Ramadan began over spring break on March 10 and lasts for a month until April 9 this year. Easter Sunday, which commemorates the reincarnation of Christ, is this upcoming weekend on March 31. Additionally, Hindu students will celebrate Holi this spring, a celebration of color based on a story of good over evil. The Jewish community will be observing Passover, which remembers the Exodus from Egypt and will take place from April 22 to April 30.

For Ramadan, which commemorates Muhammad’s first revelation, community iftars are being hosted in Dwight Chapel on March 29 and April 5. There are also nightly Taraweeh prayers in Dwight Chapel at 9 p.m. and a campus Eid Prayer on April 10 in the Lanman Center at Payne Whitney Gymnasium. 

Yusuf Rasheed ’25, president of the Muslim Students Association emphasized the importance of Ramadan for Muslims at Yale. 

“It is time of reflection, self-improvement, [and] service to the community. Ramadan is considered as the most important month in the Islamic calendar, and so to be able to participate in it with the vibrant Muslim community at Yale is a blessing we are grateful for,” Rasheed said. 

Like Rasheed, several other Yalies said that these holidays shape their sense of community in college. These students noted that while holidays are usually a time of celebrating with family, in college that changes. 

Maanasa Nandigam ’25, president of the Hindu Students Organization, said that although she has celebrated Holi her whole life, celebrating in college has been different.

Surrounded mostly by people her age, Nandigam said celebrating Holi in college has made her feel more connected to her Hinduism. 

“When you’re at home, religion is something you do because your parents do it,” Nandigam said. “When you’re in college you’re living on your own and you have the ability to choose what you want to invest your time in and what you believe in. Because of that, I’ve gotten closer to Hinduism. This is something that brings me joy and I enjoy sharing it with people who also care about it.”

The Hindu Students Organization will be celebrating Holi on April 20 at the Crescent Underground Theater. They will also be collaborating with the South Asian Graduate Association, the School of Public Health’s Desi Students Alliance and the School of Management’s South Asia Club.

For Passover, the Slifka Center for Jewish Life will be hosting a large communal seder on the first night which falls on April 22, and then will be coordinating smaller seders hosted by students and staff on the second night. 

Sophie Dauerman ’25, one of the co-presidents of the Hillel Student Board at the Slifka Center, said that in most years she has gone home to celebrate Passover with her family. However, this year she has decided to stay. 

“The warmth and strength of our community makes it feels like a home away from home for me, which is especially important to me during Passover. I’m grateful that I’ll be sharing this special time with our community,” Dauerman said. 

Christian Union Lux, a majority Protestant group, plans to observe Easter, a holiday that celebrates the reincarnation of Christ, with many other Christian groups with an inter-ministry worship night on March 31 at Battell Chapel. The event will invite all Christian students to sing worship and holy songs and will include groups such as Yale Students for Christ, Yale Chi Alpha and St. Thomas Moore. 

CU Lux also plans to host a guest pastor Nick Nowalk on Holy Saturday, the Saturday before Easter. He will speak on the topic of the “Hiddenness of God.” 

“When I’m home with my family we don’t have anything special planned for Easter night,” Tiana Luo ’24 said, one of the women’s bible course co-leaders and former board member at Christian Union Lux. “The worship night that we do at Yale carries the joy of Easter. The anticipation of the event carries it through the day and what happens after Holy Week.”

Other students also mentioned the challenges that celebrating these holidays in college can bring. 

Rasheed said that it can be difficult for people when most others around them are not observing the holiday. 

“School also doesn’t slow down and there are just as many exams and assignments as usual. So having these communal events and spaces where Muslim students can come together and be with each other in company is so critical,” Rasheed said.

The Chaplain’s Office, which helps coordinate religious celebrations, is located in Bingham Hall.

The post ‘Home away from home’: students find community in celebrating spring religious holidays appeared first on Yale Daily News.

