The Potential of a TAMID Family
By: Benjamin Zirman, TAMID at YU
The TAMID Group at Yeshiva University has quickly grown to become the most popular club on campus. TAMID’s ability to provide real work experience with Israeli companies attracts a large percentage of the student body whether they are passionate about their career aspirations in the business world or connecting to their home country, Israel, in a different way. The rising number of applicants every year has enabled the selection process to hand-pick the cream of the crop for each incoming class. This is a great example of a clear distinction TAMID at YU has over other chapters. However, there are other characteristics of the university itself that have created unique strategic hurdles for TAMID at YU.
Yeshiva University is divided into gendered campuses with the men going to school in Washington Heights and the women going to school in Midtown Manhattan. Aside for a few rare exceptions, classes are single-sex and taught separately on the respective campuses. Additionally, Yeshiva University has a strong orthodox presence within the administration and student body on campus. Some students along the Orthodox spectrum have varying and non-binary levels of comfort about the propriety of socializing or fraternizing with members of the opposite sex. Consequentially, clubs and events that unite the genders for business and serious purposes rather than the frivolity of parties hold truly significant weight in the larger community and specifically at TAMID. The importance of TAMID in day to day life to collaborate and share with a unique community cannot be overstated.
TAMID at YU has placed a strong emphasis this year on community building. A designated social game has been integrated into the weekly schedule for the education class, where members get to know each other on a more personal level. Zoey Glaubach, the former President of TAMID at Boston University who transferred to Stern College at Yeshiva University this year, was appointed as Director of Programming and has taken the lead role in community building. She recently told me “BU TAMID members became my best friends and I still talk to them every day, so coming to YU I knew I needed to implement that type of community here. Having people that you are close with personally and can work with professionally becomes such a rewarding friendship and there is so much potential for that in our chapter.” Although it is still early in the process and there is more work to be done, the inherent barriers and divisions within the university are being torn down, enabling relationships of a different sort to be formed. Every member of the education class can feel the energy and connection of this growing family and that is a powerful feeling.
I think when most people apply to TAMID, they focus on the individual skills or experiences they could gain from being accepted as a member. There is no doubt in the value of these personal advancements, but I think there is even greater value in the possible community that can be formed. Constructing a community of passionate leaders who deeply care about Israel and are driven to be successful in the world of business, can have a far greater impact than any one individual could have. If members of TAMID at any university feel a commitment to their chapter and connection with other members, together they can accomplish much greater things for the companies they work for and for the country of Israel. If this value was further developed throughout chapters across the country and to TAMID as a whole, there’s tremendous potential for each of us and for all of us together.