Beyond the slump

Talk of the Quad: The seder, as a modern Jew

“Are you Jewish?”
It’s a girl I sit next to in my English class. She is now sitting across the table from me at Bowdoin’s Passover Seder.
I give her my standard, terribly long-winded response:
“Yes, well, I mean, my mom is Jewish, so technically—I use big air quotes—I’m Jewish. But I never went to Temple and I never was Bat Mitzvah-ed and we celebrate all the Jewish holidays but also Christmas because my dad is Christian—well, technically—more air quotes—he’s both because his dad was Jewish but they weren’t religious so it’s more of a cultural thing I guess. So, yeah. I’m half-Jewish—or, like, three-quarters. But basically no. Not religiously or anything.”
And like everyone else I tell that to, including most likely the reader of this article, my classmate doesn’t care all that much.
“Oh. Cool,” she says.
And yet, it’s important to me, every time that question is asked, to clarify my level of Jew-ness, to emphasize that, though non-practicing, I am a technical Jew. It’s a surprisingly central aspect of my identity. I feel like I owe some strange, intangible allegiance to my Jewish heritage, which I simultaneously know almost nothing about and have never felt any interest in exploring.
Inexplicably, I also feel like I’m part of some invisible global Jewish network. When I’m outside of my home in the greater-New York-metropolitan area—which one-third of the Jewish population calls home—I feel an immediate connection with other people I meet who are Jewish. It’s like their Jewishness automatically makes them comforting, safe, friendly—even if they’re complete strangers. Not that I’d pick up an ominous-looking hitchhiker carrying a lead pipe and smelling like formaldehyde if he told me he was Jewish, but I guess I have to admit that it wouldn’t hurt his case. After all, he could turn out to be, like my Grandma thinks of Aaron Sorkin, “a nice Jewish boy”…right?
I’m thinking about this in Moulton Union while members of Bowdoin Hillel recite Hebrew prayers I’ve heard every year at my family’s Seders that still sound entirely foreign. I’m mouthing along, pretending I know more than I really do, and thinking about the forthcoming meal, which is also my habit at Seders. Last year, Bowdoin served roasted root vegetables. I wonder if they’ll serve them again. I snack prematurely on the matzo in the center of the table; I eat the charoset (sweet apples and cinnamon) but skip the maror (bitter herb).
Looking around the room at faculty, students and community members, I wonder why my Jewish identity is so inextricably tied to the person I believe myself to be. Especially when considering I care so little about observing the religious traditions of this holiday (I skip the hardboiled egg, too).
“It’s so interesting to see all the people who are Jewish at Bowdoin,” my friend comments.“I think that most of these people aren’t Jewish,” I say. But I don’t mean it as a judgment at all. That observation is, in fact, precisely what I like so much about Bowdoin’s Seder. Open to anyone, including my redheaded Irish Catholic friend sitting diagonally from me, the Seder is far more about community than anything else.
Yes—it’s about celebrating a Jewish holiday. But it’s also about not caring if a fellow student skips over the difficult Hebrew words in the Haggadah (the Jewish guide for the order of the Seder). It’s about amending the Haggadah so that the story of Joseph, my knowledge of which is limited to the plot of the musical “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat,” includes him “committing himself to the Common Good.” It’s about coming together with a group of peers and enjoying each other’s company over a delicious and bountiful meal (thank you, Bowdoin Dining!). Having grown up in a vaguely-Jewish household, I feel relatively confident in claiming that nothing is more Jewish than that.
So I can take from my Jewishness what I want—I can value it while also denouncing my religiosity. I can eat the charoset and not the maror because I am in a position to ingest what I want from this experience and leave the rest on the table.
The time comes for the closing remarks. It’s my friend’s turn to read from the Haggadah. This is the second Seder she’s ever been to, (the first was the Bowdoin Seder last year.) She comes to a Hebrew word, and stumbles embarrassingly. Someone a few seats down murmurs the pronunciation. I suppress laughter—partially because of my friend’s mistake, but mostly because I have no clue how to pronounce the word either.

Talk of the Quad: Tomorrow's farewell parties

I was not—I do not think—among Peter Coviello’s favorite students. He was nonetheless among my favorite teachers.
Pete, or “Coves,” as his self-appointed acolytes called him to make him ours, had many wonderful pupils in whom he delighted. I’m thinking of the unexpected poets of the lacrosse team and the unforeseen theorists at the end of the seminar table who inspired him to clap his hands in joyful assent.
As Professor Coviello departs, I anticipate an outpouring of fond remembrances to rival those of President Mills. So it’s with a familiar proprietary feeling that I once again raise my hand to say something to Professor Coviello and jealously imagine the sea of other—maybe more beloved—students upon whom he might call.
Yet as we all lose Pete, I think that jealousy grants me—grants us—some purchase of this loss. I first took a class with Professor Coviello my sophomore year. It was a seminar on Freud that was among the courses he offered when he returned to Bowdoin in 2010. (He began teaching at the college in 1998).
I admit to some skepticism: What, I chided myself, could this effortless intellectual care for my thoughts?
Yet, when Professor Coviello wasn’t teaching electrically, or gesticulating eloquently, or expertly deploying jargon and obscenity, he was listening intently. Perhaps this is why I never felt as special to him as I, or maybe all of his students, secretly hoped to: Pete is an egalitarian. We were all peers in the classroom, if only for a tantalizing moment.
This democracy is not without pedagogy. Here, as always with Professor Coviello, I’m aware of the injustice I do in paraphrasing him.
The languages we, in academic communities, create and deconstruct together has a great power to sustain and unite us.
Put another way: the vocabulary with which we parse our thoughts and carefully complicate the seemingly simple can be turned to the work of our lives. This talk does not, as Pete might say, do nothing.
I would not be writing now (in any of the ways I am) if it weren’t for Pete.
Once, in a second course with him, I managed to suggest a word that he briefly took to using. To have permeated his vocabulary one one-thousandth as much as he had entered into mine was a thrill I won’t soon forget.
Yet I drifted quickly from Pete’s powerful orbit even while at Bowdoin. My senior year, he offered a course called The Queer Child and unfortunately, I didn’t take it and don’t know much about the course information.
It did cause a stir on campus with its title, and managed to attract to it a number of my English major friends. Queer children, they called themselves. Their eagerness reminded me when I too, was in the throes of his charms.
Even then I felt acutely out of his circle. For this of course I don’t blame him, but to be distant from people who shine as brilliantly as he does is a kind of winter.
But perhaps that’s too sentimental or not poetic enough.
Besides, I would like to think that Professor Coviello teaches a way of thinking and talking that will survive his tenure at Bowdoin, as it survives in me and in all his friends and students.
So farewell, Pete! You will be, and have been, missed.
Caleb Pershan is a member of the Class of 2012.

