The first Friday of my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon University, my new friend Molly asked me if I wanted to go to Hillel for services that night. I hesitated because I was new to campus, and it seemed like there were so many better options. But after a moment, I said yes. When I walked into the Edward and Rose Berman Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh, I took a step back in surprise-or rather, attempted to step back, but the hordes of students around me prevented me from moving.

Growing up in a suburb of Baltimore with few Jewish kids, I was surprised to see so many young Jews in one place, let alone a religious institution, simply because they wanted to be there. Their enthusiasm was contagious, even as we split up for Reform, Conservative and Orthodox services. I followed the group to the Reform service, which was particularly welcoming because of its camp song melodies. The leaders made everybody feel at home by having us introduce ourselves to one another. This was especially important to a new student at a Hillel that housed not only people from my school, but students from many other local universities as well.

Everyone came back together for dinner. There was a palpable buzz in the air and a noticeable sense of community. Looking around the table, I wondered what the coming months would bring, in a Jewish sense and otherwise.

That year was filled with my faith. I co-led a Rosh Hashanah morning service, traveled to Israel for the first time and ate falafel in the warm winter. I took a Hebrew class off-campus, baked hamantaschen with the family of Hillel staffers, attended a lecture by Yossi Klein Halevi, an American-Israeli journalist, and made a second night “seder-ette” meal to share with a diverse group of people.

Every Jewish student has a different experience with Judaism during his or her first year away from home, and there is no single answer to keeping Judaism in your college life. It’s easy to lose track of your Jewishness when you graduate from your high school youth group and economics class still meets on the High Holidays. It’s easy to feel disconnected from your culture and religion when you’re not at home with your family or at the synagogue in which you grew up.

There is definitely the question of how you define your faith in this less familiar college environment, and how you’ll maintain it. The answer is not necessarily observing Shabbat every week, joining a Jewish sorority or going to synagogue. It’s about finding a community in which you feel comfortable and surrounding yourself with people that you like and with whom you identify.

My experiences are by no means an instruction manual for Judaism-not even close. They are just opportunities that I stumbled upon or carefully planned or took advantage of. As you unwrap those new textbooks and settle into a new room and a new year, be aware that your Judaism is what you make of it when you’re away from the comforts of home. But that doesn’t mean that you can’t find a different kind of comfort and home at school.

Text By: Caroline Kessler