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Atonement or astrophysics? Services or sociology?

These choices may plague Jewish students at Stanford University as the second day of the fall quarter falls on the Highest Holy Day. Coming on Thursday, Sept. 27, Yom Kippur conflicts with the first meeting of any Tuesday-Thursday course.

"This happened before, and we fixed it," said Ari Cartun, Stanford's Hillel rabbi from 1975 to 1996. "I'm surprised to see this is cropping up again."

When Stanford's first day of classes fell on Yom Kippur in the mid-1980s, Cartun and a delegation of Jewish undergraduates, grad students and faculty members met with Donald Kennedy, who was then the president. The university assured the Jewish contingent that the first day of courses or student orientation would never again conflict with either Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur.

That, however, is not what is happening now, said Rabbi Patricia Karlin-Neumann, Stanford's associate dean for religious life. Thursday, Sept. 27, she pointed out, is the second day of classes.

Karlin-Neumann noticed the conflict all the way back in winter quarter of last year. While she had initially hoped the university would cancel instruction on the day, she found that because of Stanford's late opening day and the tightly packed quarter system, "the faculty really are loath to cancel classes for any reason."

The associate dean estimated that 9 percent of Stanford's students and perhaps 20 percent of its faculty are Jewish.

With the university unable to move the first day of classes to Monday, Sept. 24, because freshman orientation lasts until the following day, Karlin-Neumann realized the campus academic and Jewish communities would have to reach a compromise.

While classes would go on as scheduled, the administration has spent the last six months making sure "every faculty member is contacted and knows about the conflict," according to Karlin-Neumann. A May 31 letter from the school provost to the faculty urged instructors to not penalize Jewish students who miss class.

Additionally, the scheduling conflict was mentioned in material sent to incoming freshmen and a list of Jewish instructors who won't be holding class on Yom Kippur is available on the school registrar's Web site.

Still, Cartun — contacted because Rabbi Noa Kushner, the current spiritual leader of Stanford Hillel, was unavailable — is worried that Jewish students might be at a disadvantage.

"Students shop around and sit in on 100 different classes. For the first days, and really the first week, students will sit in on a whole lot of classes, and then there's a big frantic orgy of adding and dropping as students set in what they want to take," said Cartun, now the rabbi at Palo Alto's Congregation Etz Chayim. "That's why this is so important. If they can't show up at those classes, they don't know what they're doing."

Karlin-Neumann disagrees, however, stating that it is "kind of de rigueur" for Stanford students to miss the first day of a class.

"The way Stanford works is there's a three-week shopping period," she said. "I would say that at the start of any given quarter, 50 percent of the students miss the first class."

While she would rather the university had canceled classes altogether, Karlin-Neumann said she is pleased that Jewish students and faculty members won't have to "leave a part of themselves at the door to be a part of this university" or "feel like they can't do this and…compete for tenure."

At U.C. Santa Cruz, where classes are set to begin Monday, Hillel officials did manage to talk UCSC administrators into postponing the school's Tuesday welcoming festival until Rosh Hashanah services are over, according to Eli Kaplan, Santa Cruz's Jewish Campus Service Corps fellow.

Sometimes, said Karlin-Neumann, scheduling conflicts have had unforeseen benefits.

"Two years ago, Rosh Hashanah fell during new student orientation. We did the same kind of thing, and worked with all the people coordinating materials. That year we got calls from every observant Jewish student entering Stanford," said Karlin-Neumann, who will lead the Conservative service on campus. "Fabulous! By the time school started, I'd developed relationships with a whole host of people I wouldn't have otherwise had a chance to meet."