Celebrating Community and Mourning Tragedy at Brown University

Two recent events took place at Brown University, one of joy and one of tragedy.

Under a tent on Pembroke Field, Cantor Lizzie Shammash sang Shalom Aleichem and Rabbi Ayelet Cohen recited the Motzi and Kiddush, beginning a glorious weekend celebrating 130 years of Jewish life at Brown.

A few weeks later, a former Physics graduate student killed two Brown students, and wounded nine others, in a mass shooting event on campus.

The juxtaposition of these events demonstrated Brown’s commitment to its Jewish community, and also that community and support networks are central to campus life.

On the weekend of November 7-9, more than 1,000 Jewish students, faculty, and alumni convened on College Hill. There were hundreds more attendees than the university expected, spanning nearly eight decades of life at Brown.

Some of us attend a daily minyan; others rarely see the inside of a synagogue. The faces of today’s Jewish students demonstrate we have ancestry from every corner of the globe. For a weekend, we came together as one, emphasizing our common values and heritage.

We participated in lectures, panels, and religious services, celebrating alumni and our school’s accomplishments in business, academia, and the arts.

Even before the shooting tragedy on our campus, we knew America’s college students were struggling with a fractured environment. Mental health is a serious issue in our country, but especially among our young people. Three-fifths of younger adults reported serious loneliness in the past month, compared to 24 percent of people 55-65.

Younger adults are no longer anchored in their families, but still must grapple with decisions about relationships and career paths. They spend more time on their phones and alone in their dorm rooms, and 40 percent less time in group venues like the gym, library, or cafeteria.

Contrary to initial fears, the Brown shooting does not appear to have a political or religious dimension. Still, being a Jewish college student is harder now than it was just a few years ago.

Between 2019 and 2024, cases of antisemitic assault, harassment, and vandalism rose by over 300 percent, with college campuses seeing an 84 percent increase between 2023 and 2024.

People who subscribe to a dichotomy about oppressors and the oppressed common on university campuses are especially likely to hold antisemitic views.

Our “J130” event demonstrated the vibrancy and resilience of Brown’s Jewish community. Brown sprang from the tolerant and ecumenical traditions of Rhode Island. From its founding, Brown foreswore religious tests in admitting students. And there is no historical evidence that Brown used the formal Jewish quotas common at other elite institutions.

The weekend also highlighted how Jewish faith and community are not only essential to Jewish students, but also a force for good at the university. In one of the event’s faculty seminars, Judaic Studies scholar Professor Michael Satlow explained the relevance of religious wisdom. Jewish texts teach gratitude, patience, personal connection, the dignity of the individual, and the combination of purpose with humility — all somewhat counter-cultural when college students often focus on ideological conflict or careerism. That guidance resonated in November — and it’s only more important now.

Many Jews have found inspiration in a covenantal relationship with God, in which we bear a shared responsibility with the Almighty. The Pirkei Avot tells us, “What you do, do for Heaven,” and reminds us that, “It is not your duty to finish the work, but neither are you free to desist from it.”

Since the shooting, Brown students of every faith have wrestled with confusion, rage, and grief. Jewish students have sought out rabbis to make sense of these events, as other students have received pastoral care from clergy in other denominations.

Brown RISD Hillel must be a center of gravity on campus — a place of rich community, deep meaning, intellectual rigor, and spiritual resilience, even in the face of tragedy. Close to 1,000 Jewish students (and hundreds of non-Jewish students) walk through the doors of the Hillel building each semester. We must make it even more of a destination, a welcoming, bustling hive of activity, where Jewish students know they can go to be with other Jews — and where students of every faith and background can convene in fellowship.

We can make Hillel central to the intellectual life on campus. We can extend the exciting programming we’ve done on the Jewish tradition in the visual arts to include music and theater. We can innovate in the way we provide religious education to students and we can examine the way that AI may enhance the study of Jewish religious texts. We can provide more pastoral care to young men and women seeking to make sense of their world. And we can engage our alumni to mentor students, not how to ace a job interview, but on how to build meaningful and rewarding careers they can sustain over decades.

What happens at Brown RISD Hillel (and every other Hillel on every campus) matters for the wider Jewish world and the university ecosystem.

When Jewish students are grounded, supported, and educated, they become better Jews, students, and citizens. They also can help heal a wounded campus, and represent the resilience of the Jewish tradition and community in America.

James M. Kaplan chairs the Board of Trustees for Brown-RISD Hillel. He graduated from Brown University in 1992.