“Isolated But Not Oppressed“:
Jewish Life at Kenyon from the Students’ Perspective

by Nate Gordon, Kenyon ‘20

At approximately 4:00 AM on February 27, 1949, Kenyon’s Old Kenyon residence hall burst into flames. At first, the flames were concentrated in the middle section of the dormitory. But by that time, the iconic steeple of the college’s first permanent building was already crumbling. Students, members of the faculty, firefighters, and Gambier and Mount Vernon community members rushed to save students from the blaze. Quickly, the fire spread to Old K’s east and west wings, hollowing out a building that housed nearly a quarter of the student body, around 500 students. Photographs from that night capture the outline of Old K, a silhouette against the flames ascending above where the building’s steeple stood just hours earlier.

The fire began when sparks from a fireplace caught in one of the building’s old chimneys and creeped through a crack between the first and second floors. The sparks remained in the cracks in the masonry until they erupted into flames. Firewalls between the east and west wings of the building gave the students in the rooms on either side of the building more time to escape than those living in the middle section of the building. On that night, nine students perished: Ernest Ahwajee of Akron, Ohio; Edward Brout of Mount Vernon, New York; Albert Lewis of Hazleton, Pennsylvania; Martin Mangel of New York City; Jack McDonald of Hamilton, Ohio; Marc Peck of Fenton, Michigan; George Pincus of Brooklyn, New York; Stephen Shepard of New York City; and Colin Woodworth of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.[1] Of those nine students, it is believed that four of them--Mangel, Peck, Pincus, and Shepard--were Jewish.[2]

At a time in Kenyon’s history when approximately five percent of the student body was Jewish, the deaths of the Jewish students in the Old K fire raises questions regarding the social position of Jews on Kenyon’s campus in the mid-twentieth century. Why were the few Jews on Kenyon’s campus living in such close proximity to each other? Were Jews excluded from fraternities and other social circles on campus? Has Kenyon been a comfortable place to be openly Jewish? These questions guide this essay, which examines the social position of Jews at Kenyon at different points in the past seventy years.

As photographs of the fire indicate, the flames were concentrated in the middle section of the building. At that time, many of the Jewish students at Kenyon were members of Middle Kenyon, an organized alternative to joining one of the school’s fraternities. In 1950, approximately eighty percent of Kenyon students were members of a fraternity.[3] Fraternity members lived together within specified divisions in the college’s dorms. Though there is evidence to suggest that fraternities at Kenyon were less exclusive than those at other colleges, these organizations held significant influence over who was included in the inner circles of social life on campus. Middle Kenyon offered independent students better housing and a social group, two functions of Kenyon’s Greek organizations. Rooms designated for Middle Kenyon members were located in the middle section of the second and third floors of Old Kenyon; students living in those rooms had the most difficulty escaping the building during the fire. The death of Jewish students in the fire suggests Jews’ distinctive place within Kenyon’s social life in the mid-twentieth century.

Students who attended Kenyon in the 1940s and 1950s said that anti-Semitism was not prevalent on Kenyon’s campus. However, they did, for various reasons, feel disconnected from campus social life and Jewish engagement. Ira Eliasoph ‘48 captured a sentiment expressed by many Jewish students from different eras:“You were isolated in a certain way and that’s how it was, but I didn't feel oppressed in any way.”[4] One the one hand, Jewish students said that they found Kenyon to be a comfortable place for them to be Jewish; they did not feel discriminated against or experience anti-Semitism. On the other hand, alumni said that they felt isolated from Jewish engagement and separated from certain aspects of campus social life.

The Jewish experience in the era of the Old K fire

Ira Eliasoph ‘48 came to Kenyon from Manhattan, N.Y., where his family attended Central Synagogue, a large Reform congregation. Eliasoph said that he chose Kenyon mainly because he attended a small high school and did not believe that he would be comfortable at a large university. Eliasoph noted that he did not inquire into what sort of Jewish community he would be entering by attending Kenyon or options available to him to practice his Judaism while on campus. Across generations of Kenyon students, this is a common sentiment: even for students who grew up in a religiously observant home and who were active in synagogue life, these students often did not seek out information the type of Jewish community they would be entering by attending Kenyon. As I will analyze later in this essay, this may have been because they were simply not concerned about their ability to engage with Judaism during their college years or because they assumed that wherever they attended they would be able to find a Jewish community.

