MJE

A lot of jargon gets tossed around in the Hillel world. As a JCSC Fellow, I constantly hear one term in particular: MJE. What is an MJE, you ask? It stands for "meaningful Jewish experience." Psshht, that sounds like a bunch of bologna if I ever heard.. a bunch of bologna. Meaningful Jewish experience. That seriously could be anything. Basically, the idea is that through my efforts, I will help the students I work with connect to Judaism on some level, any level they're comfortable with, and they will then have some kind of MJE; also, the experience of simply helping students arrive at their own MJEs will be an MJE for me. That's the idea.

I have to say, every once in a while an MJE sneaks up on me. Here I am, minding my own business and trying to just get everything done on time and done well, and something small will happen (students will have a good time at a program, a good conversation happens, students confide in me, etc) and I'll think, "holy cannoli, batman." It's like all my grief and stress, and pinching headaches, and driving around this city like a madwoman, eventually add up to these random experiences, these feelings of happiness and meaning and connection. Even though I'm often upset and terribly stressed, I sometimes realize why it is that I put up with all this other stuff: simply put, it can be meaningful and is significant to me and the people with whom I work. It matters. And when it hits you, even if it's just one moment, it is shocking and powerful.

I've been having stress headaches again this semester, and I was feeling particularly agitated this afternoon because my new co-worker doesn't have her business credit card yet, and we had two separate Shabbat dinners planned for tonight, so I was the only one to drive around and pick up all the food (chicken (ya, I had to get the meat!), kugel, potatoes, salad and veggies, wine, soda, paper goods, brownies, challah, the prayer books, calendars, name cards, etc) all by myself. I had to go get everything before the kosher stores close (on Friday afternoon, that's about 2 or 3), bring it back to Hillel and unpack everything, and then later come back and reheat everything, pack it up again, and bring it to where it needed to go. And I was pissed. Oh yes I was.

I was in charge of a Shabbat dinner on one of the campuses nearby. I set everything up, and then I noticed that instead of the 20-ish people I was expecting, we had almost twice that amount. We all sat together for a brief Kabbalat Shabbat service, and I heard all these voices singing, laughing, and explaining. I saw people helping their friends to follow along with the right passage. I saw new faces, people I had not yet met. And I couldn't help that MJE feeling, despite that I had felt a lot of stress (and anger!) earlier in the day thinking about the nitty-gritties. This is meaningful for the students who came, and it was most certainly meaningful for me. And even though this moment will pass and tomorrow I'll be cursing about my job again, right now I feel content. It's for the moments like these that I put up with the stress.

Not to say that my job should be this ridiculously stressful. Because it REALLY shouldn't be. Goodness.