To mark the beginning of a new Jewish calendar year, the University’s Jewish community celebrated Rosh Hashanah from sundown on Wednesday, Oct. 2, to sundown Friday, Oct. 4. The Jewish calendar follows the lunar cycle, and Rosh Hashanah typically falls in September or October.
The festivities began with spiritual services on Wednesday at 6 p.m., and were attended by over 100 students in the Center for the Arts Courtyard. A Rosh Hashanah Festive Dinner in the Daniel Family Commons (DFC) followed, open to all students. Services on Thursday began at 10 a.m. in Beckham Hall and concluded with another open lunch in Usdan University Center Room 108. Friday services were hosted at 8:30 a.m. at Congregation Adath Israel, located on Broad Street in Middletown.
The last scheduled event hosted by the Office of Religious and Spiritual Life (ORSL) was Tashlikh at 4:15 p.m. on Friday. The practice involves a walk in nature to a body of water, in this case the Connecticut River. Like the Rosh Hashanah meals, this event was open to all.
“[Tashlikh] is a contemplative ritual in which we let go of experiences from the past year and continue the process of returning to our deepest selves, the path of Teshuvah,” Rabbi David Teva wrote in an email to the Wesleyan Jewish Community.
The availability of the events, outside of the religious services, to all is an intentional decision by the ORSL.
“One of the things that makes Wesleyan unique is the curiosity of our students,” Teva wrote in a message to The Argus. “Learning about other traditions and practices should be an integral part of your college experiences.”
This year, Rosh Hashanah services had an additional focus. ORSL included programming to address the ongoing violence in Israel, Palestine, and Lebanon in recent weeks.
“The war in Israel and Gaza is on everyone’s mind, so we did a lot of praying for peace, healing, and security for both Israelis and Palestinians,” Teva wrote.
Other Jewish groups on campus hosted their own Rosh Hashanah events. Chabad, one branch of the larger Jewish population on campus, hosted a shofar blowing on Thursday and Friday from 11:45 a.m. to 12:45 p.m. outside Usdan. A shofar is a musical horn traditionally blown on Rosh Hashanah and other Jewish holidays.
Chabad at Wesleyan also hosted Rosh Hashanah dinners on Wednesday, Oct. 2, and Thursday, Oct. 3, at 7:30 p.m. at the Chabad House on Church Street. The dinners were warm gatherings of students beginning the new year with a meal together.
“For me, Rosh Hashanah is usually about having a big family dinner; we’ll go to synagogue and celebrate,” Liv Rubenstein ’26, who attended a Chabad dinner, said. “It’s kind of sad being away from home. So it was good, Chabad feels like being home.”
The Chabad dinners were attended by around 60 people. Like the University’s Rosh Hashanah dinners, they were open to all students.
“A good amount of [the attendees] were people’s non-Jewish friends they brought with them to celebrate together,” Rubenstein said.
Students took the opportunity to reflect on the past year at the Rosh Hashanah events.
“We said prayers and sang a couple of songs to honor the meal and usher in the new year,” Julian Fried ’26 said. “We tried to flush out all of the bad things that had happened to us or that we had been feeling bad about in the past year, to get rid of those emotions and underlying concerns and to wipe your slate clean for the new year.”
Jewish High Holiday services continue Friday, Oct. 11 and Saturday, Oct. 12 for Yom Kippur. The ending of Yom Kippur at sundown on Saturday will have events open to all students and feature performances from Jewish a cappella group Mazel Tones and a new Klezmer band, playing traditional Jewish music.
Anabel Goode can be reached at agoode@wesleyan.edu.
Spencer Landers can be reached at sklanders@wesleyan.edu.