Grace Vogel

My first memory of Berkeley Hillel was actually before I was a Berkeley student.

My brother was three years ahead of me at Cal, and when I was a junior in high school, I came to visit colleges and spent a day with him.

At the time, his life at Berkeley was very connected to Hillel.

He worked as a DOFI—Director of First Impressions—at the front desk. He was also involved in AEPi, and a lot of his friends and his community were centered around Hillel and the Jewish community on campus.

I remember walking into the old Hillel building, before it had been renovated, and having this immediate feeling:

I feel at home here.

There was something about it that felt familiar, but at the same time new and exciting.

I could see what my brother had built for himself there.

He had people.

He had a place.

He had a community that seemed to anchor his experience at Berkeley.

And I remember thinking that I wanted that too.

That visit helped me realize that Berkeley was the school I wanted to attend, and a big part of that was seeing the life my brother had created around Hillel.

I wanted the chance to build something like that for myself.

Once I actually got to Berkeley, though, I didn't jump into Hillel immediately.

My first semester, I wanted to get the lay of the land.

Berkeley is a huge, intimidating campus, and I think I was trying to figure out where I fit before committing myself to any one community.

I wasn't involved in Greek life, so I was especially looking for smaller places where I could find my people.

By my second semester, I was ready.

I realized pretty quickly that Hillel was going to become that place.

I signed up for the Jewish Learning Fellowship.

At that point, the building was about to go through renovations, and our group met in a room that felt almost like a basement. There were maybe fifteen of us sitting in a circle.

It was simple.

We talked.

We learned.

We got to know each other.

But something about the intimacy of that space made it incredibly meaningful.

Growing up, I had spent a lot of time at my synagogue in Los Angeles. I went to Hebrew school through high school, I was active in my temple youth group, and I served on the youth group board.

Temple had always been one of those places that just felt like my spot.

Some people have a coffee shop or a bookstore that feels like theirs.

For me, growing up, that place was temple.

It wasn't only about religion.

It was social.

It was cultural.

It was where I built community.

I think part of me knew that once I really stepped into Hillel at Berkeley, I would find that same feeling again.

And I did.

The people I met in that first year became the people I lived with during the rest of college.

Three of the women from that Jewish Learning Fellowship are still some of my closest friends.

And one of the men in that group is now my fiancé.

It's funny to look back and think about how much came out of sitting in that little circle.

At the time, I was simply trying to find a community at a very large university.

I couldn't have known that I was meeting people who would shape the next decade of my life.