If you are looking for a place to learn more about traditions and cultural issues other than your own or if you want to spend lunch with people who share the same traditions as you, then the Jewish Student Union (JSU) is the place to be. JSU, run by Jacob Friedman, is the club in the spotlight this month.
JSU meets bi-weekly at the LMC for lunch on Thursdays and comes together to enjoy pizza from the local kosher restaurant Jerusalem Pizza. The club welcomes Jewish and non-Jewish students in their meetings, ensuring that students who don’t know much about the religion are informed and feel more welcomed into the Jewish community. The club’s main focus is learning about and celebrating holidays like Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and Hanukkah, the celebration of light. For Sukkot, another holiday, the club brought a mobile sukkah, which is a booth or shelter with a roof of branches and leaves, to Berkley to show and enjoy the autumn holiday. To celebrate the weekly sabbath (Shabbat), students made candles to be lit at sundown on Friday before a day of rest on Saturday. In addition to the meetings, JSU also offers opportunities to learn about Judaism by holding outside events. Some of these include Hanukkah parties, end-of-year barbeques, and Shabbat dinners.
Next, Friedman talks about how their overall main challenge is recruiting new members to the club. Getting people to join can be difficult, but the club’s board has found that promoting the club on Instagram by posting pictures of what they do at JSU can make it appealing to others. In addition, setting up a booth at clubs in the courtyard was very helpful because they could get more members to join by scanning the QR code to join GroupMe, the club’s primary communication method. The app is beneficial to the club because that is where they can communicate with club members.
Friedman also shares the club’s future goals and how they plan to achieve them throughout the school year. Their main goal is to expand the club to extracurricular activities and work to create a sense of “family” even outside the doors of Berkley High School. Friedman shares his hopes for the club going forward, saying, “I know there’s a big Jewish population here at the school, and I know that there are some Jews that don’t go to the club. So if everybody could feel included, that is a long-term goal.”
Overall, doing fun events for the Jewish holidays and teaching about cultural Judaism makes JSU a club that can provide value and insight to those looking to get involved or be more informed about the Jewish community.
