The following guest post is by Erika Rief, a junior from Baltimore, MD in the Goizueta Business School. Erika delivered this message at Hillel's Rosh Hashanah morning Conservative service. It is cross-posted at Erika's blog, Rik Rief's Travel Log

To all you freshmen out there, welcome to Rosh Hashana at college. Yes, it is definitely different. For many of you, this will be the first time celebrating the High Holidays away from home. If you haven’t already realized, I just want to warn you, the food is not going to taste the same. The gefilte fish will either be to sweet or too fishy, the matzah balls will be too soft or too firm. And, at least for me, the biggest deal, is that mandel bread doesn’t seem to have caught on in Atlanta yet. This year, to cope, I finally made my own. Of course, more importantly, this will be the first time where instead of sitting next to family or Hebrew school friends in the synagogue you grew up in your entire life, you are sitting here, in Glenn Memorial Church of all places, next to people you may have just met less than a month ago or may not know at all. Feeling out of your comfort zone to begin with, how are you suppose to get in the mindset of Rosh Hashana? Even for those of us who aren’t freshmen anymore, it seems as though without Hebrew school or Jewish day school to prep us for the high holidays, they seem to come out of nowhere. All of a sudden, we are supposed to sit here, proclaim God’s kingship, and act as though we believe in what we are saying.

"I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves."
-Harriet Tubman

Mental slavery is an inability to view events, or one's self, differently from commonly held beliefs. Mental slavery cripples it's victim, can make them despairing, close-minded, and destructive to themselves and their community.

The friend who insults another is a mental slave. The family member who stereotypes or dislikes another race is a mental slave. The student who believes thing cannot change for the better is a mental slave. They are under the influence of ideas that are not really theirs, biases they are not fully aware of, that cause them to react in ways that have nothing to do with real goals or desires.

The Passover Haggadah usually doesn’t give much emphasis to Moses, but his story is a telling one.

This article originally appeared at michaelrabkin.com. The following is a talk I delivered at Congregation Shearith Israel on Saturday morning in honor of the "Emory Shabbat." The weekly torah portion is Ki Tisa.

I want to thank Rabbi Norry and Rabbi Zelony for allowing me to share the bimah this morning. I especially want to thank Barry Etra, who has been utterly persistent and authentically driven to foster the partnership between Hillel at Emory and this congregation. The significant number of Emory faculty, alumni and students who are a part of this congregation makes the relationship inextricable, but like any relationship it takes nurturing. We have done various joint programs together like the Latke-Hamentashen debate at Emory and a Shabbat dinner at the synagogue. The primary goal that we share is to create a natural bridge for Emory students to cross into the Atlanta Jewish community after graduation. Each year, about 500 of the 2,000 Jewish students at Emory graduate. We know that many stay in Atlanta, but after living in the Emory bubble for four years, it’s hard to automatically feel at home here. This relationship between Hillel and Shearith Israel is one way to build that bridge.

Matt Goldberg, chair of the Book-a-Sukkah program, said that diverse groups at Emory ranging from sororities to an interfaith club reserved the Sukkah.

"One of the customs of Sukkot is welcoming guests into the Sukkah," Matt said. This custom, known as ushpizin, goes back to Abraham and Sarah, who welcomed strangers into their tent. “I emailed all the club presidents at Emory, both Jewish and non Jewish,” said Goldberg, “and invited them to use one of Hillel’s two Sukkahs for their next club meeting.”

Hillel professionals across North America joined together this Shabbat for the first week of The Shabbat Experiment. I created the Shabbat Experiment to challenge Hillel professionals to celebrate Shabbat not just with their students or for work, but with their friends and for themselves. Over the course of the next 10 weeks, groups of Hillel professionals will complete creative challenges that are related to 10 core values of Shabbat. Follow their experiences, experiments, creations, and reflections at The Shabbat Experiment blog.