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To the Jewish students not showing up this year
A holiday message for the Jewish student who thinks they have no place in Hillel, Jewish life, learning or Israel in 2024 / 5785
Last year on our campuses was so hard, I was hesitant to speak publicly again. I want to lead in the right way for all of you and if I have not, I ask for your forgiveness and offer an invitation.
I’m sharing these words with you because I think it’s important to use this time today, with this community, at this moment, to say firmly that Hillel is a place for All Kinds of Jewish, especially for your kind of Jewish. I want to invite you to explore what being Jewish means to you today and what Hillel offers in response and how you connect to that. I want to start with a central question, one that I’ve heard from many over the past few years.
Is Hillel truly welcoming to all kinds of Jewish or just certain kinds that we appear to agree with?
If we don’t figure out this pertinent question, I’m worried we may lose a generation of students – not to apathy – but by actively pushing them away through excluding them from our Hillel.
We are being asked every day to draw lines about who is included in the open tent and who is not welcome. The moment is asking it and our stakeholders are asking it at all levels. Students want to know if they can get coffee and a snack at Hillel without needing to check their criticism of Israel at the door. Enough students have spoken to tell us that they feel excluded. They’ve resigned from leadership positions with Hillel because of Israel and they aren’t showing up to further dialogue and education events.
At the same time this is happening, our engagement with Jewish students and the university community has never been stronger. Our building attendance was up 40% this year. We already have 51 programs planned for the fall semester. More new students engaged with Hillel than ever before and not just those seeking refuge from the unprecedented levels of antisemitism. We offered more educational programs about Israel, antisemitism, bridge building and Jewish learning than ever before and the demand is still growing. While our student engagement metrics are up, so is the discontent that some Jewish students have for Hillel.
We kayak and tashlich, we ski and learn about antisemitism, we harvest veggies for Shabbat and study Jewish agrarian traditions. We bake challah and dance to Miriam’s Song and cook in the Hillel kitchen our Bubbe’s ancient recipes. We have Jewish learning fellowships, study sessions, career development, and all kinds of really good snacks.
Yet for some students no amount of challahs or Sukkah sushi will outweigh the Israel component of our vision for inclusive and welcoming Jewish life and learning. So much Jewish joy and so much Jewish suffering at the same time. Unprecedented antisemitism across the country and blessings of community like we saw this past Monday night when students and the Vermont community joined together to acknowledge our mourning, but together as one community. We are a community that is built to hold those two things simultaneously. We smash a glass under the chuppah during a wedding for a similar reason, to remember suffering as we celebrate joy.
So why are we hearing that Jewish students, who are forming their own nascent connections to Jewish life, learning, and Israel, no longer feel welcome in Hillel? They’re telling us this because we aren’t being explicit enough that our message is that ALL KINDS OF JEWISH are welcome.
While many students have felt more Jewish and more emboldened in their identity expression after October 7th, we acknowledge those students who are feeling rejected by the institutions who don’t share their values. They feel that because Israel remains a vital part of our mission and vision they can no longer feel connected to the other Jewish life and learning that we offer. They feel isolated from the institutions that nurtured their Jewish joy when they were younger. They feel isolated from their Jewish camp, they feel isolated from their rabbis, and disconnected from how their grandparents and parents experienced Jewish joy.
I’ll say it explicitly and succinctly so everyone is clear.
All students are welcome in Hillel.
Any student who wants to explore a personal and meaningful connection to Jewish life, learning, and Israel – whatever that means to them – is welcome in our Hillel. This is today’s pluralism.
Will we co-sponsor programs that delegitimize, demonize, or show a double standard toward Israel? No, we won’t. Will we host programs that explore multiple narratives and allow students to determine their own relationships to the complex issues of and peoples of Israel? Of course we will.
We don’t say this is the right perspective, but that it is one of many, like our Jewish people and practices around the world. I invite you to spend time wrestling with what that means to you at this challenging moment in time. During times when it is most challenging we must engage with the things that challenge us the most.
To act otherwise is not the Hillel I’ve known for the past 21 years of my professional life. We never shut out students with one Jewish parent or those with a tenuous connection to their Jewish identity. We do not reject the inquiring Jew by choice or their friends. We can’t start shutting out students who question what Israel means to them now. The challenge of our moment is wrestling with how to truly be the pluralistic movement of our vision even when our boundaries are being tested like never before. I believe we can rise to this challenge and find the answers to a Jewish life well-lived that includes space for every Jewish person regardless of their position on Israel.
Our organization exists to encourage our students to be their best selves, no matter how they grew up or what brought them to explore their Jewish identity in a deeper way. When students can’t find their religious needs fulfilled at Hillel we will gladly connect them with the Chabad or Ohavi Zedek or Temple Sinai or Ruach Hamaqom or each other in minyanim so that every student can find their place. It’s what we do at Hillel. We support every Jewish student.
