Armed with audio-trape recorders and warm smiles, eight students of the Hillel-JSU are visiting the homes of local senior citizens with a mission: to bridge a gap.
Student Jessica Lanoil is leading the group, Dorot’s Senior Citizen Program at Hillel, on bi-weekly visits to the homes as they perform interviews, listening to real-life stories toward creating oral histories, all while establishing new friendships.
“These regular visits are the beginnings of relationships for us with the Jewish community outside the university borders,” said Lanoil, a senior politics, philosophy, and law major, adding “”For the senior citizens, we hope our support and admiring smiles brings them some warmth into their already welcoming homes.”
On April 29, the students will present the oral histories to other students, senior citizens, and the local community at a luncheon.
The project is sponsored through a grant by Dorot, a non-profit agency that helps both the Jewish and non-Jewish elderly and develops volunteer-based programs. “Dorot” is Hebrew for “generations.”
Lanoil told CampusJ that visiting senior citizen Leah Schwartz has become a Friday ritual for her and two other Hillel students; they travel weekly to hear the woman’s memories of Vanderbilt University, her life in social work and the “AEPI boys.”
Once, Schwartz shared her photos and stories of her grandchildren with a new student visitor. “Although I had heard the story that she proudly told of her grandson before,” Lanoil said, “I saw once again the joy Leah had in opening her home and her life stories with us.”
In addition to forging new bonds, the visits have opened the door to new Jewish experiences for these Binghamton students.
For Purim, freshman Allison Adges rode a bus from campus to bring her senior a basket of hamantashen.
And Lanoil experienced Shabbat like never before. “In my visits to Leah on Friday afternoons, I have often stood with her, saying the prayers and lighting the electric candles for welcoming in Shabbat,” she said, noting that “although I attend Friday night services on campus, this was the only time I lit candles for Shabbat in Binghamton.”