On Wednesday afternoon, poet and writer Ross Gay spoke to a crowd in Battell Chapel about how joy can help us find what is beautiful. The event, which was attended by Yalies and community members, was sponsored by the Yale College Dean’s Office; Belonging at Yale and the Lamont Endowed Lectureship; Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration; the Yale University Chaplain’s Office and Ezra Stiles College.

“Ross Gay has been a person of importance to many kinds of readers. He’s exceptional in the way that he’s reached many communities and readers through his work. We chose to collaborate with the Chaplain’s Office because Maytal Saltiel has used his writing in her pastoral work,” said Alicia Schmidt Camacho, head of Ezra Stiles College. 

In addition to meeting with members of on-campus poetry organizations, Gay, who is also a community gardener, met with students from the Yale farm and the Chaplain’s Office.

During his visit to New Haven, Gay also hosted a reading and book signing at Hamden’s Possible Futures bookstore.

Gay has written four books of poetry, “Against Which,” “Bringing the Shovel Down,” “Be Holding” and “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude.” He has also written three collections of essays, “The Book of Delights,” “Inciting Joy” and “The Book of (More) Delights.” His main interests lie in finding joy and delight in the everyday. 

“Mastery is the opposite of delight, the know-it-all has nothing to delight in,” said Gay, who spoke in conversation with University Chaplain Maytal Saltiel at the event. The two talked about the importance of joy in helping to carry our sorrows. Saltiel noted that she views Gay’s work as deeply spiritual and is also interested in how to find delight and joy.

The event received special support from Dean of Yale College Pericles Lewis as part of an inaugural program for fostering dialogues and civic engagement on campus. “We try to support a range of speakers from different backgrounds so that students can learn from people who are leaders in their fields,” wrote Dean Lewis to the News.

Schmidt Camacho also noted the importance of bringing people together to enjoy art and poetry since the pandemic, not only in Stiles but across New Haven. At Stiles, she has hosted staff art shows, ran a film festival and organized pop-up concerts. Earlier this year, two first-years painted a mural at a local New Haven store and hosted a reception at Ezra Stiles. Last year, she brought Ada Limón, the 24th Poet Laureate of the United States.

One of those first years, Katelyn Wang ’27, was in attendance at Gay’s talk. She became familiar with his work in high school when she read the “Book of Delights” and was excited about hearing from the poet himself. 

“I enjoyed when he offered a reading of his work. It was very different than simply reading his words on paper—you could hear his emotions and storytelling come to life,” Wang wrote to the News. “Gay has a very down to earth, authentic personality, and that was magnified when he delivered his poetry as stories.” 

Battell Chapel was constructed between 1874 and 1876.

The post Poet and writer Ross Gay visits Yale appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Saltiel became interested in religious communities while growing up in the Jewish community of Albany, New York, one of several places she grew up in. She was involved in a Jewish youth group, did Israeli folk dance and attended a Jewish summer camp. As the descendant of both Holocaust survivors and Sephardic Jews who survived the Spanish Inquisition, Saltiel said that the importance of inheritance is a key factor in her embrace of Judaism. 

When Saltiel began her undergraduate degree at Johns Hopkins University, she became involved in her campus Hillel chapter. 

“Hillel is where I first encountered pluralistic Judaism -– everything that comes with the intrafaith hard work of what it means to be together and build community. Interfaith work is hard, intrafaith work is harder,” she said. Saltiel noted that the community-building work she learned at Hopkins Hillel informs her chaplaincy today. 

While at Hopkins, Saltiel also studied international relations and psychology. She was interested in diplomacy and peace-building work but said that she realized she did not want to be a politician.

 “What really spoke to me was third track diplomacy of working with communities,” she said. 

Around that time, she discovered the Hopkins Interfaith Center, where she met Sharon Kugler, who came to Yale in 2007 as the University chaplain and was the first woman and Roman Catholic individual to hold the position. Kugler mentored Saltiel during her time at Hopkins and later hired her to work in the Chaplain’s Office at Yale in 2013. 

