Hillel
Sigd Continued from Page 5
Continued from Page 7
Katz said that if they had had a “normal
freshman year,” they would have had a
larger social network and greater integra-
tion into the larger Penn community.

Sophomore Eitan Weinstein, Hillel vice
president for Shabbat and holidays, shared
Katz’ outlook. Th ough he’s found a new
normal, Weinstein said that fi nding a social
network at Penn has been a challenge.

“As time goes on, people are able to
fi nd the communities and fi nd resources,
but particularly in college, I think that for
a lot of people, it can be very diffi cult to
know where to turn,” he said.

Hillel has been at the center of these
students’ social life, making the peer com-
ponent of the peer mental health train-
ing especially important. According to a
BBYO-CAW study, 79% of young adults
will go to a peer fi rst to talk about mental
health issues.

“Walking into the counseling center is
a huge step,” Fidler said. “It can feel over-
whelming sometimes taking that next
step, or that fi rst step is paralyzing, while
talking to a friend is easy.”
Hillel is one of several “micro-com-
munities” for students, Greenberg said.

Beyond creating a support network
within the student organizations, stu-
dent leaders can take their training to
their other communities and clubs. And
rather than visiting the health center,
which feels removed from campus, stu-
dents are more likely to want to visit a
central and convenient location for pro-
fessional support.

Steinhardt Hall’s position as a high-traf-
fi c building and home for the Jewish
student community establishes it as the
bedrock for these mental health interven-
tions. Students already feel at ease visiting
the space to do homework, go to class and
socialize with friends.

“Th ose students are here and, for many
of them, they feel very comfortable and
safe,” Greenberg said. “Th is is their home
away from home.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com 27 years in Israel, where she’s observed
rabbis and older generations of Ethiopian
Jews take part in a day of fasting and
prayers on Sigd. But to her generation,
the holiday is a time of reunion with
friends and family with a large ceremo-
nial meal of dabo, a fragrant yeasted
honey bread, being served alongside an
Ethiopian meal with injera.

While the older generation holds on to
some of the somberness of the holiday,
remembering a time of their own yearn-
ing or struggle arriving in Israel, the
younger generation is fi lled with feelings
of spiritual and physical arrival to the
land of milk and honey.

“It’s kind of become a half-fasting and
then half-celebration,” Beza said. “We no
longer need to pray to get to Jerusalem
because we made it.”
For Ethiopian Israeli Jews in America,
however, the observance of Sigd looks
signifi cantly diff erent. Kanotopsky and
Beza will fast and break their fasts in
the evening, but their celebratory din-
ners will consist of dining with family
in Kanotopsky’s case, and with a group
of students from UPenn’s Ethiopian
Eritrean Student Association in Beza’s.

In the short time Kanotosky and Beza
have been in the United States, there
has been a desire from their American
Jewish counterparts to learn more about
Sigd. Beza believes that the Jews in the U.S.

have taken to learning about Ethiopian
Jewish culture more quickly than Israeli
Jews — symbolic of a greater acceptance
of Jewish plurality.

“Th ere’s a lot of excitement and maybe
desire to know this community, more
here to American Jews than maybe in
Israel because it’s something that they
don’t really know or are used to,” she
said. “American Jews are kind of really
excited about it, that there are Jews that
not only look like them, [but] there’s a lot
of Jews that look diff erent than them.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com BUSINESS / LEGAL DIRECTORIES
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