Mandatory Prayer Sparks Student Unrest in Mechinah Program

Rabbi Daniel Rapp, assistant dean of undergraduate Jewish studies, announced at a recent town hall meeting with Mechinah students that they would be required to attend morning prayers as a one-credit course beginning this semester.

While morning prayers have always been a Mechinah requirement, students have had the option to take the course for no credit. The mandatory one-credit requirement aims to enforce student attendance at Mechinah services by ensuring that attendance impacts student GPAs.

The move to enforce attendance at services is part of a larger initiative on the part of the Mechinah administration. Prayer is one of several activities, including shabbatons and field trips, conventionally excluded from academics, that Mechinah requires students to attend. Linking these programs to grades has generated frustration among many Mechinah students.

"When you're dealing with a bunch of 18- to 23-year-olds, this isn't the approach you should have," said a student who asked to remain anonymous. "It should be everyone's own choice to feel they need to talk to God," he said, referring to the prayer requirement. "I think it's very high school."

Mechinah Director Rabbi Zev Reichman explained the rationale behind grading students for prayers. Mechinah, he said, views Judaism "as a holistic, complete experience, and so the day doesn't start at nine. It starts at eight, when we daven together.... Part of Jewish learning involves learning about davening and davening in a group." Mechinah services also include a component in which students study Jewish prayer.

A student's mark in prayers is influenced not by his participation but by his attendance, said Rabbi Reichman. "Nobody is ever going to mark someone on whether or not they daven," he explained. "But people will be marked on whether or not they come." The same applies for other non-academic requirements.

Rabbi Reichman maintains that non-academic requirements, like attendance to services, are consistent with criteria by which colleges generally assess students, citing as an example courses in sports that penalize students for missing matches.

Still, some find the Mechinah grade's dependence on non-academic, Jewish-themed programs to be problematic. One Mechinah student finds the prayer requirement particularly unappealing on religious and spiritual grounds. "The Mechinah minyan is possibly the slowest davening on campus," said a student. "It's an hour and a half long. You can't find a minyan you like. Sefardim, nusach sefard, all these people have to be thrown into one minyan. There's no option based on what you're looking for."

The town hall meeting featured what many students perceived as Rabbi Rapp's threat to revoke financial aid: Rabbi Rapp allegedly announced (in a decree which, if it indeed was made, would almost certainly jeopardize federal funding for Yeshiva University) that failure to attend services could be grounds for placing a student on academic probation, two semesters of which could cause a student to lose his scholarship.

"People were furious, absolutely furious," a student reported.

But attempts to leave Mechinah behind are often plagued with complications. YC grants Judaic studies credit to students who complete courses in Mechinah corresponding to those in YC. But no protocol exists to transfer credit for students who leave Mechinah after taking only some of a given requirement-set's courses, causing students to rely on the word of Mechinah and YC administrators for information about credit transfer.

This system has frustrated some students. "There's no standard," said one. "It's a real struggle to get out."

Progress in this area has begun. According to Rabbi Jeremy Wieder, the Judaic studies cluster head, "the precise rules for students transferring are currently being fleshed out."

Issues in the Mechinah program have led some students to question the program's legitimacy. One student pointed out the program's approach to students' religious growth. "The guys who aren't frum - they're trying to be mekarev you. And the guys who are frum - they try to put you to that next level," he said. "They're trying to reconstruct that in this college setting. [Although] I see the [intended] purpose of it, I don't know if it works for everybody."

One RIETS student who spoke to The Commentator believes that Mechinah can survive, but only by addressing students' concerns. "I think it could be fixed by just tweaking these issues that the students have brought up, changing the attitude of how to treat these students... [and] treating them like independent adults," he said.

He added that he feels "capable people are running it. I have confidence that they'll be able to adapt. I do have confidence in the program in the long-term."