campus by junior Sophie Kagan.
Hillel’s goal at Loyola is to help students “better understand that not everybody is the same, that other options are okay and welcomed,” says Loyola senior Jess Callahan. When asked about the Jewish population on campus, she replied, “there are twenty-two of us.”
Jess explained that when she came to Loyola, she filled out a questionnaire self-identifying herself as a Jew. However, she added that here are a lot of “half-Jews” on campus that the college doesn’t know about. Jess and other self-identifying Jews at Loyola were contacted this year as Hillel held its first meeting on the 9th of September.
Jesse Silverman, a first year student at Loyola, has had a similar experience as Jess. He said he knows ” a dozen or so half Jews,” but that many of the members at the meetings have not been apart of the Jewish faith.
However, both Jess and Jesse are welcoming of this, excited that other students will have the change to learn about the Jewish religion. Jesse said he hopes Hillel will show that “there is a Jewish population at Loyola,” since many of the students come from Jesuit high schools. He also adds that for the Jewish students on campus, Hillel will provide “another medium to meet people.”
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