It's never easy being on the outside watching everyone else have all the fun. Growing up in a small town with an even smaller Jewish population, that's what it felt like for me, everyday. I'd miss all of the best parties, I'd have to skip school for the holidays and I couldn't participate in extracurricular activities. It seemed like being Jewish meant I'd spend the rest of my life explaining Judaism to the inner circle while I lived my life on the perimeter. Coming to Brandeis turned my world inside-out. I went from being in 0.2 percent of the population to being more than half of the population. I was in the majority, and elation swept straight to my head. I no longer needed to explain "Shabbat" to my teachers or "kashrut" to my friends. Everywhere I turned, others knew what my "kippah" meant, and many of them even came from similar backgrounds. I was enjoying the ease of living so much that I forgot what my life had once been like.

To this day, I fear I might have continued in my blissful ignorance had a close friend of mine not doused me with reality. I remember the two of us sitting in his room, talking lazily about readings, problem sets and dorms, when I questioned about how he was adjusting to being a Christian attending Brandeis.

"It's not bad," he told me. "People just need to think more before they act."

I was a little taken aback by his comment. I had forgotten that there were many people here who had never met a Jew in their life, much less lived surrounded by them.

"What do you mean?" I probed.

"Well, Friday nights suck here," he joked, "but in all seriousness, sometimes people don't consider their words as strongly as they should. Like last week, for example, everyone on my floor was getting all dressed up for Shabbat, and when they noticed I was just doing my own thing, they told me that it was OK and that they'd make me an honorary Jew."

Honorary Jew: I tried to remember if I'd ever used the term to describe someone else.

"They meant well by it," he continued, "but if they'd stopped and thought about it, they might have considered how it would feel if someone said it to them. Why should I need to be an honorary anything? I'm proud of who I am, and I don't need to compensate by pretending to be someone else just so I can fit in. If we went to Boston College, I wouldn't try and make you an 'Honorary Catholic' just because most of the students there are Catholic. In fact, I'd work even harder to make sure you felt comfortable and not as if you needed to assimilate."

I pondered this point, slapped by the thoughtlessness of myself and my peers. I spent 18 years of my life living as the minority, and in the few weeks that I was the majority, I completely forgot what my life had been like. Even worse, the Jewish people are particularly attuned to issues of assimilation. We should be the first to aid minorities in their struggle to remain an independent yet accepted part of the community. Instead, we were the instigating party. The fact that we were ignorant to our mistakes does not absolve us of our guilt.

My friend's comment about "Honorary Judaism" got me thinking more about the issue. Concerned that I'd unwittingly insulted other friends of mine, I asked around, trying to get a feel for how Brandeis' minorities were seeing the world. The picture painted for me was tragically bleak.

For the most part, I was told, people were respectful. But a lot of the respect was cold and socially necessary. The warm, welcoming community that is so often spoken of at Brandeis seems to waver when it comes to crossing religious boundaries. And while the Jews are celebrating their newfound majority, the role reversal throws many for a loop.

Even worse, some individuals see the world through glasses polarized by religion. These people view incidents only from a one-sided manner, assuming that because Jews make up the majority of the campus, the campus must cater to their whims. My roommate cited one such scenario when a member of the Brandeis community last year wrote in the April 29, 2003 issue of the Justice about "lurid displays of posters and crosses," and how, "[the] commitment to the marginalized voice should not come at the expense of offending an overwhelming segment of the Brandeis Jewish community." in a letter to the editor regarding the Jews for Jesus speaker.

"That type of thinking is completely hypocritical," my roommate told me. "If this person were anywhere else in the world - where he was again in the minority - then he'd expect his voice to be heard just as loudly as anyone else's. To call for a double standard because you don't agree with my religious beliefs is intolerant and insulting."

This phenomenal transition from minority to majority clearly leaves everyone stranded without any easy answers. It's very easy to look at other groups and decide that they should meet our needs, either because we have the most members or because our tables have been turned. It's even easier to forget that people can be welcomed and accepted without being pushed to conform. No person at Brandeis should ever have to become an "Honorary Jew.