Kugler recalled hosting suppers at Hopkins where students would present about their faith traditions and said that Saltiel helped to run these events through the Interfaith Center. 

“She was usually the first to arrive and the last to leave. She understood how to create a space that was hospitable and warm,” said Kugler. “What was clear to me was the heart she had for creating spaces for conversation and connection with people. She lit up when she was part of the programs that we were doing at Johns Hopkins.” 

After determining she was interested in interfaith work and community chaplaincy, Saltiel taught 4th grade in the Bronx and worked at the Johns Hopkins Interfaith Center before continuing her education at Harvard Divinity School. 

“Harvard is a very pluralistic divinity school. It was asking the questions I was interested in: How do we build communities across boundaries? How do we show up and support each other? How do we be authentically who we are?” she said of her decision to attend HDS.

In her time in divinity school, Saltiel traveled to India to do peace-building work, worked in Brown University’s chaplaincy and did hospital chaplaincy at the Yale-New Haven Hospital. Upon graduation, she worked as the Repair the World Coordinator at the Hillel at the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn, Saltiel also did interfaith work, taking a group of students to Rwanda as well as working with an organization of Black and Jewish students to travel to the American South to talk about the civil rights movement. In 2013, she came to Yale to work in the Chaplain’s Office.

History of the Chaplain’s Office at Yale 

After the daily chapel requirement was lifted in 1926, Yale’s first chaplain, Elmore McKee, was hired in 1927. McKee was elected by a council of New Haven pastors to be the first full-time pastor of the Church of Christ at Yale University, as well as the University Chaplain. Since then, the chaplaincy has grown to accompany an influx of students of diverse religious backgrounds. Currently, there are seven chaplains at the Chaplain’s Office and over 25 people working on the Yale Religious Ministries council.

“I’ve always been the round peg in a square hole,” Saltiel said of becoming the first Jewish chaplain at a university where attending chapel was once compulsory.  

Even within the Jewish community, Saltiel explained, she has not taken the most conventional path to chaplaincy, as she chose not to go to rabbinical school. 

Kugler recalled once meeting a group of men from the class of 1950 when she first came to Yale. Kugler said to them that she could only hope that chaplaincy could grow to reflect the world, which, Kugler said, is not only the white Protestant one that some previous chaplains represented. 

“I could not be prouder of what Yale’s doing now with this next chapter of the University chaplaincy. Maytal being the first Jewish woman at the helm of this is powerful,” Kugler noted.

Saltiel said she felt humbled and said that she would not be here today without all of the people who came before her. She described herself as “standing on the shoulders of giants” and expressed pride at realizing the dreams of her ancestors.

Working in the Chaplain’s Office at Yale 

Since coming to Yale in 2013, Saltiel has been known for her obsession with pink flamingos. In 2021, returning to campus during the pandemic, Saltiel said she remembered feeling like there needed to be more joy on campus. She blew up pink flamingos, tagged them with the phrase “Embrace whimsy, take me with you,” and spread them around Cross Campus. 

“People took a pink flamingo and went to class at the law school or put them in their windows. I wanted people to understand that we need to be joyful creatures…There is so much more to your being,” she said. 

The Chaplain’s Office is not only there for students in times of joy, but also in times of grief, she noted. Along with Muslim Chaplain Omer Bajwa, Saltiel co-taught a class on university chaplaincy at the Divinity School this fall — one which Kugler pioneered. As they were teaching the course in the fall, both Muslim and Jewish communities in particular, they said, were experiencing a period of immense grief with the start of the Israel-Hamas War. 

Bajwa said that in their class, he and Saltiel tried to create a strong sense of community while also responding to calls for help from every corner of the University.

In their work with students, the Chaplain’s Office facilitates an Interfaith Forum at Yale where Saltiel interacts with students weekly to build community across different faith identities. She emphasized the importance of welcoming strangers and seeing the “divine spark” in students “of all faiths or no faith.” 

