Hillel International

History

In 1923, Dr. Edward Chauncey Baldwin, Christian professor of Biblical literature at University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign was distressed by his Jewish students' lack of knowledge of the Old Testament, and he discussed his concerns with Rabbi Benjamin Frankel.

Later the same year, members of the local Jewish and university communities met in a rented loft over a dry cleaner in Champaign, Illinois, to found The Hillel Foundation.

In 1925, B'nai Brith pledged to sponsor Hillel's activities with a budget of approximately $12,000 that year. By then, it encompassed 120 Hillel foundations and affiliates at an additional 400 campuses. The campus foundations seek to create a welcoming environment for Jewish students on their respective campuses.

Beginning in 1988, under Director Richard M. Joel, Hillel underwent an organizational shift in mission and structure. An integral part of this shift was the institution of a Board of Governors, chaired by Edgar M. Bronfman until 2009 when he was succeeded by Randall Kaplan.

Bronfman's involvement began in 1994 during a visit by Richard Joel to the Seagram building, when Bronfman pledged his support to Hillel. When Bronfman agreed to serve as chairman, Hillel gained legitimacy among other philanthropists. The subsequent revitalization of the organization resulted in increased donor support, updated programming, and broad international recognition. Part of the increased donor support came as a result of Bronfman's well-known campus visits, beginning in 1994, that continued until his death in 2013.

Hillel has been described as the largest Jewish campus organization in the world. Hillel foundations are found in Israel, South America, and the Post-Soviet States, and affiliated organizations are found in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom.

Although the foundation was not organized nationally until 1923, Texas A&M Hillel was founded in 1920. At the time of its founding, Texas A&M University was named the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas.

Adam Lehman was appointed chief operating officer in October 2015. Lehman had been senior vice president at AOL.

Hillel International Presidents and CEOs

Services

As Hillel is funded by donations, it is usually free for an interested student to participate in their activities. However, as set by International Hillel Policy, there are restrictions on the services, topics of discussions, and events that can be held. These restrictions focus mainly on Zionism, where Hillel takes a firm stance in not promoting certain types of views on Israel, such as the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions campaign. Hillel's strategy, as redefined in 2006, explicitly set a goal to "inspire every Jewish student to make an enduring commitment to Jewish life". To be effective, Hillel activities vary from campus to campus, with an emphasis on responding to the needs of participating students. To reach a larger audience, campus Hillel foundations struggle to create a pluralistic, inclusive environment that still remains distinctively Jewish. To do so, the national foundation organizes trips to Israel, places service fellows at the campus foundations, creates a guide to Jewish student life, and leads advocacy work on Jewish and Israeli issues, as well as providing some financial support to its campus foundations.

Hillel chapters regularly offer Shabbat services. Hillel is also dedicated to social activism, fundraising, and philanthropy for charitable causes. These activities are usually led on the local campus level, but many campuses participate in alternative spring break trips dedicated to service, a Yom Kippur Fast Action Campaign, and the Oxfam Fair Trade Coffee Campaign, as well as more traditional local service projects at soup kitchens, homeless shelters, and Jewish community organizations.

Social justice

Since 2010, Hillel's campus initiative at the University of Washington, Freedom Shabbat, has highlighted the problem of modern-day slavery during the holiday of Passover, a time when Jews remember their escape from slavery in Egypt.

Hillel also organizes alternative break trips for students across the globe, where students participate in short-term service projects dealing with a range of issues, from poverty to food justice. They have partnered with the non-profit organization City Year to create civic engagement spring breaks for students.

Hillel Houses in the United Kingdom

As of July 2014, there Hillel Houses in the cities of Birmingham, Bournemouth, Brighton, Bristol, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Newcastle, Sheffield, and York. Hillel Houses in the UK are not connected to Hillel International in any way other than name; they are under the auspices of the Union of Jewish Students of the UK & Ireland (UJS).

Hillel House in Leeds is home to Leeds Jewish Society. The Hillel Student Centre is the flagship Hillel run student house. It is fitted with plasma televisions, a shul which is home to the Leeds Student Minyan, as well as a quiet study area. There is also a cafe where kosher lunch is served for students. The centre has been run for many years with dedication by Charles Ross, a Leeds resident. Although no longer residential, there are kosher student flats available at Universities in Leeds.

Hillel House in Birmingham is the largest residential Hillel in the UK, serving over 40 full-time residents and the base for Birmingham Jewish Society. The House provides kosher self-catering accommodation to students in Birmingham, and communal facilities (including a commercial kosher kitchen and 100+ capacity dining room) for Jewish groups and societies. Rooms start from £2,860 per academic year, and there is a range of accommodation - including en-suite rooms.

