Sarah Lewis

There was a period during college when I was struggling with some really big decisions.

My time at Berkeley wasn't completely linear. I took time away from school more than once, and there were moments when I had to think seriously about whether I was going to stay at Berkeley and what I wanted my life to look like.

I think it was during my sophomore year when someone on the Berkeley Hillel staff heard that I was having a difficult time and trying to make one of those decisions.

They reached out and asked if I wanted to get coffee.

That was it.

They didn't have to do that.

There wasn't a Hillel program I had signed up for or a meeting I was required to attend. This person had simply heard that I was struggling and wanted to check on me.

So we got coffee.

I remember how meaningful it was to have someone who genuinely wanted to hear what was happening in my life. Someone who was willing to sit with me while I talked through things that felt very heavy at the time. Someone who could be a mentor and give me feedback without making the decision for me.

That conversation helped me.

More than that, it made me realize the kind of community I had around me.

Berkeley is a huge university. It can be easy to feel as though you're one person in an enormous sea of students.

At Hillel, I never felt like I was disappearing into that sea.

The staff knew me.

They cared about whether I was doing well.

They cared about my success, but not only in the sense of grades or accomplishments. They cared about whether I was actually thriving.

That distinction mattered.

Over the years, I came to see that the people working at Berkeley Hillel weren't invested in students in a superficial way, and they weren't doing it simply because student engagement was their job.

They genuinely cared.

A lot of the staff members were recent college graduates themselves, so there was a particular kind of mentorship they could offer. They were far enough beyond college to give perspective but close enough to remember what it felt like to be there.

For me, those relationships became part of the support system I needed to make it through Berkeley.

And then something happened after I graduated that showed me those relationships weren't limited to the years I was enrolled.

After graduation, I accepted a job in Ohio.

Once again, I was moving somewhere new.

One of the Berkeley Hillel staff members, Maya, had grown up in Ohio. When she heard I was moving there, she proactively reached out to me.

She started connecting me with people she knew.

One of them was a friend of hers who had recently become a rabbi.

I connected with him, he invited me to his house for dinner, and I eventually attended his congregation for the High Holidays.

I had graduated from Berkeley.

I wasn't a Berkeley Hillel student anymore.

I was across the country, starting my post-college life in an entirely new city.

And Hillel was still helping me find my community.

There is something remarkable about that to me.