N.Y.’s Hidden Hillels

Baruch College, above right, has a relatively well-established Hillel that serves as a bridge to other CUNY Jewish student groups.

by Carolyn Slutsky
Staff Writer

It is lunchtime, and students pour into the already-crowded room at Baruch College. They grab plates of kosher Chinese food and boisterously take seats around the full amphitheater high up in the building.

Comedian Dan Ahdoot, a slight Iranian Jew, jokes about his “receding hairline and proceeding eyebrow line” and says that his mother tells him he should marry an Iranian Jew. He in turn says that leaves either her or his grandmother as options. The laughter from the 100-plus students, particularly the other Persian Jews, is hearty, and the applause when Ahdoot finishes riotous.
The students, mostly Jewish but some from other faiths, have taken time from their busy class and work schedules to attend the comedy hour, be together with

friends and celebrate being part of the Jewish community at Baruch.

The college has a flourishing Hillel, one that meets students where they are in their Jewish and professional lives, and serves as a bridge to other City University of New York schools.
While some New York City campuses like Columbia and New York University often make news with Muslim-Jewish flare-ups, high-profile speakers or fancy programming, Jewish life at CUNY schools can take on a different role.

Many students are first-generation Americans and college students, and backgrounds can range from Israeli to Russian to South Americans and students typically commute from home rather than from farther afield.

Dorin Rosenshine, founder and editor of Hakesher, Baruch’s Jewish student magazine, says her Jewish friendships at Baruch are priceless.

“You’d think because this is a commuter school there’s no way to form friendships, but everyone is like family,” she says.

She started Hakesher in her sophomore year after a Muslim student wrote an anti-Israel article in the school newspaper. Rosenshine, now a senior marketing major, and other Jewish students tried to respond but their submissions went unprinted. “I thought, ‘if they’re not going to publish my stuff, I’ll publish it myself.”

She and other students say the Jewish presence on campus has increased and improved over recent years. Nir Buchler, Hillel’s student president whose parents are French-Tunisian and Israeli, says anti-Semitism is not a common feature at Baruch, but instead the student body is defined by its acceptance of diversity.

“I’m a mix of everything, and I feel good here,” he says.

Rabbi Craig Miller of the Jewish Community Relations Council devotes a large portion of his working hours to helping develop Jewish life at Baruch and providing a rabbinical presence for students there. Baruch is a business-oriented college, and Rabbi Miller anticipates that the students he works with now will become leaders in the Jewish community and beyond as they graduate.
“If you look at Baruch today,” he says, “you see the future of business.”

On other CUNY campuses, Hillels along with Jewish student organizations that haven’t yet met all the requirements to become officially recognized Hillels, are growing or newly cropping up. Smallandmighty.org is an online resource for universities with smaller Jewish student organizations that have not yet attained official Hillel status.

Hunter College on Manhattan’s Upper East Side has an established Hillel and some 1,200 Jewish students out of 16,000 total students.

Executive director Lisa Pollack says that CUNY students share a sophisticated, urban savvy, coming from diverse countries, language and cultural backgrounds, and that Jewish CUNY students are no different. To that end, she says, Hunter Hillel offers diversified programming that tries to target them where they are.

“Rather than the engagement which is traditionally a notion of bringing students to you, we go to where they are to reach them in different places of their Jewish identities,” she says.

Recent Hunter Hillel events have focused on social justice and lending a Jewish spin to volunteer opportunities such as clothing drives, AIDS and breast cancer awareness events, visiting hospitals and soup kitchens and environmental issues. There is also significant pro-Israel programming, because “even if students don’t come from the same place regarding Israel, they all have a deep love and belief in Israel,” says Pollack.

At Lehman College in the Bronx, what was once a rich, thriving, Jewish community became dormant with demographic changes, and all semblance of Jewish campus life dissipated. In 2005, Brooke Greenberg, then an undergraduate studying political science, decided to revive the Hillel.

“I’m very proud of my culture, proud of being a Jewish woman, and when I realized there was no Hillel I saw it as my duty to start one,” says Greenberg. She reached out to the estimated 100 Jewish students on campus, and to Zelda Newman, who serves as faculty advisor.

Like other campuses, Lehman’s Jewish student group attracts a large percentage of Jews but also draws participants from the large Latino population, as well as students from other diverse backgrounds. Greenberg, now a graduate student in education, says many students are naïve about Jewish culture and religion, and approach her with all variety of questions from kosher laws to ritual objects like the menorah and mezuzah, to sex. For many, she is the first Jew they have met.

“If we weren’t there they wouldn’t go seeking it out,” she says of the non-Jews involved in Lehman Jewish life. “But since we are there, they do.”

Future plans for campus Jewish life include a kosher vending machine for the community’s observant students, and an increase in holiday observances.

“It’s levitating a few feet about the ground,” says Greenberg of her Hillel. “But it’s not flying in the air yet.”

At John Jay College, Melanie Frey and a band of other Jewish students established the city’s newest Hillel just the past semester. Frey, a post-graduate taking classes towards a master’s degree, said when she arrived on campus last summer she realized there was no Jewish life to speak of, and she would rarely meet other Jewish students in class.

Finally, she and another student decided to establish a Hillel, reaching out to Baruch and other schools as models and partners. Though the group is not an official Hillel yet, with some 70 people on its mailing list and outreach efforts ongoing, it is on track to become one, and John Jay students have attended Friday night dinners at Hunter and joined a group of CUNY schools for a joint Chanukah celebration at a downtown bar.

“There’s a lot of research into international criminal justice,” at John Jay, says Frey, “which includes anti-terrorism and genocide prevention,” areas that encompass international Jewish concerns.

CUNY Hillels struggle — and also thrive — because of their status as commuter schools. Many students live with their families, and those who observe Shabbat and attend religious services opt to do so in their own communities, rather than partaking of those things at school.
Mark Weintraub, Hillel’s director of New York campus development, says there are approximately 65,000 Jewish college students in the New York metropolitan area, and that the commuter status is a defining aspect of most schools, one that precludes meeting in a dormitory room but that unites students in other ways.

“The idea of Hillel isn’t just to get people in the door but to create meaningful Jewish experiences wherever students are,” says Weintraub.

Matthew Vogel, associate director of Hillel at Baruch recognizes this, and says Baruch offers Shabbat and other religious opportunities, but doesn’t want religion to be the extent of what people seek from on-campus Jewish life.

Off a hallway teeming with students and posters for Jewish events and signs reading “Hillel is our Home, let’s keep it clean,” Vogel sits in a shared office talking about Hillel’s role for its members.

He says that in a pre-professional environment like Baruch, with many students the first in their families to attend college, integrating business with Jewish values is a key component of what he and his colleagues do. Hillel helps students with job preparation and brings in speakers to talk about career paths.

“How do you apply lessons from the Torah to business?” asks Vogel of the kinds of questions Hillel helps students address.

Lisa Pollack summed up the unique role Hillel fills for students from Hunter and across CUNY schools.

“Because it’s a commuter campus, they don’t have an incredible sense of hominess and socialibility,” she says. “That’s part of why Hillel needs to be there. Because it’s the place they can go to feel comfortable.”