When he reflected on the position of Jewish students at Kenyon during his time on campus, Eliasoph noted that there were likely students who held anti-Semitic beliefs, but they did not voice those views openly:  

You know, there were some people on campus, students, that I had reason to believe were anti-Semitic. But there was never any overt anti-Semitism, and certainly there never was anything that I saw from the faculty. So, you know, it was comfortable that there wasn't any problem or, you know, I didn't have any awareness of any problem in any way for me or anybody else.[5] 

While Eliasoph did not feel discriminated against as a Jewish student at Kenyon, he did say that he felt separated from the social fabric of the campus, which was dominated by fraternities. While it seems that Jews were not actively excluded from Greek organizations, Eliasoph noted that he and other Jewish students were not interested in that aspect of campus life, in part because the fraternities did not actively seek out Jewish students. “It was just that there were a bunch of us who weren't invited and weren't interested in what some of those groups were doing.”[6]

Charlie Parton ‘48 was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Parton is not Jewish, but provides a perspective on how fraternities viewed Jewish students and the openness of social life on campus. In Parton’s view, social life at Kenyon was inclusive; Jews were not excluded from the social life of the school. Parton said, “If somebody had a party, they [Jews] were welcome, everybody was. There wasn’t really any distinction as to who could go where or anything like that.”[7]

Robert Price ‘58 was a member of the Alpha Delta Phi (ADs) fraternity and recalls that every fraternity on campus had at least one Jewish member in the late 1950s. Price said that there were thirteen people in his pledge class, and three of them (including Price) were Jewish These numbers indicate that the Jewish population at Kenyon had grown in the decade between when Eliasoph and Price were on campus, and that it was becoming easier for Jews to integrate themselves into the college’s social community.

Although Jews at Kenyon were not excluded from social life on campus, they still felt removed from active engagement with Judaism. Price said, “I did not like the fact that I could not go to a Seder or go to High Holy Days without making a big to-do about it.” Price added, “It was inconvenient to be at Kenyon. You were isolated, it was a tiny college.”[8]

Moreover, Jewish students who attended Kenyon prior to 1960 were required to chapel services at Harcourt Parish, the Episcopal church on campus. Gordon Keith Chalmers, who was president of the college from 1937 to 1956, did believe in the necessity for Kenyon students to attend Christian religious services. In a 1947 Kenyon Collegian article outlining the college’s chapel requirement, President Chalmers was quoted as saying:

Kenyon College is a church college and holds that Christian education is a part of liberal education. Some colleges regard Christianity as one more subject in the catalogue, to be studied in class. At Kenyon we hold that Christianity is a matter not only of study but of practice, and one good way to learn and follow its practice is in the services of one of the branches of the Christian church.[9]

For Eliasoph, “The chapel requirement was a pain. I didn't enjoy doing that, but I did learn something from going to the services.”[10] However, Eliasoph also credits Chalmers for making the college a welcoming place for non-Christians, including Jewish students. In speaking about factors that made Kenyon a more comfortable place to be Jewish than perhaps other inistutions of higher learning in the mid-twentieth century, Eliasoph said “I think part of it really came from the top from Chalmers, who I think was very open minded kind of guy and didn't have any bad [anti-Semitic] feelings in that way. And I think that he sort of set the tone.”[11]

The Jewish experience in the 1960s and 1970s

The Jewish experience at Kenyon during the 1960s and 1970s was a period of transition. This era was caught in between the lack of Jewish life on campus in the ‘40s and ‘50s and the more recent Jewish experience marked by institutional support for organizing Kenyon’s Jewish community, which began with the establishment of Hillel on campus in the 1980s. Jewish students at Kenyon in the 1960s and 1970s, like those who attended in the 1940s and 1950s, do express similar sentiments about the lack of resources on campus for Jewish students. However, Jews on campus in the ‘60s and ‘70s suggest that they felt more included in the broader social life of the campus than did Jewish students ten or twenty years prior. In the 1960s, Kenyon was rapidly changing. The student body grew by about 300 students to a total of around 800. In 1969, Kenyon became coeducational, which had a deep impact on the social landscape of the college.[12] The college added many new buildings on campus, of which Mather Science Hall, Dempsey Hall (Lower Peirce), and Gund, Bushnell, and Manning residence halls are still a part of campus life.

