They say that reli­gion is one of those things that you're never sup­posed to discuss–but I think that col­lege involves a great deal of chal­lenges and changes that are tricky top­ics, includ­ing reli­gion. In my case, my father is Jew­ish and my mother is Chris­t­ian (Pres­by­ter­ian to be spe­cific). Yes, I get to receive and give presents on both Christ­mas and Chanukah, thanks. Nei­ther of my par­ents being par­tic­u­larly reli­gious, they decided to raise me cel­e­brat­ing both reli­gions’ hol­i­days but not immerse me in either one. I was not bap­tized or Bat Mitz­va­hed and I never attended any kind of reli­gious school­ing. They wanted me to be aware of both sides of my reli­gious her­itage, but in some ways the effort to do both had a bit of a neu­tral­iz­ing effect and, grow­ing up, I hardly knew any­thing about either religion.

I’m hon­estly not entirely sure when I became inter­ested in explor­ing both halves of my reli­gious back­ground. I can’t iden­tify a key moment or event that pushed me in that direc­tion, but around the begin­ning of my sec­ond year at Oxy, I made a con­scious deci­sion to explore the Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian faiths through stu­dent groups on cam­pus. I already knew a girl involved in the cam­pus Hil­lel and I asked her to tell me more about their activ­i­ties and how to get involved. The Chris­t­ian side was a lit­tle trick­ier because more than one group existed on cam­pus and I did not know any­one involved with the one that fit best with my exist­ing beliefs, a club called Pro­gres­sive Chris­tians United. I found out when they met and just showed up to their next meet­ing. I attended PCU meet­ings reg­u­larly for a few months and spent a great deal of time with the Hil­lel students.

My orig­i­nal point of con­tact in Hil­lel became a good friend and I enjoyed their weekly din­ners on cam­pus and learn­ing more about Judaism—particularly Reform Judaism—from the Rab­bini­cal advi­sor and another stu­dent who was a Reli­gious Stud­ies major and extremely knowl­edge­able on the topic. At first I treated both new endeav­ors like an aca­d­e­mic class: I asked a lot of ques­tions and scrib­bled down notes to Google later. I fix­ated on the ques­tion that had emerged: Which one am I? I felt immense pres­sure to choose one reli­gion. I think that this came partly from a desire for sim­plic­ity and partly from a broader change that I was expe­ri­enc­ing at this point in my life and in col­lege. I gen­uinely enjoyed spend­ing time with both groups, espe­cially as PCU worked on a project related to Dar­fur and Hil­lel pre­pared to attend a con­fer­ence in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. I was also break­ing apart from my orig­i­nal group of friends from my first year and fig­ur­ing out my course of study. The ready-made bonds in both of these groups were extremely appeal­ing to me. I fit in more with my Hil­lel friends but main­tained an inter­est in learn­ing about both religions—for a while, anyway.

Four or five months after my ini­tial leap of faith, so to speak, I started to feel a lit­tle drained by the whole process. I fit in bet­ter with my Hil­lel friends and thus spent more time with them, but I no longer felt as intrigued by the reli­gious basis of either asso­ci­a­tion. Explor­ing my dual back­ground started to feel too much like home­work and I grew resis­tant; I stopped attend­ing PCU meet­ings and pre­ferred to see some of my Hil­lel friends out­side of that par­tic­u­lar con­text instead. By the end of sopho­more year, I no longer attended any kind of reli­gious meet­ing or event.

This sounds kind of depress­ing on paper, but it really wasn’t. When I first got involved with both groups, I made that choice. And when I phased myself out of them, I made that choice as well. I needed to see what was avail­able to me after years of curios­ity. I learned that I can be spir­i­tual with­out sub­scrib­ing to orga­nized reli­gion. I learned that I can be friends with those who are more reli­giously obser­vant than I am—that first Hil­lel friend remains a close friend, for which I am very grate­ful. I learned that even though I look at this phase as a sig­nif­i­cant expe­ri­ence in my over­all under­grad­u­ate edu­ca­tion, it’s also an aspect of my life that con­tin­ues to evolve today.

Were/are you involved in reli­gious groups in col­lege? What’s avail­able at your school? Is there any­thing you would change about your involve­ment (or lack thereof) in reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions on campus?