On Thursday morning, I was taking notes in my 8 a.m. economics class at Kansas University. On Thursday afternoon, I was frantically packing my suitcase. By midnight, I was in New York City.

That alone would be enough to make me feel as if I had left one world – springtime academia at KU – and entered another – the frantic, dynamic and rainy experience of New York City in April.

But my journey marked much more than a mere transition from Midwest to East, from college town to the most famous city in the world. By spending the weekend studying the Jewish community of the Lower East Side, I really was entering another world.

The opportunity arose as part of my Jewish Cities honors class taught by Jonathon Boyarin, a KU professor of religious studies. Our tiny class of four students was to spend the semester studying various Jewish communities in the world. On the first day of class, Boyarin surprised us with the news that he had received grant money to take us to New York City for a weekend of exploration, observation and experience.

A mural painted on the side of an apartment building announces the Lower East Side of New York, where Kansas University freshman Brenna Daldorph spent a weekend this semester studying the Jewish community with her classmates for a course called Jewish Cities.

Boyarin himself would be our guide. Though he is a native of New Jersey, Boyarin has spent most of his life in New York. Upon accepting his position at KU, he decided to split his time between Kansas and New York, returning to the city frequently to see his wife, Elissa Sampson, who still resides in the apartment building they have lived in since 1979. The arrangement allows him to maintain strong connections to his community – the community he would show us.

KU freshman Brenna Daldorph and her classmates studied the Jewish community of New York's Lower East Side during a weekend trip during the spring semester. I

“In order to understand people, you have to see them in their natural environment,” he explained.

Another world

I was the only non-Jewish student in my class, but I always have been interested in the culture – to the point that some of my Jewish friends joke that I know more about Judaism than they do.

However, I was ultimately naÃive in thinking that by attending a few Passover seders and reading voraciously, I actually understood an incredibly diverse community. In New York, I discovered a world I knew nothing about. The Jewish community I had encountered previously lived in the Christianized world of the Midwest. But in New York, I was suddenly the outsider, keenly aware of a body of understanding that lay just beyond my reach.

Nowhere was this better illustrated than during my first real Shabbat. Shabbat is the Jewish Sabbath, a day of rest lasting from Friday night to Saturday night. Observant Jews do not work or utilize technology during this time, believing that Shabbat must be truly restful – without distractions or the division of time between different tasks.

In honor of the occasion, I was invited to dinner at the home of Boyarin’s rabbi, Yossi Pollack. He was anything but my preconception of what a rabbi should be. The recent Yale University graduate and his attorney wife were hip, funny and young. They seemed like my peers, yet I soon learned that their lives were vastly different from my own. During Shabbat dinner, I listened to them discuss how they had removed the light bulb from their refrigerator in order to avoid breaking a Sabbath rule. Once, when they opened the fridge during the holy 25 hours, they accidentally switched on a light.

I was in another world.

This conclusion was cemented when, later that night, I learned about Shabbat elevators – elevators that stop on each floor on Friday nights so observant Jews need not break another Sabbath law and touch a button.

However, my most important lesson was that of the magic of each night of Shabbat. On this day of rest, no one is rushed and the community comes together. As we walked back from Shabbat dinner, I noticed that everyone was out and about, walking to avoid using the technology of transportation. We meandered back slowly to Boyarin’s apartment among black-coated members of the strict Chasidic Jewish movement. The Chasidim were all heading home across the Williamsburg bridge from equally celebratory Shabbat dinners. As we passed, each called out the warm and traditional greeting: “Shabbat Shalom!”

A student transformed

The weekend continued to be an incredible educational experience. I learned firsthand about the strict rules governing relationships in the orthodox Jewish world when I was checking out a cute boy I met at the New York University kosher cafeteria, only to glean that he was a shomer negiah, an observer of the strict rule of no physical contact with women.

We visited as many synagogues as we could walk to – from the Greek one in the heart of Chinatown to a Chasidic one, like a time capsule, with its entirely male congregation in long black coats and fur hats.

I learned about keeping kosher by poking around Boyarin’s kitchen, which had been built in the 1920s expecting Jewish tenants – it already had two sinks. Nestled in his neighborhood of little cafes, flower shops and dog walkers, we visited the last Lower East Side Jewish wholesale store and a kosher restaurant owned by a decidedly not-Jewish Puerto Rican named Manny.

And mostly I just had a chance to talk to people.

Throughout my trip, the community opened up to me. I was accepted with kindness and open hearts into sacred spaces and homes. Boyarin shared his favorite corners of the city. His wife shared her knowledge of the New York Jewish experience, answering my constant queries about the meaning of words and practices.

Over the course of a weekend, I learned so much. I learned by leaving my familiar corner of the world and being in a place I had only read about. Even the most intense study of synagogues of the Lower East Side could never compare to my experience of being in the rosy morning glow of Stanton Street Shul, feeling the weight of the Torah on my knees or noticing the way the paint peeled on the ancient murals.

It never could have introduced me to the diverse congregants – the quiet black woman immersed in prayer, the svelte Israeli hairdresser busy chastising her son or the man who sported a Gold’s Gym sweatshirt under his tallis.

I never would have understood the way these people could be united by the power of lifting their voices in songs of worship, or the way that I, too, would be effected by the haunting Hebrew melodies rising around me. I never would have known that I, too, would lift my hands and clap along.