As Kenyon expanded in size and diversity, so did opportunities for Jewish students to become a part of different facets of college social life. Many alumni of this period indicated that they did not so much feel isolated, but recognized the lack of resources available to them in Gambier. Similar to students who attended Kenyon in the 1940s and 1950s, these students felt that anti-Semitism was not prevalent on  campus; while they did occasionally hear derogatory remarks about Jews, they also heard similar remarks about other minority groups on campus. One sentiment commonly expressed is that they did not expect to engage with Judaism while at Kenyon; they did not believe that it would be an aspect of their college experience.

Fraternities welcomed Jews, but some Jews stayed away

David Horvitz ‘74 is a former chair of Kenyon’s Board of Trustees. As a student, Horvitz was a member of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. Horvitz’s experience at Kenyon is indicative of the trajectory of Jewish life on campus in that he was able to join a fraternity on campus, but other students recognized this as out of the ordinary. Horvitz said, “I wasn’t the first, but I was the only one in that class, which was unusual because there weren’t that many Jews overall. And there was talk about how unusual it was for a Jew to become a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon.”[13] Horvitz said that for the most part, other members of the fraternity took no issue with his Jewish identity. However, Horvitz did mention that there was one individual in the fraternity who was anti-Semitic and prejudiced against other students. Horvitz said, “He just made nasty identity comments about anybody who wasn’t Waspy. Most of them were Waspy. One guy. Other than that, I didn’t find being a Jewish there especially isolating.”[14] In certain ways, Horvitz’s reflections demonstrate how the Jewish experience in the 1960s and 1970s had changed at Kenyon from ten or twenty years prior. Jewish students more easily assimilated into campus life than they did before.

However, other Jewish students from that era decided that they did not wish to associate with fraternity life on campus. In certain ways, this made their experience at Kenyon. Daniel Epstein ’70 said that he was not excluded from socializing with the fraternities, but ultimately decided he did not wish to join one. Epstein expresses that his awareness of Kenyon’s history informed his decision to not join a fraternity:

But now that I look back on it, I think there must've been something in me and something in the place—you know the story of the Old Kenyon fire. I'm not sure how many of those students were Jewish, a lot of them were Jewish. And they were in that place because they were not welcome other places. So, on some level or other I might have been responding to some history that was there and I thought, you know, if Jews weren't welcome to the fraternities twenty years ago, so things have changed, but I really don't think I want to do that [join a fraternity].[15]

David Lynn ‘76, who has been editor of the Kenyon Review since 1994, said that during his time on campus he did not wish to associate with the fraternities. “I think the WASP elite recognized that I wasn't one of them, even though I'd gone to their schools, I'd done all their things, I knew how to play the game. But I never aspired, really to be part of the WASP elite.” Lynn believes that he likely could have joined one of the fraternities on campus, but decided that he did not wish to. The fact that Jewish students in the 1960s felt that they could join a fraternity but chose not to speaks to the position of Jews at Kenyon during this time. Campus social life was open enough that Jews were welcome to join fraternities, but some decided that they did not want to be part of these social circles which they viewed as WASPy.

Jewish women at Kenyon

Bonnie Levinson ’73 was a member of the first class of women to attend Kenyon, and she experienced the college during a period of intense transformation. Levinson sees a parallel between her position as one of the first female students at Kenyon and as a Jew on campus. “Although they were not prepared for us to be here as Jews, they certainly were not prepared for us to be here as women. They did not have a clue as to what we needed or to transition the college into a coeducational institution.”[16] Kenyon certainly was unprepared for having women on campus, but there were ways in which the arrival of women on campus positively impacted Jewish life at Kenyon.

