Sarina Shohet

When I arrived at Berkeley, I had made a decision: I wasn't going to get involved in Jewish life.

I had gone to Jewish day school. I had gone to Jewish summer camp. It felt like everything I had done growing up was Jewish, and I was ready for a break.

I remember thinking, “Okay, it's time for me to see what it's like to live in the real world.”

So when my parents suggested that I go on Berkeley Hillel's freshman retreat, my immediate response was no.

I wasn't doing it.

But I had only been at Berkeley for about a month, and I had made some new friends. They started encouraging me to come, too.

“Come on the retreat.”

“No.”

“Come on.”

“Fine. I'll go.”

And that was it.

I was a Hillel girl for the rest of my time at Berkeley.

In retrospect, I think part of the reason I didn't want to go was because I knew exactly what was going to happen. I knew that if I went, I was probably going to get involved. And I was right.

But I'm so glad I did.

The friends I made on that freshman retreat became some of my closest friends throughout college. And they are still my friends today. I've been hanging out with them recently, years after we graduated, and I look at them and think: These are my friends for life.

We met because a bunch of us went on a freshman retreat.

That still feels a little crazy to me.

I think what happened on that retreat was that I discovered what Berkeley Hillel felt like.

Hillel was a place where people were completely comfortable being themselves. Everyone was funny and spunky and intellectually curious. There was a kind of ease to it.

And that mattered at Berkeley.

Berkeley is a place where people come because they want intellectual rigor. We wanted our brains to be challenged. We wanted to think deeply and argue and learn and explore.

But not everything about Berkeley felt calm or welcoming.

Hillel somehow held both things.

It could hold the intellectual rigor that so many of us were craving while also being a place where you could relax. You could walk in and feel at ease. You could be Jewish and nerdy and enthusiastic about learning without having to explain yourself.

We could just be Jewish nerds.

And we celebrated that.

I think that's why the retreat became more than just a weekend away. It was the beginning of finding my people.

College can be an overwhelming place. There are thousands of people around you, and you're constantly trying to figure out where you belong.

At Hillel, I found a place where I didn't have to work quite so hard at that.

I could walk through the doors and immediately feel like I was with people who understood something about me.

And the people I met there became part of my life long after Berkeley.

That's one of the things I find most remarkable about Hillel when I look back. I went to the freshman retreat because my friends talked me into it. I went even though I had specifically decided not to get involved in Jewish life.

And then, almost immediately, I found a community that I didn't want to leave.

Sometimes the experiences that change your life aren't the ones you carefully choose. Sometimes they're the ones you almost don't go to.