Saltiel described her approach to welcoming people who come into her office as treating them with “radical hospitality.” Her goal, she said, is always to make sure everyone feels welcome and comfortable. 

Lydia Monk ’24, who has been attending the Interfaith Forum at Yale since her first year, described it as a thought-provoking environment.

“College is a really emotionally and experientially rich time, and IFFY is an intentional space to slow down and reflect. What I love most about IFFY is the time we spend in silence, just thinking together about the questions we ask each week. I love that IFFY is somewhat self-contained, while the reflections definitely leave with people, there’s not some goal of producing something or trying to get anyone to respond,” she wrote to the News. 

Stepping into the new role

After being at Yale for a decade, Saltiel has seen many eras of the Yale chaplaincy. She said that she aims to continue the chaplaincy’s work of accepting different faiths and growing its scope.

In terms of practical goals, Saltiel said she hopes to move the Chaplain’s Office out of the basement of Bingham Hall and into a bigger space that is more accessible to every member of the Yale community. Kugler and Bajwa also echoed this sentiment.

“I want our chaplaincy to continue to be nimble to the needs of the community. I want us to be a place that continues to love people exactly as they are,” she said.“Being a chaplain is about showing up and helping students find their voice. It’s about our community.” 

The Chaplain’s Office is located in the basement of Bingham Hall Entryway D on Old Campus.

The post PROFILE: Meet Maytal Saltiel, Yale’s first Jewish University Chaplain appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The group is comprised of volunteers from the Monsey Jewish community who have been visiting college campuses every Thursday night to support Jewish students and bring strength during what group members called a difficult time for them. 

The group, which consists of Tova Feldheim, Michael Greenfield, Yitzy Deutsch and others from around the suburban community of Monsey, formed shortly after a Cornell University student posted online threats to “shoot up” the university’s kosher dining hall in October. The group then made their first stop at Cornell in early November. Since then, they have visited Binghamton University, the University of Pennsylvania and, most recently, Yale.  

“As a community, we want to support our Jewish brothers and sisters on college campuses,” Feldheim told the News. “Many of them are far from home from their families. With what they’ve been experiencing, we want to fight hate by spreading love. We’re here to show our love.”

Between Oct. 7 and Oct. 23, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism reported a 388-percent increase in antisemitic incidents reported nationwide compared to that same time period last year. In late October, the Cornell student — who has since been charged with posting threats using interstate communications — issued a series of online threats, including to shoot, stab and slit the throats of Jewish students. In early November, the Biden Administration noted an “alarming rise” in the number of antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents occurring at schools and on college campuses. The Council on American-Islamic Relations wrote in a report that the organization received 216 percent more reports of Islamophobia and anti-Arab incidents between Oct. 7 and Nov. 4 than it did last year. 

Each Thursday night, the Monsey group shows up to a different campus with a barbecue and their guitars. They invite others to participate in a ‘kumzits’ — a Yiddish word meaning ‘come and sit’ — to close out a long week and start getting into the mood of Shabbat. 

Feldheim said that the group was formed of friends who decided that they wanted to show their love for students who have experienced acts of hate on college campuses. 

“All these organizations are helping families in Israel, but what about here in America and how can we support people here?” she noted.

The event was attended by a range of people from across Yale’s Jewish community, including undergraduates and graduate students.

Several students in attendance told the News that they found the event to be uplifting and supportive. 

“It was empowering to have support. They care about you.” said attendee Samuel Rosenberg ’26. 

Alex Schapiro ’26 wrote to the News that it was “great to bring some simcha,” using the Hebrew word for joy to describe his time at the event. 

In addition to supporting American college students, Feldheim also expressed hope that all of the people whom Hamas took as hostages during its Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel will be released. 

“We are a bunch of entrepreneurs, accountants, lawyers, doctors, programmers, an amazing group of friends, who want to do good for others,” Ethan Pfeiffer, another organizer, wrote to the News. 

The group members told the News they hope to visit the State University of New York at New Paltz next.