However, Ellen Pader ’73 believes that the arrival of women also contributed to an increase in the number of Jews who began to attend Kenyon. In fact, Pader estimates that 10 to 15 percent of the approximately 100 women in the Class of ’73 were Jewish.  “My memories of it is being very aware of how many more Jews there seemed to be in the [Class of ‘73], men and women, than in the rest of the campus together, as if it had somehow changed demographics very strongly.”[17] Pader, who is from an active and tight-knit Jewish community in Teaneck, NJ, said that she quickly figured out which of her peers were Jewish and was able for create lasting friendships with them. “I found myself gravitating towards people who I realized were Jewish…I think we were all aware of who was Jewish.”[18] Nonetheless, Pader recognized that she was more aware of being Jewish at Kenyon because it was not the norm as it was for her at home. She says:

I think was just identity. I think it was just that sense that when you're in a strange place and there's something that you have in common with somebody, that cultural connection. It was just that recognition of similarity and understanding at some profound level...We walked into someone else’s territory, but there was never a sense that we weren’t wanted.[19]

Pader’s reflection is indicative of changes in the Jewish experience when viewed in comparison to students who experienced life at Kenyon twenty or thirty years prior. For those students in the 1940s and 1950s, this sentiment of “cultural difference” contributed to feeling isolated from social life at Kenyon, as well as from an organized Jewish community. However, Pader believes that because she felt different because she is Jewish, it made her feel a deeper connection to the cultural aspects of the religion. Speaking about the “cultural difference” that she felt, she said, “It reinforced my cultural Judaism. My identity is Jewish, because it wasn’t the norm...You become more connected to it...It probably reinforced my sense of identity because I became aware of it.”[20]

Although the number of Jewish students on campus was increasing during the 1960s and 1970s, these students were still in search of ways to engage with Judaism on campus. The arrival of Dr. Eugen Kullmann made it possible for to students engage with Judaism on both a religious and an academic level. [21] In 1968, Kenyon hired Kullmann to teach in the Religion Department, but he also took it upon himself to lead Friday evening Shabbat services that occurred in the Church of the Holy Spirit on campus. Kullmann’s classroom persona and his outspoken views about current events made Jewish learning relevant to Jewish and non-Jewish students. However, there still did not exist any sort of formalized Jewish community at Kenyon. In other words, Kenyon’s administration has yet to begin focusing efforts on hiring a Jewish leader or creating a home for Jewish students on campus.

Alan Rothenberg ’67 eventually led the creation of Jewish life on campus in the twenty-first century. However, when he was a student at Kenyon he had few options to celebrate Judaism. Rothenberg had no expectations for Jewish life at Kenyon.  “When I was at Kenyon, I never thought about a Jewish community at Kenyon, that we needed one, that we should have one—it would have been beyond my wavelength to take something like that on.” Nevertheless, decades later, Rothenberg became committed to the idea that Kenyon should have a vibrant Jewish community and a permanent home on campus.

The Jewish experience in the twenty-first century pre-Rothenberg Hillel

The Jewish experience at Kenyon in the twenty-first century differs radically from the one Ira Eliasoph experienced in the 1940s. In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the home of Kenyon Hillel was in a house next to campus auto body shop. It included an office for the Jewish chaplain, communal space for Jewish events, and housing for a few Jewish students on the second floor. However, this building did not include space to hold High Holiday services, which were held in Weaver Cottage, a multipurpose space on campus.

Jessie Rubenstein ‘08 came to Kenyon from a Conservative Jewish family in which her mother was a rabbi. Rubenstein said that at home she often experienced anti-Semitism, but that when she came to Kenyon she had a difficult time staying away from Jewish life. She said, “I had a very involved Jewish upbringing. I was very influenced by Judaism growing up. I did kind of try and break away from that when I went to college and I thought, ‘hey, maybe give something else a try’ but it didn't work.”[22]

When Rubenstein came to Kenyon, her perception of being Jewish changed. Rubenstein expressed that, unlike at home, she felt comfortable being openly Jewish at Kenyon. She said, “It was comforting to be in a place where being Jewish was not seen as a bad thing, or seen as something that I should be teased over. I felt very accepted at Kenyon for who I am, and that was nice.”[23] She added, “I never felt scared to tell anyone at Kenyon that I was Jewish. That’s something I grew up with, being scared to tell people that I was Jewish. To be the known Jew on campus--that was not something that I lived in fear of.” Rubenstein’s comments are similar to those that Jewish students who attended Kenyon thirty or fifty years prior. However, Rubenstein’s comments are distinct in that she not only felt relatively comfortable at Kenyon, but had the structure of Hillel for her to take initiative and work to grow the community. She dedicated a significant portion of her time on campus to making other students want to engage with Jewish life while at Kenyon.

