The Aggravator

Chestertown Tale

Washington College was a strange choice of matriculation for even an ultra-assimilated Jew like me.

I went there in the mid-1980s to study philosophy and seek my own holy grail. I wanted to find out if goyish girls could be as decadently bosomed as my father’s 47 maternal aunts, but without the wrestler’s arms that tragically afflicted these flowers of Jewish femininity.

I was sad to learn that some of the college girls, despite their elevated status in the majority culture, also had beefy biceps. The emptiness of that left me only with the sad truth that I had chosen to go to school with very few of the Chosen.

Chestertown, the college community, was a breathing anachronism. Even during that late 20th-century decade, the town whites lived in the most charming federal architecture you ever set eyes on, but the blacks rested their weary bones in plank dwellings that looked like they were slapped together by Jim Crow himself. A lot of these shacks still had privies in the backyards.

I felt like a metaphor there, one Jew, as all the Jews, wandering alone and misunderstood in a hostile world of equestrians, debutantes and superior golf courses. I had a far better chance of raising the dead than a minyan down there.

But now, all that’s changing.

While universities and colleges across the United States are becoming more hostile to Israel, Jews and Judaism, with their left-wing professors railing in academic papers and classrooms, Washington College is emphasizing its interest in recruiting more Jewish students.

“We’re eager to attract Jewish students interested in going to college at a secular school,” said Baird Tipson, Washington College president. “Jewish students can be comfortable studying here and maintaining their Jewish identity. We feel that they really add to the diversity of our experience and allow us to be reflective of the diversity of America.”

If there ever really is an Ashkenazic exodus across the parted waters of Chesapeake Bay, it will be thanks entirely to Roy Ans.  A New York-born physician and 1960s-era Jewish alum and current board member, Dr. Ans is fighting a difficult battle with macular degeneration and glaucoma, but he’s seeking to shed a great deal of light on many pupils.

“My motivation was simple,” said Dr. Ans. “I wanted any Jewish student going to Washington College to feel as comfortable as any other student.”

Through Dr. Ans’ tireless prodding, the school recently began production of a new recruitment brochure titled, “Shalom, Opportunities for Jewish students at Washington College.” This piece touts, among other things, the school Hillel chapter as well as its Chavurah, a fellowship organization that uses the town’s small but vibrant Jewish community to make up for its lack of a shul.

There are also a burgeoning number of classes on Jewish topics including, so far, Jewish-American Writers, Literature of the Holocaust, Jewish vs. Israeli Culture in Art, American Jewish Communities and Religion, and Society and Culture in the Middle East.

Dr. Ans himself has underwritten the Roy Ans Fellowship that provides a $2,000 stipend to a sophomore or junior of any religion who conducts a research project related to the Jewish American experience.

I have to warn you. The brochure they are producing also has a section touting “Alumni Mentors,” and one of them is Yours Truly. That’s right, they’re bragging about it.

Washington College is actually proud to have produced the man that produces this column. But don’t let that wreck it for you. Send your young Jew or Jewess there and, unlike Mrs. Gilden’s little boy, yours will probably turn out great.