So why are students hearing otherwise? Since October 7th and even before then, some students feel welcome but not others. Some students have told us how and why they don’t feel reflected in Jewish life, learning, and Israel anymore. I have the feeling that plenty more are just checking out from their Jewish identity because it’s just too hard right now.
When I don’t know where to go I look back at the written Torah. To me, that’s where all the commentary developed from and I like to look at source sheets. I want to refer to our texts and our foundational documents to examine our connection to the word Zionism and its multiple manifestations. Zion appears throughout our prayers and our prayerbooks, our Torah our Talmud and eternal dialogue since. Today we said “Yimloch Adonai Leiolam Elohayich Zion, L’dor v’dor hallelujah!” The Eternal One shall reign for ever; your God, o Zion, from generation to generation. Now our generations are speaking to each other again. The word is fundamental to many prayerful connections to our religious traditions.
Let’s look at modern texts. When we have questions we study, we learn, so I want to share what Hillel the organization has to say about Zionism from our source texts, policy statements.
It’s said that Hillel is a Zionist organization because we believe in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination. It’s true. We do. Our Israel guidelines which you can find at hillel.org state, “Hillel is steadfastly committed to the support of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized borders as a member of the family of nations.” Yet nowhere in our Israel guidelines does it explicitly state that Hillel is a Zionist organization. Others have defined us as Zionist but it’s important to note that the word Zionism is nowhere to be found in our policy documents or our by-laws, our mission statement, vision, or values. What does it mean that this word isn’t there? The message for me is to look at the text, explore the questions I have with others, and find my own relationship to that through our Jewish tradition. I invite you to do the same this year. The rest is commentary and now we should all go study together.
As our Rabbi Hillel the Elder says, “if not now, when?” It is the right message at the right time.
This is the moment to determine what our values, vision and mission tell us about how an ideology of national aspiration and religious longing can mean for our collective future. We must wrestle with the toughest subjects to be the Hillel we’ve been for the past 100 years and hundreds of years into the future; one that welcomes every student, no matter what.
We should be the Hillel that welcomes and convenes the most difficult conversations. We should provide the pizza for late-night meetings of students discussing the actions, policies, and ideals of Israel and without question its neighboring countries and peoples. We should not have any litmus test when it comes to engaging Jewish college students with Jewish life, learning, and Israel because that is not Hillel.
My years on college campuses have shown me that students care about Israel, contrary to so many who say they are apathetic, I believe students want a thriving, inclusive, and safe Israel. They want peace and safety and basic humanity for all Israelis and Palestinians and Christians and Druzim and Bedouin and Arab and Muslim peoples in a land that means so much to so many. Whether it’s admiration or frustration, with love or with concern, with fear or with pride. If students are telling us they don’t feel anything about Israel it’s because we aren’t providing the right space for them to confide their true beliefs and ask for learning without judgment or condemnation. We should be welcoming with acceptance and curiosity and education and a warm starting point to our great traditions that we see in our Torah.
Israel and Zion are integral to our prayers. Just as we removed the Torah from the ark for today’s service and just before our central prayer, the Shema, we said, “Baruch shenatan torah l’amo yisrael bikdooshatow. Praised be the One who in holiness gives the Torah to our people Israel.” The people Zion the land Israel, the land and Zion the people and nation of Israel. Its centrality to Jewish life is right there every Shabbat and nearly every holiday. How we relate to that is up to us in every generation.
We use bold words like ALL and EVERY in our aspirations because that’s the work we’re doing. We are after a world where every Jewish student, no matter their background or beliefs, or perspectives at any moment in time, is invited to see that a life of Judaism can be a life well lived. However being in a pluralistic Jewish community is not easy. Each person must constantly navigate the path between actions they resonate with and those they oppose. How one finds their relationship to these issues is the foundational cornerstone of Jewish identity. We learn what defines us through the eternal dialogue with our ancestors and the recipients of those traditions today, our students.
No matter what you’re feeling, there are others who share your perspectives and want to connect. We do not purport to have the answers but we’re fully invested in exploring the questions with you to help make the world better in our time together on campus. You’re invited to explore this beautiful and vast tradition we collectively share as Jews, together in our UVM community.
As Jewish people, we are reminded that we may not complete the work, nor are we free to desist from it, so we will keep working toward a truly inclusive vision for all Jewish people in Hillel.
Forgive each other and forgive us as we figure out the way forward together in Jewish community. You are invited and welcome to be your kind of Jewish at Hillel.
Gmar Chatimah Tovah
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