Rubenstein recognized the potential for Kenyon’s Jewish community, a major factor shaping why she served as one of Hillel’s student managers for two years. Rubenstein said:

It was a little disengaged. Hillel events were not well attended. It was always a struggle. It was like me and six or seven other people and that was not great. Outreach to the Jewish students when I first arrived was not great. One of the reasons why I wanted to be the manager of Hillel was I wanted to change that. Hillel should be a place that people wanted to go.”[24]

Rubenstein said that part of her strategy was to focus Hillel events on things other than prayer services. She said that Hillel began hosting meals and discussions with professors as part of her way to get more Jewish students to come to Hillel events. She also said that Hillel provided students with food and hot chocolate during exam weeks. Though not inherently religious, these sorts of strategies encouraged more Jewish students to see Hillel as a place for them on campus. She recognized that for Hillel to succeed, students themselves had to want to come to events, rather than attending because their parents pressured them to do so. Rubenstein said, “Hillel should be a place where people want to be. Not because they’re there out of a sense of obligation to their parents, but because they want to be there. People were there out of an obligation to their parents, and that can only take a community so far.”[25]

Hillel gave Rubenstein a home on campus. “It really helped me find my place at Kenyon. Being able to have a Jewish community on campus was essential to making me feel like I belonged.”[26] Rubenstein felt that finding this group that she closely identified with and could commit time to was indicative of the broader Kenyon experience. She believed that Kenyon’s isolated location contributed to Jews feeling welcome on campus. She said:

In terms of accepting others, I think it’s a good thing. We don’t have the outside world to rely on, so we rely on each other. Not many people want to go live up a hill surrounded by cornfields. It takes a special type of person to want that. If you’re the type of person who wants that, you’re the type of person who is ready to accept being with the people who are with you on that hill.[27]

Rubenstein’s comment is relevant to the broader topic of the minority experience on a small liberal arts campus. It should also be viewed in relation to the perspective of Jewish students who were at Kenyon in the mid-twentieth century. As older Jewish alumni expressed, Kenyon’s location contributed to feelings of solitude and isolation from any form of Jewish engagement. In the twenty-first century, Rubenstein, in fact, is saying that this very isolation contributed her belief that Kenyon was, in general, a comfortable place to be Jewish.

Kenyon in the twenty-first century in the era of Rothenberg Hillel

In the second decade of the twenty-first century, the Jewish experience continued to eveolve. Most notable is the addition of the Rothenberg Hillel House, which was dedicated on October 24, 2014. The project was spearheaded by Alan Rothenberg ’67, who joined Kenyon’s Board of Trustees in 1995. In 1996, Rothenberg’s daughter graduated from Kenyon, and Rothenberg said that it was around this time that he started to become invested in the long-term success of Kenyon’s Jewish community. To that end, Rothenberg believed that Jews at Kenyon needed a permanent space on campus dedicated to Jewish life.

Rothenberg reflects on the initiative he had to take to take for the building to be completed. He said: “I realized this wasn't going to happen because other people wanted it to happen. It was only going to happen if I made it happen. And fortunately we had some great fellow travelers, many of whose names are on the house now.”[28] The establishment of the Rothenberg Hillel building gave the Kenyon Jewish community a more public face. It made students and parents aware that a Jewish community existed in Gambier, an unlikely location for a growing Jewish community. The building included a sanctuary, big enough for Jewish students, faculty, and other community members to fit in for High Holiday services, a two-sided kosher kitchen, and space for students to study and hang out. Rothenberg Hillel House has given Jewish students a permanent home on campus and provided Jewish life at Kenyon newfound visibility. However, just as Jewish students faced issues of inclusion in the 1950s, there are still issues which alienate Jewish students on campus.

