“I’d like to help you, because you helped me.”
What a strange way to start a conversation. And even stranger was the fact that the woman who walked into my office and said that was a complete unknown to me. My mind did the panic-scan where I mentally cycled through every Tucson connection I had to see if I could remember who this woman was.
Blank.
“Yeah, hi. How can I help you?” was all I could sputter out.
“You don’t know me, but you spoke at Professor Thomas Meixner’s memorial service a couple months ago. I was going through my own faith crisis. Your words were sincere. Your eyes were sincere. And that was exactly what I needed at that exact moment,” she shared.
For context, Thomas Meixner was a devout Catholic and fantastic professor at the University of Arizona who was murdered on Yom Kippur two years ago. And here I stood, astounded, across the desk from a Catholic woman telling me she was touched by what I considered to be nothing more than an act of basic decency – offering a few words at a memorial service to a fallen professor.
She asked what it is, exactly, that we do at Hillel. My mind started scanning for answers again. Should I lead with our Shabbat and holiday services, programming, Israel classes?
“This,” I said. “This … is what we do. We create meaning. We create connections. We create moments. We create memories. And we do it through joyful Judaism.”
I surprised myself with that answer, but long after the woman had left my office, I sat pondering the conversation and came to the obvious but necessary conclusion that it’s the human connection we foster at Hillel that has the biggest impact on our students. Whether it’s the students helping each other with homework, the staff providing support to our students, or the camaraderie on display at our Shabbat dinners, the meaning is ever-present through the little connections we create.
I routinely hear laughter, see tears, observe rage, sense frustration, and notice heartbreak. But it’s through the context of these very real experiences affecting our students that the connections to Judaism and each other are made. This. This is what we do.
The holiday of Chanukah is a conspicuous time to remember that we all have the opportunity to have a profound impact on others. The light we put forth will continue to shine in this world. The seemingly mundane acts in our daily lives can have a lasting, and exponential, impact on others, in ways that we may never realize. After all, one day’s quantity of oil became eight days of light.
