Student Affairs
Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur just recently started off the Jewish New Year. Frankly, the year 5781 is off to a rough start. Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a prominent figure in not only the American political world, but the Jewish one as well, passed away on Rosh Hashanah. That, coupled with a global pandemic, a crisis …
Growing up, I always had a hard time establishing, expressing, and maintaining my own boundaries. The fear of being perceived as “selfish” and therefore unlikeable were too big to acknowledge and respect my own needs and desires. Thinking I was nice for never saying “no” led me to believe that on the rare occasions I …
An increasingly common sentiment among my friends, peers, and community is that the past few years have been awfully chaotic and upsetting to the maximum. Both domestically and globally, tragedy overlaps with injustice, people polarize at alarming speeds, and climate disasters sweep the planet hand-in-hand with a pandemic. Thus, I’m quite certain that I’m not …
My favorite part of being a Christian is the community that comes along with it. Community lies at the core of most religions, and is the foundation of the concept of religion. Often, religious community turns into an extended family—helping to raise children, sharing meals together, overcoming life’s challenges alongside one another, and providing weekly …
Ever since the Pandemic started, so many unknowns have entered our lives, more than ever before. It seems as if things that were certainties, like our fall semester in college that includes game days, hangouts, and sitting on the terrace with friends, have forever changed. With mask mandates, social distancing, and limited gatherings, the way …
For me, the purpose of the Catholic mass was always interconnected with the formal positions within the service. For a successful service to occur, everyone needed to perform their assigned role. The priest led the mass, the servers assisted him, and the readers introduced tradition into the service. Though the mass itself bored me as …
As we all know, the coronavirus pandemic has changed and continues to change modern-day society. Whether these changes are economic, social, political or of another kind, they are clear changes that are extremely visible and life-changing for many demographics. However, as someone who has an affinity for religion and everything that it represents, specifically Judaism, …
My first meaningful discussion about religion on the UW–Madison campus occurred at the residence hall I stayed at my freshmen year. A floormate and I were the only two people sitting in the lounge that day, and we had recently begun to become friends. She started the conversation by asking me what my thoughts were …
Growing up as a first-generation American is challenging at times: We’re the bridge between cultures, the children of the immigrants that have served as the backbone for this nation they call home. I was brought up in a Punjabi Sikh family and my parents were strict but nurturing. They put me and my siblings through …
During the COVID 19 pandemic, death has permeated our cultural consciousness—and it’s terrifying. We have been conditioned by our culture to avoid thinking about death. Scientific studies have even shown that the same neural circuits that give rise to the mind, filter out thoughts about our own demise. As an interfaith fellow, I have learned …