During her time on campus, Deb Malamud ‘16 was involved with Israel and the early stages of what became the student organization Kenyon Students for Israel. She also grew up in a Conservative Jewish community and wanted to continue her active involvement in a Jewish community while at Kenyon. Malamud faced the challenge of being engaged with both the campus conversation around Israel-Palestine and the school’s Jewish community. She felt that she was unusual among Jewish students in her desire to openly voice her opinions about Israel: “I felt like the majority of Jews on campus wanted to separate themselves from the issue that I was gravitating towards. I felt like I was more of an anomaly than a representative of them.”[29] Malamud expressed that there were times when she attended events at Hillel but was unable to enjoy it because conversation quickly turned to political issues surrounding Israel-Palestine.

I would have liked it to be separate. I really would prefer it, but there was no way. It was definitely intertwined. And that's also part of why sometimes it was difficult to attend Jewish events on campus because the conversation would so quickly switch to that [Israel-Palestine]. And don’t always want to be, like, ‘on’ for a conversation like that. Sometimes you just want to have a Shabbat dinner.[30]

The public conversation around campus about Israel-Palestine Malamud’s situation indicates a new stage in Jewish life at Kenyon. By this time, Jewish students had a home in Rothenberg Hillel. Jewish events took place on a regular basis throughout the semester, in addition to bigger events for the High Holidays, Hanukkah, and Passover. Jewish students were no longer seeking ways to engage with Judaism; now, they were looking for a voice in issues discussed on campus.

During her time at Kenyon, Malamud and a few other students began meeting with Professor Fred Baumann in the Political Science department to discuss issues related to Israel. The group continued to meet regularly and eventually became Kenyon Students For Israel, an organization which continues to exist at Kenyon. KSFI brings in speakers, co-hosts events, and its members publish op-eds in the student newspaper the Kenyon Collegian. Malamud said, “I was part of the group that made it [the Israel-Palestine conversation] a two-sided discussion.”[31]

While Malamud wanted to be actively involved in the Israel-Palestine conversation on campus, she did not want to sever relationships because of it. “I didn’t want to lose friends over it, and that was something that was really important for me.” She added, “This stuff [topics around Israel] had just started being a topic of conversation and people didn't want to appear adversarial, a lot of the people who were involved in putting up the wall[32] were our friends. It was important to preserve those relationships.”[33] Malamud’s involvement with KSFI gave her a valuable way to discuss issues related to Israel with other students who believed it was important to represent the Israel side of the issue in the campus conversation about Israel-Palestine. Her involvement in the group, though, alienated her from Kenyon’s Jewish community. This is an obstacle that Jewish students in previous eras at Kenyon did not face. While certainly not all Jewish students become actively involved with the Israel-Palestine conversation at Kenyon, it is increasingly an aspect of their Jewish identity on which they are asked to take a position. This indicates the increasing complexity of Jews’ position on campus and the notion that Jews are expected to take stances on political issues related to the Jewish identity in the twenty-first century.

Conclusion

In the past seventy years, Jewish life has developed to the point that it would be unrecognizable for a Jewish student who attended Kenyon in 1948. First, the number of Jewish students has grown enormously. Of the 1,730 students on campus in 2019, around 16 percent are Jewish, a total of approximately 275.[34] Though an exact number is not available, many of Kenyon faculty members are Jewish as well. Jewish students on campus today have many resources to engage with and celebrate different aspects of their Jewish identity through Kenyon Hillel. Further, Greek life at Kenyon is more open than ever before, providing Jewish students with options for social life that were previously unavailable or less welcoming. There are platforms for Jewish students to discuss issues related to Israel, a particularly hot issue on U.S. college campuses with the rise of the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement globally. All of these are aspects of the Jewish experience at Kenyon that at one point in the past did not exist. No longer is Gambier, Ohio a place where students feel they need to leave Judaism behind for four years. Many Jews arrive on campus and are at the very least interested in the options for Jewish cultural and religious activity during their time here. But all of this accompanied by challenges.

