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Finding time to ask why

Joshua Jerusalmi ’11

Like many undergraduates in Jewish studies, Josh Jerusalmi started at Brandeis by not coming. He deferred for a year to spend time in Israel. That year has really helped him make the most of university.

“I was raised Orthodox,” he says. “All my life rabbis and parents said do this, don’t do that. There was no time to open up the sources and ask why.”

“I’m focusing on Jewish identity,” Jerusalmi says, “and I am interested in the Holocaust — my grandparents were Holocaust survivors. I get courses at Brandeis where we look at things like Nazi propaganda, things you wouldn’t necessarily see in a yeshiva or religious setting.”

His favorite course so far is Abraham Joshua Heschel: Spirituality and Action. Outside of Brandeis, his favorite experience is mentoring and reading to young children in a local public school served by a Brandeis volunteer program, which he also coordinates.

Filling the gap with passion

Emily Watkins ’10

A 10th-grade trip to Israel put Emily Watkins on the road to Jewish studies at Brandeis. A lifelong public-school student, she returned from that trip and enrolled in religious and historical studies for half of 11th grade, then continued those pursuits during a “gap” year before entering college.

At Brandeis, she is immersed in the politics and sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. Calling the struggles “hard to understand, but deeply interesting and infinitely challenging,” she says, “My people are Israelis, my people are not the Palestinians — but that doesn’t mean everything the Jews do is right.”

Her favorite classes so far are Contemporary Middle East Politics, taught by Asher Susser, a former director of the Moshe Dayan Center at Tel Aviv University, and Sociology of the Israeli-Palestinian Confrontation, with Gordon A. Fellman. Her most rewarding extracurricular activity is teaching fifth-graders in an on-campus Hebrew school run by the Boston-area Jewish Education Program.