Hillel Houses in Canada

As of November 2013, there are Hillel Houses in the cities of Halifax, Calgary, Edmonton, Guelph, Hamilton, Kitchener, Kingston, London, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, and Winnipeg. Each Hillel House serves one or more universities and colleges in the area.

Praise and awards

The Hillel Foundation has received many awards over the years. One example is from March 2011, the Hillel Organization was a recipient of one of the first nine grants from the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund, a pilot program of the Jim Joseph, Righteous Persons, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. The fund provides $500,000 in grants and technical support to digital media projects designed to engage 18- to 40-year-olds in Jewish life, learning, culture and community. Investment analyst David Cohen said in a 2006 fundraiser, "We [Cohen and his wife] believe that Hillel is perhaps the organization in the Jewish community best equipped to educate the next generation. No other group so fully embraces the entire community the way Hillel does: kosher or not; observant or not; religious or not; Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox—just Jewish."

Local branches and staff members that are part of the greater Hillel Organization are often recipients of both Jewish and non-denominational awards. As an example, in 2010, Bernard Steinberg, President and Director of Harvard Hillel received a 2010 Covenant Foundation Award for excellence in teaching. In 2008, the University of Kansas Hillel was named "KU Student Organization of the Year" out of more than 500 student clubs for the second year in a row. In 2007, Hillel at Virginia Tech received the University and Community Partnership Award for offering "students the means to explore and celebrate their Jewish identity in a dynamic and comfortable environment".

Opposition to discussions about disinvestment from Israel

Hillel's use of the motto "Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel" has been criticized as alienating to Jewish students who are critical of Israeli policies, as well as attaching political ideology to an otherwise religious group. According to Hillel's official guidelines, Hillel will not "partner with, house or host organizations, groups or speakers that delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel."

A campaign called "Open Hillel" has been started at universities to discuss Hillel's pro-Israel stance.

In December 2013, Swarthmore College Hillel became the first Open Hillel by declaring it will not abide by the international organization's Standards of Partnership, which prohibit Hillel chapters from hosting speakers or cosponsoring with student groups that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, hold Israel to a different standard or are deemed to "demonize or delegitimize" the state of Israel. In a statement from Swarthmore Hillel, "All are welcome to walk through our doors and speak with our name and under our roof, be they Zionist, anti-Zionist, post-Zionist, or non-Zionist." In March 2015, Swarthmore Hillel's board voted to change the name of the organization after Hillel International threatened legal action if the student organization did not modify an upcoming event to meet Hillel International's Standards of Partnership, which does not allow anti-Israel speakers. The student group removed the word "Hillel" from its title so it could proceed with the planned event, and subsequently adopted the name "Swarthmore Kehilah", severing its association with Hillel.

In March 2015, the Student Board President of Muhlenberg College's Hillel resigned over Hillel's refusal to sponsor Open Hillel's "From Mississippi to Jerusalem: A Conversation with Civil Rights Veterans" event, bringing three Jewish veterans of the Civil Rights Movement to discuss their efforts on behalf of civil rights in the American South and in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Caroline Dorn, protesting Hillel's refusal to allow the civil rights veterans to speak at Hillel, said in her resignation:"I can’t be a representative of Hillel International, an organization that I feel is limiting free speech on our campus and prohibiting academic integrity." The event was held without the sponsorship of Hillel and had an estimated 100 attendees.

As of 2016, four campus Hillels have indicated they are "Open", namely Guilford College, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, Wesleyan University. They reject the Standards of Partnership that they protest limit dialog and freedom of speech.

When Swarthmore protested Hillel's restrictions on free speech, Hillel President and Chief Executive Officer Eric Fingerhut said that it was "not acceptable" to host certain speakers under the Hillel banner, and that "anti-Zionists will not be permitted to speak using the Hillel name or under the Hillel roof, under any circumstances." Hillel International's rules prohibit Hillel campus chapters from hosting programs that include groups or individuals that "deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state with secure and recognized boundaries; delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel," or that support boycott, divestment or sanction campaigns against Israel. Harvard Hillel had barred Avraham Burg, a former speaker of the Knesset, from speaking because Burg's talk was cosponsored by Harvard Palestinian Solidarity Committee. Hillel guidelines currently bar liberal Peter Beinart, who supports limited boycott of products produced on West Bank settlements; linguist Noam Chomsky who supports a no-state solution, and Jewish philosopher Judith Butler, author of a radical critique of Zionism that rejects its moral legitimacy.

