University of Maryland

When one walks into the Maryland Hillel on Tuesday nights, one cannot help but notice the large mass of people gathered into the multipurpose room.
Hundreds of chumashim are spread out on dozens of tables, along with many slices of pizza, bags of chips, and cans of Coke.

Indeed, this semester has seen a huge increase in the number of people attending and the excitement surrounding Pizza and Parsha. Pizza and Parsha, a program in which students learn the weekly parsha while enjoying free pizza, was started in the fall of 2006. In past semesters, there were about 30 or 40 students attending the event each week, which took place in the cramped beit midrash in Hillel.

This semester, Pizza and Parsha has been attracting between 115 and 130 students a week. This increase is partly due to more active recruiting by the current participants. Racheli Rosen, a freshman, has been attending Pizza and Parsha since the beginning of last semester and has done much of the recruiting for the event. She claims that most people will go if their friends are going, and so the key is for people who enjoy the event to tell their friends to come along.

The chavruta/chabura style of the shiur works well. Because students study in groups of two to six, they are able to bounce ideas off one another while still maintaining the personal, friendly feeling. For students who don’t want independent learning, a different speaker comes to lecture each week as well.

Pizza and Parsha has been rejuvenated this semester, in large part due to the efforts of the students involved. The high attendance itself has even added to the appeal of the event. Daniel Perel, Maryland '10, sums it up. “There is an energy in the room which we haven’t really seen before. You just sort of draw off everyone else in the room.”

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