Ninety years ago Dartmouth began rejecting qualified Jewish applicants based on nothing other than their religion. Sixty years ago the College removed these quotas for the first time. Thirty years ago the College hired its first rabbi. Ten years ago it opened the Roth Center, the first official Jewish space on campus. Today, the College boasts a healthier, more intense, more vibrant Jewish community than at any time in its history, according to historians and Jewish leaders on campus.
The Roth Center, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last month, now serves as a physical space for Dartmouth Hillel, the larger of the two campus Jewish organizations. The other major Jewish organization on campus is Chabad, a Hasidic-Orthodox movement that was brought to the College five years ago by Rabbi Moshe Gray.
Jewish students interviewed by The Dartmouth describe the relationship between the two organizations as strong, and say the College and student body have been respectful and welcoming of their religion.
"I've never heard an anti-Semitic comment here," Chabad co-president Melisa Garber '08 said.
Frank Glaser '08, the co-president of Chabad, lauded the collaboration between Chabad and Hillel in creating events such as Shabbat 400, a dinner designed to bring together as many Jewish students on campus as possible.
"The high level of cooperation between Chabad and Hillel here at Dartmouth is unprecedented at other colleges and universities," he said.
The level of cooperation and mutual respect between the Jewish community and the College has come about as the result of the slowly increasing acceptance of Jewish students on campus over the course of Dartmouth's history.
At the turn of the 20th century, Dartmouth, like the other Ivy League schools, accepted nearly anyone capable of passing its entrance exams and paying for an education, Provost Barry Scherr said. After World War I, the influx of applicants to the College forced Dartmouth to become more selective, and in the 1920s the College instituted a soft quota on the number of Jewish students admitted to the College, he said. This policy continued until the 1940s, when College President John Sloan Dickey ended the quota system.
A letter from that era sheds light on the attitude of the College administration during that time.
"If we go beyond the 5 percent or 6 percent [of Jewish students] in the class of 1938, I shall be grieved beyond words," then Director of Admissions Robert Strong wrote to an alumnus, according to a speech given by former College President James Freedman.
During the Dickey and Freedman administrations, Jewish students were gradually integrated into the community, Scherr said. It was not until the mid-1970s that the first rabbi came to campus, an event that sparked an increase in Jewish involvement on campus. The Jewish community continued to grow, and by the early 1990s the congregation of 30 to 40 students could not fit into their meeting house at 13 Summer Street, which the group used for worship. In response, Rabbi Daniel Siegel and a group of students began planning the construction of what became the Roth Center in 1997.
The presence of a physical center for Jewish life on campus has led to a noticeably more active Jewish community, Scherr said.
"There's a sense of greater vibrancy about Jewish life now," he said.
Current Hillel Rabbi Edward Boraz said the goal of his organization is to serve Jewish students regardless of their religious practices or their connection to the faith.
"The challenge at Dartmouth Hillel, and indeed the College, is to form and to cultivate community, and yet cultivate at the same time our individualism," Boraz said. "This is both a blessing and a challenge."
Chabad, the other major Jewish organization, encourages Jewish students to learn and take pride in their faith, according to Gray, the group's leader.
"Judaism addresses all aspects of life," he said. "This is not an apathetic crowd," he added, referring to Dartmouth students.
Since Gray founded Dartmouth Chabad in 2003, the Friday Shabbat dinner he hosts weekly at his house has become the highlight of many students' weeks, according to students interviewed by The Dartmouth.
The dinners provide a family atmosphere that engages students, Glaser said. He recalled students playing with Gray's three young children, taking care of them and even changing their diapers.
Both Jewish organizations have grown in recent years, student leaders said. When Gray first came to the College, Chabad attracted only two students. Now, Chabad's Friday night dinners attract 40 to 50 attendees, according to Glaser.
On a typical Friday night, Hillel draws 30 to 40 students and an additional 10 to 20 community members, according to Meredith Druss '08, Hillel's former president and current civic engagement intern.
College Chaplain Richard Crocker said he has seen a simultaneous increase in the intensity of religious life on campus and the number of students who do not identify with any religion. Gray concurred, citing the decline in the number of Dartmouth students who identify as Jewish. Only 66 students in the Class of 2011 said they were Jewish on their applications, according to Gray. He added, however, that there are more Jewish students on campus than those numbers suggest.
"People are asking me why the Jewish community is so small," he said. "It's not small -- it's four times the national average."
While students and religious leaders describe Jewish life on campus as healthy, several members of the Jewish community said they felt many Jewish students on campus do not take their religion as seriously as they should.
Modern Judaism places too much emphasis on the social instead of spiritual aspects of the faith, Eliana Fishman '11 said.
"In Judaism in general, and on this campus, there is a problem that Jews don't talk about God," she said. "When people think about Judaism, they think about bagels, cream cheese and lox."
Part of Chabad's goal is to educate more secular students, Garber said.
"'What is Judaism?' -- I think a lot of students don't ask themselves that," she said, adding later, "There's a whole history that people don't really think about."
Gray described the average Jewish student on campus as someone who attended Hebrew school as a child, became a Bar or Bat Mitzvah and has not been involved since then, except when his or her parents drag the student to holiday services.
For some devout students, the support of Jewish organizations on campus is not enough.
"There really are no Orthodox students on campus that I know of," Garber, who identifies as Conservative, said.
She explained that students who closely follow dietary laws and the Sabbath cannot find a place to eat when the Pavilion is closed.
Jordana Beeber '08, who describes herself as "traditional" but not Orthodox, said the campus cannot fully accommodate Orthodox students. She, too, cited the Pavilion as an example, saying that some students do not believe it is Kosher enough for the most observant students to feel comfortable eating there.
Beeber has faced her own challenges as a traditional Jewish student on campus, she said. A few years ago, she had an exam scheduled for a major holiday, and her professor refused to allow her to make it up, she said. Forced to choose between following her faith and taking the class, Beeber dropped the class. Professors are now required to accommodate students who must miss class for religious reasons, Beeber said.
Beeber added that her experience was a "fluke," saying that the administration has been very helpful.
"Overall, I've been very impressed with the administration's responsiveness to student needs," she said.
