Roxy Honowitz

I had what I think of as a pretty typical Jewish upbringing.

I went to Hebrew school.

I had my bat mitzvah.

And then I got to high school and largely lost touch with my Jewish identity.

As a kid, Jewish learning often felt like something I was supposed to do. You go to Hebrew school. You learn what you're supposed to learn. You work toward your bat mitzvah.

There is a destination.

Then you reach it.

What I hadn't really figured out was what came next.

Berkeley Hillel showed me what having a Jewish identity as an adult could actually look like.

That was very different.

At Hillel, Jewish learning didn't feel like someone was making me sit in a classroom until I completed a requirement. There were evening classes and opportunities to keep learning, but I could choose them because I was interested.

It became my own discovery.

My own curiosity.

My own identity.

And learning was only one part of it.

You could come to Hillel to take a course.

You could come for dinner.

You could celebrate Shabbat.

You could hang out.

You could work there.

You could bring your own interests and passions into the community.

It never felt like Hillel was shouting at you, telling you, "This is what being Jewish is supposed to look like."

Instead, it felt like an invitation.

Here is this space.

What could your Jewish life look like inside it?

That was incredibly important to me.

There were people at Hillel with all kinds of backgrounds and relationships with Judaism. Different levels of observance. Different beliefs. Different perspectives.

I remember someone who converted to Judaism while we were there. There was a celebration around his conversion, and although I didn't know him particularly well at the time, I remember thinking how interesting and exciting it was to see someone else's path into Judaism happening right there in the community.

Years later, life brought that connection back in a completely unexpected way.

After graduating from Berkeley, I moved to Israel.

I had studied sustainable agriculture, and I knew there was a lot happening around sustainable agriculture in Israel, so I thought: I'll go live abroad. I'll start there. I'll find an internship.

So I did.

Then COVID happened.

What had started as an adventure abroad turned into several years of living in Israel, and during that time I began discovering other interests and parts of myself as well.

At one point, my apartment needed a roommate.

And the person who moved in was that same person whose conversion I had witnessed at Berkeley Hillel.

Suddenly it was, "Wait a minute. We know each other. You were at Berkeley!"

I love that memory because, in a strange way, it captures what Hillel was for me.

You were constantly meeting people whose Jewish lives looked different from yours.

People were coming from different backgrounds and heading in completely different directions.

Then sometimes, years later and halfway around the world, those paths crossed again.

Living in Israel also gave me a much broader understanding of just how multifaceted Judaism really is.

There isn't one Jewish experience.

There isn't one way to be Jewish.

There isn't one political viewpoint, one level of observance, one cultural background, or one path through life.

Looking back, Berkeley Hillel was almost a little version of that larger Jewish world.

A kind of petri dish.

I was exposed to so many different ways people understood and lived their Judaism before I even knew how valuable that exposure would become.

Most importantly, Hillel gave me permission to claim Jewish identity for myself.

Not because my parents told me to.

Not because I was trying to finish Hebrew school.

Not because there was a bat mitzvah at the end.

Because I wanted it.

Because I found meaning in it.

Because it gave me community, values, and a sense of where I stood in the world.

I graduated from Berkeley in 2019, but the Jewish identity I developed there didn't end when I left campus.

It traveled with me to Israel.

It remained with me when I came back for graduate school.

And it continues to be a strong part of my life today.

When I think about why, I keep coming back to Berkeley Hillel.

Hillel gave me the footing.

It showed me that Judaism wasn't something I had completed as a child.

It was something I could keep exploring for the rest of my life.