Beginning the New Year in Community at Hillel
Danielle Kranjec is the associate vice president for Jewish education at Hillel International.
Beginning a new year surrounded by people who may become part of your story is a powerful moment. On college campuses, Rosh Hashanah arrives as so much else is beginning: new friendships are taking shape, unfamiliar places are becoming home, and the year ahead still feels full of possibility.
At Hillel, High Holiday gatherings give Jewish students a chance to mark that beginning together. Around a table, through the sound of the shofar, or surrounded by voices singing familiar melodies, students can enter the new year alongside friends and mentors who will celebrate with them, show up for them, and help turn a campus into a community.
There also is something deeper happening when we gather on Rosh Hashanah, whether for a meal or to pray. A core Jewish tradition is that we connect to the Divine through the presence of other human beings. After the destruction of the Temple, the Jewish people had to imagine anew what it meant to serve the Divine. The sacrifices that had once been at the center of Jewish worship were no longer possible. In their place, the rabbis elevated tefillah, prayer, as a new form of avodah, service. And this new expression of connection and devotion was constructed to happen in community.
That’s why we gather a minyan. We need other people to answer amen. We need voices around us when our own voices are uncertain. We need the people beside us to remind us that we are not the only ones searching, hoping, grieving, celebrating, or beginning again. This is part of what makes communal prayer so powerful. When we cannot hear the voice of God, we can hear those around us.
Pirkei Avot, Ethics of our Ancestors, teaches, “Do not separate yourself from the community.” Jewish tradition asks us to do more than exist alongside others, but to understand ourselves as part of something larger. We show up for one another, add our voices to prayer, and create together something none of us could build alone.
That need for one another reaches all the way back to the beginning of the Torah. In Genesis, the first thing God declares to be “not good” is human solitude: Lo tov heyot ha’adam levado, “It is not good for a person to be alone.” From the beginning, our tradition imagines human life as relational. We find meaning and holiness not only within ourselves, but in our connections with one another.
This is also why ritual and community are so deeply intertwined. Ritual gives us a reason to show up. At Hillel, students come together for Shabbat and holidays, meals and learning, celebrations and difficult moments. They sing the same songs, light candles, bless the bread, and mark time together. These acts may seem small, but they are how belonging and community are built.
After all, belonging is more than a feeling — it is a practice. We belong when we learn one another’s names, save a seat at the table, notice who is missing, and make room for someone new. We belong when our presence matters to others, and even more so when we begin to understand that their presence matters to us.
There is something particularly beautiful about gathering together on Rosh Hashanah, which Jewish tradition calls the birthday of the world. We mark the beginning of creation itself, celebrate all that has come into being, and imagine what the year ahead might hold.
On a college campus, that invitation can feel particularly powerful. With a new academic year beginning at the same time, new students are finding their footing. Returning students are reconnecting with friends and deciding what they want this year to hold. Everyone has a fresh opportunity to ask who they want to be, what they want to build, and which communities they want to be part of.
Hillel gives students a place to begin answering those questions. And when they welcome the new Jewish year together, they’re doing so with a community that will be there for them time and again, for Shabbat, celebrations, conversations, and other moments of joy and challenge still to come. Whether it is your first time walking through the doors or Hillel already feels like home, there is a place for you at the table.
The new year is beginning. Come begin it together.