The profound internal contradiction that could spell doom for Hillel
Students don't want campus Jewish life to come with a strictly enforced political agenda
Students don't want campus Jewish life to come with a strictly enforced political agenda
Brown University junior Hal Triedman is a leader of an independent prayer group called Friday Night Jews, but he doesn’t know exactly how it started, since it was founded before he arrived on campus. He’s pretty sure it had something to do with a few students being upset with the local Hillel, the main Jewish…
In the fall of 2016, roughly a dozen Jewish college students gathered at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, for a weekend-long workshop. Led by young organizers from a tiny progressive Jewish student group called Open Hillel, the students strategized and networked. They had no idea they were being watched by a major pro-Israel organization with…
Jewish students at San Francisco State University have been arguing in federal court for more than a year now that their university is anti-Semitic. Their proof: They say the university discriminated against Hillel, the biggest Jewish student group. Other Jewish students — their group is called “Open Hillel” — have joined the case. Yet Open…
Last week, a controversy at Princeton Hillel reverberated throughout the Jewish world. Kenneset Member Tzipi Hotovely, a deputy foreign minister from the Likud party, had been slated to speak about combatting BDS and justifying Israeli settlements. Following a protest from Jewish progressive students, Princeton Hillel decided at the last minute to revoke her invitation to…
Hillel’s College Guide lists 981 colleges and universities, from IDC Herziliya to Southern Methodist. And yet, Swarthmore and Wesleyan, where students participated in the controversial Open Hillel movement, are missing from the list entirely. Guilford and Vassar, the other two schools commonly affiliated with the movement, are listed in the guide. They remain affiliated with…
More than 100 rabbis and rabbinical students have signed a letter calling on Hillel to sever ties with a right-wing Israeli funder and drop its guidelines on discourse about Israel. In the letter, the religious leaders – many of them identified as LGBT – denounce Hillel’s links with Mosaic United, an initiative sponsored by Israel’s…
Open Hillel, a movement of Jewish students who seek to widen discourse about Israel on college campuses, is holding a rally this afternoon — urging Hillel International to end its financial partnership with Naftali Bennett, Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister. The rally is taking place outside Hillel International headquarters in Washington D.C. @OpenHillelNow rally today for…