October 6, 2023:

I attend Erev Simchat Torah services for the first time. Though I’ve been involved with the Jewish community through summer camp and youth group my whole life, I didn’t grow up a regular synagogue-goer. My family never prioritized it. Before my junior year of high school, I visited Israel and came home committed to going to synagogue every Shabbat and major holiday.

I’m at Congregation Dor Tamid, my small synagogue in suburban Atlanta. I adore everything—our celebration, our dancing, our Torah. I also adore Carol, the 65-year-old friend I have made. We chat for a long time. She asks about my future. I eagerly inform her that I’m considering top-tier schools like Purdue, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and MIT to pursue my dream of aerospace engineering within commercial aviation.

I also tell her that, as a proud liberal Reform Jew, I don’t want to stay in the South because I don’t like the political climate. Then, as many long conversations at synagogue go, she tells me her life story. When Carol shares her wisdom and talks about her regrets over the decades, she never mentions the name of her university or employers. That stays with me. Maybe in the end, it doesn’t matter? That night, I go home, do homework, browse various college websites and fall asleep. Two hours later, the pogrom in Israel begins.

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech)

October 7+2: I drive to Virginia Tech for a prescheduled tour. I am numb. My meeting the next day with a Jewish engineering major is canceled. She’s grieving and can’t leave her dorm. I go to Hillel instead. They’re doing matzah ball soup runs. Something clicks. I highlight VT in green.

University of Alabama (Bama)

October 7+4: I take the PSAT. I arrive early. I know I will need to cry in the arms of my Jewish chemistry teacher, who is proctoring the test, before I pretend everything is normal. I expect an average score. I am wrong. Based on my performance, the University of Alabama offers me a full-ride scholarship. But Bama is antisemitic, right?

I’ve heard stories of rejection, alienation and harassment on the campus. And I don’t want to stay in the South, right? Still, I will visit. Why not? When I do, Hillel interns tell me about a student who transferred to Bama to escape antisemitism at the University of Pennsylvania. I know Penn is not an anomaly. I realize that my college list is shrinking. To attend one of the elite northeastern private schools I once idealized, I’d have to enter as a warrior, not an engineering student. I refuse to pay $90,000 a year to fight. I deserve better.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)

October 7+59: Other northeastern universities can betray me, but MIT never would, right? It’s the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the nerd capital of the world. When I’m sad, which isn’t unusual post-October 7, I have a list of coping strategies: studying Torah, Instagram doomscrolling, FaceTiming Jewish friends. My last resort? Browsing the MIT admissions blog! I know how weird it sounds, but that blog—with its beautiful student-written stories of community, growth, burnout and survival—is why I dream of MIT. Yet, today, on December 5, MIT President Sally Kornbluth is evasive when asked at a congressional hearing if calling for the genocide of Jews is against MIT’s code of conduct. I highlight the school of my dreams in blood red.

Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech)

October 7+290: As a Georgian aspiring engineer, everyone expects me to attend GT. Intending to leave the South, I used to resist those expectations. Now, I’m excited by the prospect of attending their Chabad on Campus, studying abroad at the Technion in Haifa through a special exchange program and developing anti-drone technology capable of preventing Iran’s drone attacks.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI)

October 7+400: Now in my senior year, I fly to Washington, D.C., for the national “Standing Together” rally to support Israel and fight antisemitism. When I arrive, I chat with a Jewish RPI alum who says, “I can’t speak to Jewish life at RPI because I didn’t have a life. People were also too busy to be antisemitic, so that’s a plus?” My Jewish identity isn’t anti-antisemitism. It is joy.

In my post-October 7 world, my Judaism has expanded to include Jewish rituals and traditions: I wrap tefillin, pray regularly and avoid non-kosher meat. I began these mitzvot in honor of the hostages, but I’ve grown to love them. I highlight RPI, in upstate New York, in light red because I want to have the time during college to keep growing Jewishly.

Vanderbilt University (Vandy)

October 7+420: I don’t chase prestige, but I’m tired of helplessness. I refuse to be chased out of prestigious institutions. I’ve decided I am ready to fight, just as Jews have always fought to exist in every other institution that tried to deny us. With its Students Supporting Israel chapter, strong Jewish community and merit scholarships, I choose Vandy, in Nashville, as my potential battleground, my new top-tier aspiration. Yes, I’ll face antisemitism. I’ll fight it. But I will not be a professional activist. I’ll be an engineer whose creations protect my people from missiles. I’ll be a Jew whose words protect my people from hate.

Countdown

October 7+511: On October 7 and every day afterward, I have watched as thousands of university students, faculty and administrators decided Jews do not have the right to life, freedom or self-determination.

They camped on campus grounds, harassed and threatened Jewish students and rejected the intellectual freedom their institutions were supposed to stand for. They turned places of education into places of fear.

Before I decide between classes like MATH 1502 and CHEM 1211, I face one decision with vastly different options than I had 18 months ago—picking where I will spend the next four years of my life.

On a recent Shabbat, when I see Carol at our synagogue, she asks where I’ll be going to college. I tell her that I’ve changed over the past year, but in the end, universities are schools. They don’t belong on pedestals. They’re places to learn and to grow. I want to learn and grow in Judaism and academics, so I’ll be choosing among Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, University of Alabama and Vanderbilt—depending on where I get in—to pursue my new dream of aerospace engineering in nonlethal defense aviation.

These southern universities didn’t feel right for me on October 6, 2023, but I’m not the same woman I was back then. 

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Gabrielle Siegel is a high school senior and engineering student at FCS Innovation Academy in suburban Atlanta. When not writing, she can be found studying physics, fencing or maintaining her Duolingo Hebrew streak.

Siegel is the winner of the 2024 Hadassah Magazine and jGirls+ Magazine teen essay contest, which asked: How has your experience since October 7 changed the way you think about and express your Jewish identity? How has this past year shaped your view of the future and where you are headed?