90-year-old Hillel considers its campus future

When recent rabbinical school graduate Rabbi Benjamin Frankel began a part-time clerical position in 1923 working with students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, little could he have imagined that within less than a century, the small Jewish student program would balloon into a national and international organization with a presence at 550 colleges and universities.

Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life is celebrating its 90th anniversary in November, the organization confirmed. Under its first full-time national director, Abram L. Sachar, Hillel grew from a primarily religious organization to a center of cultural Jewish learning at a time when Judaism was viewed with suspicion in academia, and when the existence of Jewish students on American college campuses was relatively new.

“In this dynamic and global environment, our young people will go off and pursue careers and opportunities all over the world, but the one time and place when we have the greatest critical mass of the future of the Jewish people is during the college years,” Hillel CEO Eric Fingerhut, who assumed the position this summer, told JNS.org.

In the late 1980s, Hillel underwent another transformation under the directorship of Richard M. Joel, who led the effort to “recognize the growth of Jewish life on campus and to greatly expand together with some extraordinary Jewish philanthropists the footprint of Hillel, to build the physical infasctructure of Hillel, and to enable to reach the campuses where a large percentage of our Jewish students are,” Fingerhut said.

In 2002, Hillel partnered with the Jewish Agency for Israel to create its Center for Israel Affairs. Among its Israel-related activities, Hillel organized events, brought experts to speak on campuses, and trained students in Israel advocacy. Hillel also became involved with Taglit-Birthright Israel, bringing more than 10,000 Jewish students to Israel in the first three years of the program alone.

Via the Jewish Agency, Hillel also began to invite young Israelis to spend one or two years working at local campus Hillels in leadership roles. Today, 58 Jewish Agency Israel Fellows to Hillel serve 67 North American campuses, according to Hillel.

“It’s really hard for people to embrace governments or ideology, and yet to embrace a specific person who has a real narrative… makes it much more difficult to demonize Israel if you’ve actually met an Israeli and you see them as a human being,” Wayne Firestone, Fingerhut’s predecessor said.

Hillel’s work to connect American Jewish students with Israel has not come without controversy, often relating to the questions surrounding the group’s “big tent” policy.

Hillel’s official guidelines state that the group will not “partner with, house or host organizations, groups or speakers that delegitimize, demonize or apply a double standard to Israel.” But a student campaign, Open Hillel, was recently founded by students who feel excluded from Hillel because they believe their critical views about Israel are not accepted.

Others have raised concerns about the need for Hillel to enforce its official guidelines on Israel amid anti-Israel activity on some campuses.

“Contrary to some reports that anti-Israel activity is all but non-existent, there are real problems on many campuses, with groups and speakers—and sometimes faculty members—spreading falsehoods about Israel,” Aviva Slomich, director of student programming for the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America, told JNS.org in July.

“For that reason the role of Hillel leaders in educating and protecting impressionable students is essential.”