Fall 2005

Seeking the Spirit

Student religious leaders tell us why they participate, what they believe,
and why they still ask questions

Email Story

Ilana Zafran ’06

Zafran is a member of Worthy Questions, a non-denominational campus group about spirituality and questioning, and she’s a coordinator of Hillel, the Jewish organization on campus. She spends around four hours a week between the two groups.

My Resident Adviser nominated me for Worthy Questions in my freshman year. I’ve stayed involved because, well, I like to talk about deep things sometimes! 

I became involved with Hillel because I am Jewish and come from an all-Jewish community back East. Even though I wasn’t a deeply religious person when I got here, I wanted to continue to be part of that culture.

I have a lot of questions about my faith. I definitely would call myself a spiritual person and a Jewish person but I don’t know ... the part I’m still working on is intertwining those two pieces.  For me, Judaism is very much a cultural thing and not so much about my beliefs. I have other parts of me that are spiritual, and I haven’t figured them out entirely.

Because Jewish students are a minority on campus, I define myself here in a more traditional Jewish way. I find myself reacting to stuff on campus. For example, on one Scot Spirit Day the Fellowship of Christian Athletes got out clothespins that said “Jesus Loves You” and stuck one on my (Jewish) friend’s backpack.

So, on campus I am forced to think more about my Jewish identity and accept it. There’s still work to be done in promoting understanding of the many religions at Wooster. People will do things without realizing what others might think — they aren’t always aware.  And they don’t want to sound stupid, so they don’t ask questions. 

Freshman year was hard in some ways because Hillel wasn’t active. The group held a mock seder at The Wooster Inn but no actual seder on Passover. So my friends and I planned our own. We found a Haggadah and wrote some of our own additions to it, and we invited friends, Jewish and non-Jewish. That year, we had about ten or fifteen people. We did it again sophomore year and had a few more. Then last year, forty people came!  I really enjoyed teaching other people about Judaism. We had to make our own community by teaching and trying to make people aware that, hey, we’re Jewish and it’s fun. We started putting a Yiddish-word-of-the-week in the Pot. 

Many of my good friends here are Christian. They’ve been raised always grappling with traditional religious problems, and their questions force me to ask questions of myself and my faith. Before I came to Wooster, I had never met anyone who went to church every Sunday or whose dad was a minister, like my best friend here.

I believe in prayer now. I never did before I came here. When talking about prayer, I would always call it “hope.” Then something came up in my sophomore year, an intense situation for one of my friends. I felt I had to turn toward prayer. So I’ve become more traditional with religion, and I’ve learned a lot about other religions through my friendships.

I think the main lesson I learned from my upbringing was to treat people fairly. Promoting equality and peace are the big values I’ve been given by my religion. I was taught to practice charity, and at Wooster I’ve been able to do volunteer work. I did a study abroad component about politics and conflict. The Jewish community I grew up in was a left-leaning liberal group, and here it has been easy to support liberal activities.

The main things I’ve learned are to be open-minded, hold onto your faith, and remember your ancestors.