Talk of the Quad

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Hy Khong

Orient Staff

April 17, 2014

Walking through Smith Union two weeks ago, I saw more students crowded near the mail center than I’d ever seen before (even more so than the week before Spring Gala, when everyone seems to have a Nasty Gal clothing package). The sounds of S.U. box doors swinging open, paper crinkling and high-fives meant only one thing: College House decisions had been released.

As I navigated my way through all the commotion, I kept hearing one phrase pop up in conversations: “I’m so excited for next year.” Living in a House has been one of the best experiences I’ve had at Bowdoin, so it’s understandable that accepted applicants would feel the same thrill I felt one year ago.

But I couldn’t feel completely excited for them. I grew a little bit more uncomfortable with each text that came in carrying names of those who would be succeeding us at Reed. It was a look into the future, but what about the present?

It wasn’t until I was walking down a sunlit Boody Street later that week that I realized my time is coming to an end, just like the rapidly melting snow. These letters were more than just the announcement of the future of the Houses—they were a subtle reminder that my housemates and I only have a month left. Exactly one month from today, our OneCards will no longer open the doors to the place we all call home.

I feel as if we’re running out of time. Where did this year go? There’s still so much I want to do with the people I run into in the kitchen, so many late night conversations to be had in the living room and events I wish could take place in our yard. (We do have the best yard in the game, after all.)

The limited time I have left in Reed terrifies me because I feel as if I haven’t made the most of the year. Like trying to hold onto sand, so many months feel as if they just slipped between my fingers. I expected a tremendous year, and it was…for the most part. Returning to campus from the summer, my housemates and I laid out in the sun, cooked endless meals together and thoroughly took advantage of the fact we were all living under one roof—something we’d never get the chance to do again.

The elation and naïve hope with which I entered the school year quickly dissipated as the temperatures plummeted. I felt myself succumbing to the legendary “sophomore slump.”
I grew increasingly disenchanted with the House system, with the winter months; Bowdoin began to feel stagnant, and I became increasingly stressed by the big decisions looming overhead and the smallest of things—like someone not returning a text message—would upset me more than it should have. My attempts to forge new friendships and to strengthen old ones, something for which the College Houses are the perfect platform, felt feeble.

I fixated on this slump as if it was the heart of being a sophomore on campus. For four to five months, one bad day would continuously lead to another until I had dug myself into a rut of debilitating loneliness.

Nights I didn’t go out I spent on my bedroom floor staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of the dark corners I hadn’t known my mind contained.

My personal sophomore slump pushed me into a severe depression—one I disguised with a heavy workload and “I’m just tired”—and I cannot say that I didn’t think about leaving Bowdoin, at least sometimes.

Sophomore year narrows your horizon. Friend groups grow closer—sometimes to an irritatingly insular degree—and study abroad and major declaration decisions feel burdensome and momentous. But my year has been so much more than just a slump—it’s been a year of youthful adventures, immense growth and lasting memories. Yes, it’s a year of ridiculous highs and lows, but I’d argue the highs overshadow any low.

It wasn’t until I looked through the photo album of candid moments from this year—in its entirety, for the first time—during Spring Break that I managed to pick my head up and remember how fulfilling living in Reed has been. Each memory came flooding back to me as I glimpsed at each 4” x 6” photograph. I used to compulsively upload these photos to Facebook at the end of each week, obsessed with not letting any hilarious incident or cute portrait be forgotten. I’m sorry if my mass uploading of midnight soccer, impromptu swimming-with-the-bioluminescence trips, or weekend revelry popped up on your newsfeed when you needed to study. Actually, I’m not sorry. These are the memories we need to cherish.

However, I noticed there was a big time frame missing in my album. Four to five months of the year were not documented because I was submerged in my sophomore slump, convinced that I was miserable with Bowdoin. These months are now time that I—with only a month left in Reed—wish I still had.

As the year winds down and my housemates and I prepare to pass the torch down to “New Reed,” I’m taking photos again because although we’re on our way out, this month is still the last chapter of our time at Reed and of our sophomore year.

When I return from being abroad in the spring, it’ll be a little odd not to walk down Boody Street to my room, let alone have half my grade off campus. But if there’s anything this year has taught me, it’s to make the most of the present because it will fly by you faster than you can realize.

To the new generation of Reed: Sophomore year will be one of the best—you just have to look beyond the slump.

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