The Office of Jewish Student Life and Interfaith Programming

Religious Services
There are weekly student-led Friday evening services for Shabbat held in the Intercultural Center.  

Holiday Observances

• Shabbat:   A weekly dinner is held in the faculty/staff club.  The food is prepared by Dining Services with the help of two student cooks who also make sure that the food is prepared according to kosher guidelines.  This is the only time of the week that kosher meat is served by Dining Services.  Students who are on a meal plan swipe in, the other students are covered by Skidmore Hillel’s SGA budget.
• High Holidays:  Since the Jewish Chaplain is co-rabbi at Temple Sinai, there have been joint Skidmore/Temple Sinai services for many years.  Rosh Hashanah evening and day services and Kol Nidre and day-long services for Yom Kippur are held in the JKB Theater.  Students are also given the times and locations of services in the community if they choose to attend off-campus.  We help to arrange transportation if students wish to go off campus.  Students can participate in the Break Fast after the concluding services in the Theater lobby or sometimes they prepare their own Break Fast celebration on campus.  Holiday meals are served for the evening of the start of Rosh Hashanah and for before the fast for Yom Kippur.
• Sukkot:  The students build and decorate a Sukkah on the green.  During nice weather, they can gather in the sukkah and hang out, study, or eat.  For the past few years, the students have arranged a Saturday evening havdalah (the ceremony to make the end of Shabbat) followed by a coffeehouse program with food, hot drinks, and music.
• Simchat Torah:  We do not have services on campus but students are given the times and locations of services in the community if they wish to attend.
• Hannukah:  There is nightly candle lighting during the eight nights of Hannukah.  This year the students used the Dining Hall Atrium.  There is also a special holiday Shabbat dinner with traditional Hannukah foods prepared.  For the past three years, we have helped the students to organize a multi-faith holiday celebration, Holidaypalooza.  This is a collaboration with Late Night and with the other religious and mutlicultural clubs.  Other students groups also participate like the Sonneteers and Random Acts of Crafts.
• Tu B-shevat:  This holiday often falls during winter break, but when it doesn’t, we have observed it with tabling in Case Center, giving out foods that come from Trees and foods from Israel.  The students have organized programming around this holiday in past years.
• Purim:  This holiday often falls during spring break.  We do not do a service on campus, but students are given the times and locations of services in the community.  In the past few years, students have organized a campus-wide party to celebrate the holiday.
• Passover:  The students run their own Seder with the food prepared by Dining Services.  They have prepared their own Skidmore Hillel Haggadah with the help of Rabbi Linda.  Starting last year, we worked out a new Passover food arrangement with Dining Services to better provide for the students who are trying to observe the dietary laws for the week of Passover.  We worked with Dining Services to create menus that they then prepared and served in the International Food area.  This worked out really well and will be done again this year.
• Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day):  For the last few years the students have set up the Field of Flags to mark the victims of the Holocaust.  Often this observance day falls after classes have ended so we do a simple ceremony of candle lighting.  In past years when the observance falls earlier in April we have brought in speakers, films, exhibits and other programming.  

Speakers
The Office of Jewish Student Life brings speakers to campus and helps to co-promote programs of Jewish and/or Interfaith Interest that are generated out of other offices on campus.  We work closely with the Office of the Dean of Special Programs on both the Greenberg Middle East Scholars and Perlow programs.  We have worked with the Music Department, Religion and Philosophy, Latin American Studies and others to help in their programming.  This year we collaborated with many student groups and Offices to develop the program around the speaker, Patrice O’Neill and the Not on our Campus Program.

Educational Programs
We have presented all kinds of programs like our IGUTF-funded Film Series:  Growing Up a Minority in a Majority Culture.  Its intent was to focus on the issues surrounding identity development and to show that there are universal themes in being a minority that transcend any one religious, ethnic, or other groupings.  We showed five films that were followed by discussions.  This fall we help coordinate a campus-wide program Orchestrating Peace.  It was a film screening, dinner and panel discussion on the role of music and the arts in bringing together people in the Middle East.

Discussion Groups
There are a number of discussion groups that meet on a weekly basis.  There is a Friday Noontime Torah Study with the Rabbi.  This past year, the students initiated a Skidmore Hillel student-led Saturday morning Bagels and Torah discussion.  Another new group this year was the addition of a Hebrew Language Table where students can gather and practice their Hebrew language skills.

There are other more occasional discussion groups.  Rabbi Linda has led a group on Thursday evenings for the last several years.  It started out as an Interfaith Spirituality Group, then as members changed, it became a Jewish Mysticism Study group that had faculty guest facilitators like Steve Stern and Marla Segol.  

Community Service and Social Justice Projects
For the last few years we have worked with the Office of Catholic Life, BeneFaction, the Newman Club and Skidmore Hillel on the Fair Trade Sale and Oxfam Fundraiser.  As stated above the Fair Trade Sale raises funds for student charitable projects while raising awareness of the social justice issues surrounding the fair trade movement.  We have also participated in Oxfam’s Fast for a World Harvest where people are asked to skip a meal and donate that amount of money to help alleviate world hunger.  Students give money from their meal plans or can make donations.  We have raised as much as $1,000 in the past.

This past year in conjunction with the holiday of Purim which has a practice of giving gifts of food to the needy, we organized a project and invited the Newman Club and Christian Fellowship to participate.  We met with the Dirctor of Communtiy Service and through her Office made arrangements to put together Easter Baskets through the Saratoga Springs Public Schools Homeless Coordinator.  Over 30 baskets were made and were distributed through Project Lift at Lake Avenue School and through Franklin Community Center’s emergency food pantry.

Advising
The Office works with Skidmore Hillel to support its events and programming.  There are weekly meetings with the club’s presidents and periodic meetings with committee chairs and other board members as needed.  There are two off-campus Board planning retreats, a Fall Retreat at Rabbi Linda’s House and a Spring Board Planning Retreat at Margo’s house.  We also have held an annual retreat that is open to any Skidmore student at Silver Bay on Lake George.  

Spiritual Counsel
The Jewish Chaplain, Rabbi Linda Motzkin is available to all members of the Skidmore community for religious and/or spiritual counseling.