In February 2014, the Vassar College Jewish Union, an affiliate of Hillel, joined Swarthmore Hillel in declaring themselves to be an Open Hillel, and Wesleyan University's Hillel followed suit. Alumni at the University of California Berkeley have also created a petition calling upon their school to do the same. In response to Open Hillel, a group of students formed Safe Hillel in 2014 to preserve the pro-Israel agenda of the original Hillel organization. According to its founder Raphael Fils, "Hillel should not have to change its mission in order to accommodate those who don't agree with it. Hillel is the one place students are supposed to feel entirely comfortable in their support of Israel. If that makes some people uncomfortable, there are plenty of other places to go just to hear attacks on Israel."

Princeton University Hillel's executive director, Rabbi Julie Roth was criticized by two Hillel student board members and other members for sending out a mass email encouraging Hillel members to oppose a petition by tenured Princeton faculty members which called on the university to divest from companies that profit from the occupation of the West Bank by Israel. Thirty-eight Jewish Princeton students wrote an open letter criticizing the Center for Jewish Life, Princeton's Hillel, for acting as if the center would automatically oppose the faculty's petition without debate. The students' letter, which appeared in the campus newspaper, The Daily Princetonian, also criticized Hillel International for prohibiting member chapters from hosting or engaging in discussion with groups or individuals who promote boycotting, divesting from or sanctioning Israel. Hillel had also been criticized for monopolistic tactics that the group is alleged to have used to assume primacy over the Jewish campus scene.

Activities

In 1997, Jeremy Deutchman, a graduate of Hillel's JCSC fellowship and a student member of Hillel's board of directors, wrote a lengthy article in Tikkun.

Deutchman believes that Hillel engages in the wholesale "dumbing down" of Judaism, and providing stylish, yet meaningless Judaism instead of substantive Judaism.

Deutchman says Hillel has been too similar to a massive corporation that franchises out simplistic templates to campus franchisees that removes the religious meaning of Judaism in favor of a meaningless commodity.

Citing a Hillel-sponsored activity where several dozen students worked for hours constructing a sixty-pound matzoh ball, Deutchman calls it an example of where a "symbol triumphs over substance".

Deutchman also questions the value of Hillel volunteers giving out trinkets, such as kazoos, to students who listen to a spiel about Hillel.

Hillel's focus should not be on increasing the number of students who participate in Hillel events; instead Hillel should ensuring that the students' activities are "spiritually rich" rather than of a "secular, universal nature", according to Deutchman. Deutchman advocates for Hillel to present Judaism as a "substantive alternative to the materialism and selfishness" of modern society rather than "merely another one of the many variants of private life fun offered in the consumer marketplace".

Deutchman echoes a common criticism of the non-profit organization sector, arguing that the organization had become overly donor-driven, and had hence compromised Judaic quality.

Policy position intermarriage

Former Hillel president Avraham Infeld was challenged in traditional circles for asserting that Hillel accepts intermarriage—marriage of Jews to non-Jews.

Assault

UCLA Hillel rabbi and director Chaim Seidler-Feller was accused by journalist Rachel Neuwirth of verbally and physically assaulting her on the UCLA campus in October 2003. Eyewitness accounts were contradictory, with some indicating Neuwirth did not provoke the incident, but others indicating that she had. After more than three years of litigation, in a legal settlement, Seidler-Feller provided Neuwirth with a letter of apology accepting full responsibility for the attack on Neuwirth and a large financial arrangement with her.

Slander

In 2006, a George Washington Law School student organized an on-campus rally to focus on disinvestment from Israel.

In an email sent to students in Hillel, Robert Fishman, director of George Washington University's Hillel, asserted that the rally's organizer is "considered a terrorist by the state of Israel, and has been convicted of crimes in both Israel and the United States. He advocates for the destruction of Israel, and in its place, the creation of a Palestinian state. He has also openly admitted to associating with suicide bombers and has made comments in the past about his desire to become a suicide bomber." All of Fishman's accusations were false.

Fishman later wrote a letter in the campus newsletter saying he regretted his statements.

Robert Fishman also orchestrated a group of Hillel members to read highly critical questions pre-drafted by Deborah Lipstadt as if they were their own to President Jimmy Carter who spoke on campus in March 2007. Along with blocking the microphones from other students, the activities gave the media the false impression that the audience was critical of Carter despite repeated standing ovations.

Islamophobia

Rutgers University Hillel's executive director, Andrew Getraer aroused controversy after making comments, in what he assumed to be private Twitter conversation, claiming that Palestinians did not exist, that Muslim students at Rutgers sympathized with terror, and that the Qur'an mandates the killing of Jews.

Local Hillels

Hillel's Guide to Jewish Life at Colleges and Universities provides information about Jewish life on campus at many different colleges, including a full listing of local Hillel chapters.

Local Hillels include:

In popular culture

Hillel is mentioned briefly in Futurama in the episode Mars University where a group of robots who are part of Bender's old fraternity, Robot House, plead with Bender to help make them cool again, "Even Hillel has better parties than us."