Hillel is showing the Jewish world that, if you take care of your own — you educate, celebrate and invest in your people — they, in turn, will want to serve our people. It’s a[…]
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Category: Hillel
“Students do not take well to ideological force-feeding…”
Of course, the Berkeley Hillel, like all Hillels, is not an island of groupthink conformity. Students do not take well to ideological force-feeding; they are not conduits for the opinions of others; they are smart[…]
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“There is too much political anger on university campuses today, too little robust debate, too much suppression of robust debate about Israel, too much degrading of First Amendment principles and too much latent and overt anti-Semitism”
There is too much political anger on university campuses today, too little robust debate, too much suppression of robust debate about Israel, too much degrading of First Amendment principles and too much latent and overt[…]
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“What is most irritating in some of the criticisms is the myopic vision of the role of Hillels – as if they should be singly engaged in political advocacy”
What is most irritating in some of the criticisms is the myopic vision of the role of Hillels – as if they should be singly engaged in political advocacy. Students are not foot-soldiers for any[…]
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“Israel engagement…must enlarge our educators, our Hillel directors, and our student leaders”
Israel engagement, in responding to this micro-crisis and in the work more broadly, must instead do something radically different. It must enlarge our educators, our Hillel directors, and our student leaders: it has to give[…]
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“We must ask ourselves: which behaviors, skills, and dispositions are we hoping to cultivate among young Jews, and how might they best be imparted?”
In addition to more funding and more personnel to expand projects of the pluralistic kind that I’ve described, what we need now is a paradigm shift in our educational vision and our methods. We must[…]
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“…there is a strategic error already starting to emerge in the Jewish community’s predictable response to these concerns…”
School is back in session, and amidst all the excitement of new beginnings there is a mounting, murmuring anxiety for what awaits Jewish students on college campus this year in the wake of the summer’s[…]
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Hillel professionals “did not go into Jewish education to win a Kafkaesque “color war” mapped onto complex geopolitical realities”
Our colleagues working at Hillels around the country are talented, and they are driven to do their work by a passion for the big questions of identity, belonging and meaning. They did not go into[…]
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“Hillel is an organization, and organizations have rules…”
Hillel is an organization, and organizations have rules. Those who don’t want to follow those rules can always opt out and build their own organization. Shmuel Rosner, “The Swarthmore Rebellion”, The Jewish Journal (20 December[…]
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We invest so much money in Jewish teens and youth and then just hope for the best. It is a misuse of funds unless…
It is a rare occurrence when I get an e-mail from a Jewish high school, youth group or summer camp director notifying me of the students bound for my campus. For those that have been[…]
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