The post Group from Monsey Jewish community visits students at Yale appeared first on Yale Daily News.

His search began with the decision to sign up for professor Hiʻilei Hobart’s seminar, Indigenous Food Sovereignty. 

“I ranked it number one because I recognized that her name was Hawaiian and I was like, ‘Oh this will be kind of cool,’” said Ching.

Ching’s start at Yale last fall coincided with Hobart’s arrival. Hobart, a professor in the Ethnicity, Race and Migration department, is the first Native Hawaiian faculty member in Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Ching described Hobart as one of his most important mentors in his time at Yale, and he is now her research assistant.

“It was kind of serendipitous that her start coincided with the influx of other Hawaiian and Pasifika students,” said Ching, noting the strong community he entered upon arriving at the University. 

Outside the classroom this year, Ching helped to officially found the Indigenous Peoples of Oceania at Yale. He currently serves as the group’s executive director and works to provide a space for students who identify as indigenous to Oceania. 

The group has also organized events such as the recent concert for Maui wildfire relief. In addition to these efforts, Ching has devoted much of his academic study to the history of his people. 

“A lot of my academic work here at Yale has centered around the Pacific and Hawaii in particular. The cultures I grew up in and the histories that I’ve come to know as my own have such an important place in institutions like Yale, where there is a severe lack of not only representation but reckoning with imperial history,” said Ching.

Jairus Rhoades ’26, who directed the recent benefit concert, described this community of students as essential to his time at Yale.

“Talking with all of the Natives at the NACC felt like talking with people with truly relatable experiences and heritages,” he wrote to the News. “The constant sense of restlessness with my identity as a Samoan, Filipino, and white person saw tranquility and settlement immediately. The regulars at the NACC are some of the funniest and most beautiful groups of people I know on campus.”

This year, the Native American Cultural Center is celebrating its tenth year of existence.

The group of students has not only provided community to undergraduates, but also to Professor Hobart. 

“I tell the Pasifika students often that, while they may not realize it, they are community for me, too, here in Connecticut … These students are teaching me, and those around them, what it means to bring home with you,” wrote Hobart. 

The sentiment is not lost on her students. Inspired by Hobart’s seminar, Ching, along with other IPO members Kalaʻi Anderson ’25 and Connor Arakaki ’26, participated in repatriation efforts to return remains held at the Peabody Museum to their home in Hawaii last fall. 

Ching described the repatriation process as an important reckoning with Yale’s complicated history with the Pacific. 

Hobart also expressed gratitude for the students involved in the process.

“I was so lucky to arrive at the same time as this incredible influx of Islander students who are establishing [a] powerful, politically engaged, and culturally vibrant presence on campus,” Hobart wrote to the News. “What they are doing right now paves a path for future Pacific Islander presence here at Yale.”

Ching noted a hope to see more professors who are from the Pacific and who study the Pacific. 

In addition, he expressed wanting to see more Native languages offered, noting that this is the first year that Yale is offering Cherokee. He mentioned that Stanford has taught Hawaiian language for several years and recently started a Samoan language program. 

“My biggest hope for this community is that it continues at its breakneck pace in programming and outreach and that more people, both allies and Natives alike, join us in partaking in the joy that is celebrating Native stories,” wrote Rhoades.

Ching, Rhoades and Hobart all look forward to the growth and success of Indigenous Peoples of Oceania in the future.

Yet Rhoades also told the News that while he hopes the group will gain more recognition in the broader Yale community, it has already established a strong support system among its members.

“IPO, with its current leadership, is a group I would advise people to watch out for. Events happening almost every week that flush out so much of the beautiful yet endangered cultures that Pasifika communities are brimming with come at the effort of well-abled students and supportive faculty who have a passion for their community that is unique because of its smallness,” he wrote. “In these small numbers, though, we still find so much affirmation and support from the Native community because of the universality of our painful pasts.”

The Indigenous Peoples of Oceania group began in the fall semester of 2023. 

