For the first time in Lakeside’s history, a Jewish student group will be meeting on campus. Led by Lilian G. ’24 and Yona P. ’26, the group hosted its inaugural event — a Rosh Hashanah celebration — in September. Now, as they prepare for their first meeting, Yona and Lilian are excited to create a welcoming space for Lakeside’s Jewish community.

Yona and Lilian hope to make inclusivity central to the group. They plan to host some meetings limited to Jewish students and other gatherings — like holiday celebrations and current-events discussions — open to everyone.

“I think a very important part of this is that people of all different Jewish identities can get involved,” said Yona. “When we announced the Rosh Hashanah Apples and Honey event, there were multiple students who came up to me and asked whether they could come. One had a Jewish grandmother, and another was culturally Jewish but didn’t know much about Judaism,” she continued. “It’s going to be important to have this space so that people of all those identities … feel welcome and supported at school.”

In addition to holding welcoming celebrations, the group may discuss topical issues including antisemitism and the Israel–Hamas war.

 “[The war has] underscored the importance of creating a safe space at Lakeside where Jewish students can gather and discuss hard topics,” wrote Yona. “The new Jewish affinity group … hopes to give Jewish students a place to come together this year to express their grief and anguish, to explore related topics like intergenerational trauma, and to discuss this complex political situation in nuanced ways that can’t happen on social media.”

Given the relevance of these topics to students of all faiths, Lilian and Yona are considering opening some conversations to the whole school.

Still, Lilian said that she “want[s] to make sure that our community isn’t centered around that [and that] we’re centered around the joy of the Jewish experience as well. And I want to make sure that that remains our focus, just finding what the community wants and needs.”

Yona and Lilian also plan to address the intersection of race and religion. “A very unique thing about being Jewish is [that] most Jews at Lakeside are white…and so, [discussing] being part of a racial majority group while also a minority in your religion or faith or ethnicity…would be really helpful,” said Yona.

While Lakeside has been supportive of the idea of a Jewish student group, discussions regarding its categorization have been ongoing this fall.

“Judaism is a religious identity for some but also a cultural or ethnic identity for others, so you could argue that it belongs in a lot of different spaces, [either] as its own affinity group or under an interfaith-and-spirituality umbrella,” said Yona, referring to Lakeside’s multireligious alliance. 

In October, it was decided that the group would become its own affinity group. Lilian and Yona feel that this decision marks an important step in Lakeside’s efforts to support Jewish students, furthering actions the school has already taken like canceling tests on Jewish holidays.

“[In] this Jewish affinity space we can support each other so it’s not all on the administration,” said Lilian. “We can work together to ask for what we need and find what we need in the school.”