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Jewish Life at Duke welcomed our students to the beginning of the 2020-2021 school year on August 14, 2020 with our first virtual Shabbat of the semester during Weeks of Welcome.

When Covid-19 presented us with the challenge of how to bring our programming to our students, the JLD team came up with JLD@Home to enable us to connect with our community no matter where they might be. See the offerings delivered via JLD@Home below:

At Jewish Life at Duke, one of our guiding principles is to meet students where they are and provide them a space to explore their Jewish identity. For some, Jewish Life at Duke is the place where they returned to, strengthened, or even discovered their connection to Judaism. Ben Thier '20 shares his (touching and funny!) story of finding that connection below:

A Blessing for the Class of 2020 by Kenny Green ’20, JSU President (2019-2020)

3 Lessons I've Learned from Virtual Shabbat with Jewish Life at Duke

This week we are going to West Africa to visit the landlocked country of Burkina Faso. It is bounded by Mali, Niger, Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, and Togo. Its name roughly translates to “Land of the Honest People” J The capital, Ouagadougou, translates literally to “You are welcome here at home with us”!

This week, we are showcasing Sri Lanka, a South Asian island country. Sri Lanka is located in the Indian Ocean and is separated from India by the Palk Strait, a 40-mile inlet. Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte is the country’s legislative capital, and Colombo its largest city and center of commerce.

This week we travel to South America to visit Chile, one of the longest and narrowest countries in the world. One theory of the origin of the name “Chile” is that it came from the indigenous Mapuche word “chilli”, which means “where the land ends” or “the deepest point of the Earth”. Another interpretation is it came from the Mapuche imitation of a bird call, “cheele cheele”.