The post Students, faculty celebrate founding of Indigenous Peoples of Oceania cultural group appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Massey opened up her business in June of this year. She has been sourcing and buying clothes for years and storing them before finally purchasing a storefront last March. 

The store is organized according to time period — the front is centered around the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s and ‘60s, and the back is centered around the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s. For Massey, opening Noir Vintage & Company is a milestone that for her feels like a dream come true.

“It’s so surreal, it’s like a dream. It catches me like ‘Oh my god, I’m really here.’ I’m still taking it all in,” Massey said.

Massey described her love of history as a main motivation for opening her store. Growing up, she always admired the way her grandmothers and “aunties” dressed for church and the thought that they put into their style. 

According to Massey, her store is not just another building with clothes for sale. Each piece tells a story. 

“I never just take a piece and hang it on the hanger. It has to mean something, it has to have history and a story behind it. Vintage pieces always have a story,” she said. 

Before opening the store, Massey was a professional makeup artist for 34 years. Yet, she’s always loved vintage.

Since high school, she has taken pride in her fashion sense. Growing up, Massey bought second-hand clothes out of necessity, shopping most of the time at local Goodwills and Salvation Army stores, unable to afford other clothes. 

“I wanted there to be something for everyone,” she said. “Not only do I have vintage clothes, I have vintage decor. I even wanted to bring in vintage children’s toys – the toys I played with when I grew up.”

Massey reflected that there were not very many Black-owned businesses in the New Haven she grew up in, and she never imagined she would own her own storefront. According to Massey, the current downtown location of her store is ideal for business, and Massey has benefitted from many Yalies who have frequented the store, including first years who participated in FOCUS – Yale’s community service pre-orientation program – during Camp Yale. At the time, Massey was looking for artists to design a mural in her store and she found two first years, Katelyn Wang ’27 and Johan Zongo ’27 to complete the task. 

Wang and Zongo met through social media after being accepted to Yale last spring. They quickly bonded over their shared love of art, each admiring the other’s artistic talent. Though Wang was in California and Zongo in Ghana, they knew that once they both arrived in New Haven, they would want to collaborate.

After participating in FOCUS, Wang, who calls herself an activist artist, was eager to begin painting a mural for Massey’s store. She quickly recruited Zongo to join her after showing Massey samples of their past artwork and received funding from Dwight Hall to buy the materials for the mural. 

Before beginning the mural, Wang spent time talking to Massey about her vision for the mural and researching African American art and culture.

“As a public artist, one thing I focus on is making art for the community,” said Wang. “It’s really weird to use someone else’s space as your own canvas. There’s a keen awareness of making sure you’re creating for someone else. … You want to make sure that [the community] remains at the core of your creation.”

While Wang has painted murals in her hometown of San Diego in the past, this was Zongo’s first experience with mural painting.

He was surprised by Massey’s willingness to trust in him and Wang, which he said is indicative of Massey’s overall inviting character.

“I felt very welcome. It felt like I had known her my entire life from the very first interaction,” said Zongo. “As I learned more about Evelyn as an individual, I wanted to give her that service [of painting]. She really deserves it.” 

The two student artists spent seven weeks working on the mural, culminating in a reception hosted at Ezra Stiles College to celebrate their work which was followed by a walk to Noir Vintage & Company with fellow Yalies to view their artwork.

Bringing students and faculty to the store was particularly important to both Wang and Zongo. The reception included Ezra Stiles’ Head of College and Wang’s Chinese language professor. 

“I was looking to know New Haven better, beyond the Yale bubble. Connecting with Evelyn really opened me up,” said Wang, “There’s a sense of home and belonging in a small local business that cannot be found in any other store. Her sense of family and how she treats everyone is really inspiring and led me to see the humanity of New Haven.”

Wang hopes to create more art for New Haven organizations in the future and mentioned that she and Zongo are currently talking with the New Haven Climate Movement about a project. They also hope to include New Haven youth in future projects. 

“Man, I just want to make art for a good cause and have fun. I genuinely believe art can change the world,” said Zongo.