For the past two years, I have worked as one of Kenyon Hillel’s Student Managers. In that time, there were Friday evenings when thirty or forty students and faculty gathered in Rothenberg Hillel House to share a Shabbat meal; around 100 students, faculty, and other community members attended Passover seders; a Torah study group met on a weekly basis. However, during this time, I was often struck by the feeling that Jewish students at Kenyon believe that a Jewish community will exist on this campus whether they decide to engage with it or not. Researching Jewish life at Kenyon made it clear to me that an active and growing Jewish community will only continue to thrive here if Jewish students en masse care deeply about celebrating this part of their identity together. Between classes, involvement in clubs and other student organizations, and a social life, it is understandable that dedication to one’s religion will not become a regular part of a Kenyon student’s week. With that in mind, Kenyon Hillel must continue to serve not only Jewish students of different backgrounds, but also Jewish students who wish to interact with Judaism in different ways while on campus. Some students might want to attend services on Friday evenings, others would prefer to attend an event that is more focused on certain aspect of Jewish culture, such as challah making. As history demonstrates, it will be difficult for Kenyon to ever satisfy every Jewish student. Certainly, the presence of Kenyon Hillel in a permanent home on campus ensures a certain degree of longevity for a Jewish community on campus. Nevertheless, the institutional support for Kenyon’s Jewish community will only continue to exist if Jewish students, faculty, and alumni are actively involved in the longevity of Jewish life at Kenyon.

[1] “College remembers Old Kenyon fire.” bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu. http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x1494.html (Accessed May 8, 2019).

[2] “College remembers Old Kenyon fire.” bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu. http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x1494.html (Accessed May 8, 2019).

[3] “College remembers Old Kenyon fire.” bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu. http://bulletin-archive.kenyon.edu/x1494.html (Accessed May 8, 2019).

[4] Eliasoph, Ira. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 1, 2019.

[5] Eliasoph, Ira. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 1, 2019.

[6] Eliasoph, Ira. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 1, 2019.

[7] Parton, Charlie. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 5, 2019.

[8] Price, Robert. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 20, 2018.

[9] “Chapel Attendance News Relaxed.” Kenyon Collegian, March 14, 1947.

[10] Eliasoph, Ira. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 1, 2019.

[11] Eliasoph, Ira. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 1, 2019.

[12] This essay does not fully investigate the impact that coeducation had on the Jewish experience at Kenyon. The research of Sigal Felber ‘21 covers this topic.

[13] Horvitz, David. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 12, 2019.

[14] Horvitz, David. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 12, 2019.

[15] Epstein, Daniel. Interview by author. Digital recording. Gambier, OH. May 21, 2018.

[16] Bonnie Levensin, and Ellen Pader. Interview by author. Digital recording. Gambier, OH. May 26, 2018.

[17] Horvitz, David. Interview by author. Phone interview. February 12, 2019.

[18] Pader, Ellen. Interview by author. Digital recording. June 28, 2018.

[19] Pader, Ellen. Interview by author. Digital recording. June 28, 2018.

[20] Pader, Ellen. Interview by author. Digital recording. June 28, 2018.

[21] See my essay “Eugen Kullmann and Leonard Gordon: Visions of Jewish Life at Kenyon” for a fuller picture of Kullmann and his impact on Kenyon’s Jewish community.

[22] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[23] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[24] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[25] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[26] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[27] Rubenstein, Jessie. Interview by author. Phone interview. June 4, 2018.

[28] Rothenberg, Alan. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 30, 2018.

[29] Malamud, Deb. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 28, 2018.

[30] Malamud, Deb. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 28, 2018.

[31] Malamud, Deb. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 28, 2018.

[32] A reference to the symbolic wall Kenyon Students for Justice in Palestine put up on campus as part of their annual “Israeli Apartheid Week.”

[33] Malamud, Deb. Interview by author. Phone interview. May 28, 2018.

[34] “Top 60 Jewish Schools.” Hillel International. https://www.hillel.org/college-guide/top-60-jewish-schools (Accessed 05-9-2019)