(JTA) — Hillel International is receiving $38 million, its largest gift ever, from a foundation established by the co-founder of Home Depot. The Marcus Foundation, established by Bernard Marcus and his wife, Billi, said Monday it would make the multi-year donation to a new Hillel staffing initiative, Talent Grants. The initiative seeks to “recruit, train…
The liberal Israel lobby group J Street has not allowed the Israeli journalist Ari Shavit to speak at its events since 2014, after the prominent writer was accused of sexual misconduct by a J Street staffer at a conference for college students, the Forward has learned. The revelation comes days after Shavit identified himself as…
In an uncharacteristic, and laudable move, yesterday Hillel International cancelled Ari Shavit’s book tour of US college campuses after accusations of sexual harassment against Danielle Berrin were made public. Hillel and other major Jewish organizations, have not always been as quick on the draw. In lower profile sexual harassment cases on individual campuses, and organizations…
I’ll be the first to admit. College Station, Texas is an awkward place for a Jew. Living in Dallas for eighteen years, the Jewish community was as much a part of me as every other facet of my life. Most of my friends were Jewish, I was heavily involved with BBYO, and I attended religious…
From openly anti-Semitic professors to swastika graffiti, the campus can be a hard place for Jews, and is certainly a hard place for Zionist Jews. The hype is true: anti-Zionism is alive and well. But my experiences at Brown University have taught me there is also hope to be found in pro-Israel activism. My first…
Forty years ago, I was still living in Washington DC and was still a member of Fabrangen — one of the earliest havurah-style minyanim –– when I noticed something odd that one of our members was doing when the Torah scroll was joyfully carried around the community on Shabbat morning. The member was Rabbi Max…
In June 1969, I was ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary. My first “pulpit” was rabbi of the Hillel Foundation at the University of Florida. I was 26 years old and married with a three-month-old child. I grew up in Boston, intensely aware of the ideas and thinking of the Catholic Church. In retrospect, I…
A lot has happened at Brown RISD Hillel over the past few days after a group of Jewish students planned an event that they framed as a dialogue on competing Jewish and Palestinian narratives around the 1948 War of Independence. As members of Brown Students for Israel (BSI), we don’t shrink from discussions that challenge…
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