Yale students with a valid ID can get 10 percent off at Noir Vintage & Company, which is located at 111 Court St. in downtown New Haven.

The post Yale students paint mural for Noir Vintage & Company appeared first on Yale Daily News.

Nigun means “melody” in Hebrew and consists of wordless melodies that are traditionally sung by Hasidic Jews. Medad Lytton ’25 and Ruthie Weinbaum ’25 have been leading the group in song every Monday night since they had the idea to create the group last year.

“During Sukkot last year, on Friday night, Medad waved me over and said ‘Ruthie, I want to start a Nigun Circle [at Yale], do you want to start it with me?’” Weinbaum explained.  

Lytton added that he was inspired to start the Nigun Circle after learning how to sing Nigunim during his gap years in Israel and developing an interest in Hasidic Judaism. 

Lytton said that after learning more, he wanted to bring the power of Nigunim to students at Yale.

“The study of Yiddish is fundamentally about Jewish renewal and it sits at the crossroads between new-age progressive Jewish renewal and Hasidic Jewish renewal and the Nigunim also sit at that crossroads,” Lytton said.

Hasidic Judaism is a revivalist movement that began in 18th-century Eastern Europe and focuses on spirituality and connection with God through ecstatic or spontaneous prayer. 

Although Lytton said that Hasidic Judaism is ultra-Orthodox, Lytton noted that the nigun has been picked up as “an important piece of Jewish renewal movements also in non-ultra-Orthodox spaces.”

Gryffin Wilkens-Plumley ’26, a frequent Nigun Circle attendee, spoke about the comfort of singing Nigunim every week. 

“There’s things you can’t express, there’s things that you don’t know that need to be expressed that sort of are revealed through the process of the nigun,” Plumley said, adding that he had just been humming a nigun to comfort himself after a long day.

Lytton echoed Plumley’s statement, saying that the wordless quality of the songs act as a “container” for all individuals and emotions involved.

Those who attend the Nigun Circle with Lytton and Weinbaum come once a week to sit in a circle in the dark and sing the wordless melodies for about an hour.

“I always want Jewish spaces to have a lot of singing,” added Weinbaum, who sings in the Yale Glee Club and is currently the pitch of the a cappella group Red, Hot and Blue. “There is no sheet music, the only thing we plan is which songs we’re gonna sing. We don’t plan what key we’ll be singing in. We have no idea who is going to show up every week. It’s so different from singing in a choir and that feels in some ways more spiritual and more community-based.”

Lytton is also involved in singing at Yale, most recently with the Camerata at the Institute of Sacred Music, which is a joint program between the Divinity School and the School of Music. 

He said that, for him, the Nigun Circle serves a dual role that sets it apart both from traditional musical groups and modes of worship on campus.

“Nigun Circle is part singing group and also part spiritual community,” he said. “Nigunim are my vision of how we can connect with the divine and become better people.”

As opposed to traditional Jewish prayer, Nigunim are more “spontaneous and fluid,” said Wilkes-Plumley. 

Wilkes-Plumley described the worship as both “spiritual” and “easily accessible.”

“It’s more accessible than climbing to the top of a mountain and sitting there for several hours,” Wilkes-Plumley said. “I’m connecting to the other people but especially when I’m closing my eyes I’m trying to recenter myself and connect back to myself. I kind of try to obviate myself in the universe, to just stop thinking about myself as a separate thing and instead not think about myself.” 

Other groups such as Taize, a group run by the Lutheran Ministry invite Yalies to engage in musical worship. 

Taize convenes at Battell Chapel once a week to worship the divine in song.

“There are some songs with words and some without but they tend to be very simple, often two-line melodies that people harmonize over and repeat,” Lukas Bacho ’25 who has attended Taize, told the News.

Wilkes-Plumley said that he would be interested in attending an “interfaith Nigun” in the future. 

Wilkes-Plumley said that since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas, the Nigun Circle has served as a respite to bring people together and a place to process pain for many in the community. 

Wilkes-Plumley pointed to a particular Nigun Circle after a vigil on Oct. 9 at the Women’s Table, which he found especially meaningful.

“I remember after the vigil, I went up to the Nigun Circle and I’ll remember that for a long, long time. A long, long time,” Wilkes-Plumley reflected. “That Nigun Circle was very different. It was extremely potent, extremely heightened, and extremely needed.”

Lytton and Weinbaum spoke about the transformative power the Circle has had for them in times of need, with Lytton saying that people leave the singing session “transformed.”

Lytton and Weinbaum said that Nigun Circle is open to anyone of any religion or no religion as a space to wind down, meditate or process. 

“Nigunim are about losing yourself in something bigger,” said Lytton. 

Nigun Circle occurs every Monday night at 9:15 p.m. on the third floor of the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. 

The post A year of the Nigun Circle at Yale appeared first on Yale Daily News.

The Allan Bloom Forum is affiliated with the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union. According to their website, the forum holds that “ideas have consequences, and in this spirit, seeks to promote the public exploration of the ideas which have shaped American and Western culture.” According to one of the event organizers, the talk attracted over 250 students and faculty members. 

“I found the lecture engaging and very reminiscent of Sandel’s ‘Justice,’ which I read a few years ago,” said attendee Niva Cohen ’27.

The forum is named after Yale professor Allan Bloom.

Sandel, who said he was a friend of Bloom, spoke fondly about him at the beginning of the lecture, mentioning how Bloom supported the idea of putting Sandel’s “Justice” class online to make it more accessible to a wider audience, and not just to his Harvard students. 

Sandel opened up by discussing how the question of the tyranny of merit can be a paradoxical one. He said that there is a growing divide between “winners” and “losers” in meritocracy. He said that at Ivy League universities, “there are still more students from the top one percent than students from the bottom half of the country combined.” 

Sandel claimed that meritocracy corrodes the “common good” and generates “hubris and humiliation.” He argued that meritocracy creates a system where the “winners” look down upon those less successful.

“I was really moved by how many attended the lecture,” Anne Lee ’26, who helped organize the event, said. “It was great to see such a wide range of people from all over Yale at the event.”

In his speech, Sandel claimed that the disconnect between “winners” and “losers” gets to the heart of one of his main research questions: what caused the populist backlash of voters in the United Kingdom and United States during Brexit and the Trump era? Many of the voters who voted for these political shifts, he argued, did so out of resentment of the “winners.” 

Sandel claimed that elitism and resentment lay at the center of these issues, arguing that a “focus on honoring the dignity of work” was equally important to a four-year degree.  

“We equate talent with moral desert, and don’t often think about the fact that everything about us is luck (even how hard we’re able to work),” Niva Cohen wrote to the News. “It’s important to puncture our utopian Yale bubble in which everyone is idolized for their reflective skills. Recenter humanity as a determinant for value, and deemphasize ability.” 

Sandel argued that politicians on both sides of the aisle try to tout the “rhetoric of rising,” as he called it: the notion that “you too can go as far as your talents will take you.” Yet, Sandel said, the politicians who spread this rhetoric actually entrenched these inequalities further and neglected to alleviate these inequalities by changing economic policies. 

“Obama used the phrase, ‘you can make it if you try’ 140 times in his speeches,” Sandel said.

Sandel told a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. who, he said, when meeting with a group of garbage collectors, mentioned that their jobs were as significant as a physician’s job. 

If either neglected their jobs, Sandel said King told them, disease would spread in the community.

Sandel claimed that institutions of higher education also should play a role in creating change. 

“Universities are arbiters of opportunities … we [they] should not concentrate these opportunities in a citadel and then make it a competition to get to this citadel,” Sandel stated. 

In closing, Sandel argued that civic education can occur in places that are not prestigious university campuses and that higher education can be a public good not just for elites.  

Sandel’s teachings are available online through websites like edX. 

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