The Israel programs aim to imbue students with the knowledge and emotion only first-hand experience in Israel can provide, organizers said. The goal is for students to return to campus with personal stories and new energy to help them promote Israel effectively and get others involved in the cause.
In its 10 years of operating in the former Soviet Union, Hillel has reached thousands of Jewish students.
Now it\’s trying to reach more.
The UCLA Hillel rabbi who allegedly lost his temper and kicked a freelance journalist who called him a derogatory name could be required to undergo anger management training, counseling or worse for his reported actions.
On Dec. 1, Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller and Rachel Neuwirth will meet separately with a city attorney hearing officer in Los Angeles to try to sort through the facts of his reported physical assault on her. Afterward, the hearing officer will mete out the appropriate punishment to Seidler-Feller, if merited, said Eric Moses, the city attorney\’s director of public relations. It is possible the hearing officer could recommend that criminal charges be brought against Seidler-Feller.
Two suicide bombings struck the Jewish State Tuesday, killing at least 15 victims and wounding dozens. The two attacks left the U.S.-backed \”road map\” peace plan in tatters and marked a new surge of deadly violence in the nearly 3-year-old intifada.
For much of his life, Lawrence Mudgett didn\’t need Judaism. He had football. But when the 6-foot-6, 250-pound sophomore was declared ineligible for the NCAA at the beginning of the school year, he began searching for another niche.
As a participant on Birthright Israel\’s 2002-2003 winter programs, Mudgett found what he was looking for.
\”Going to Israel changed me. It\’s opened up so many doors,\” said the UCSB sophomore. \”Just being part of the Jewish community and being involved in Hillel helps fill the void of not being on a team and not having that camaraderie.\”
Fans of the legendary first seasons of \”Saturday Night Live\” remember Laraine Newman sashaying with Gilda Radner in the hilarious faux commercial for \”Jewess Jeans.\” They recall her Barbra Streisand impression and her angry beatnik character reciting bad poetry in nasal Brooklynese. But Newman, 50, will reveal one of her more serious roles when she\’s honored at Hillel at Pierce & Valley Colleges\’ Comedy Nite 2003 on Feb. 1: her involvement with the Jewish community. The granddaughter of an Arizona Jewish cattle rancher, Newman will describe how she grew up so assimilated that \”all my Jewish friends went to Hess Kramer but I was shlepped off to Camp Trinity.\”
The announcement that Richard Joel has been named as president of Yeshiva University (YU) is an important and salutary development in American Jewish life. Joel is a gifted leader, able spokesman and prolific fundraiser. He has been able to establish the national Hillel organization which he heads as a \”big tent\” for American Jews — one that embraces unaffiliated and under-affiliated Jews at a vital stage in their lives (college), while also serving the most committed Jews who enter its buildings to eat, study, pray and socialize with other Jews.
College can be a time for Jewish students to further explore their Judaism — religiously, socially and politically. The following is a compilation of resources available to Jewish students and a summary of what these groups are doing on campus.
Last year, when philanthropists Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman decided to give the gift of Israel to thousands of young Jews, skeptics wondered whether there would be any takers.
There was no question: Of the three rabbis sitting up on the dais at UCLA Hillel,Rabbi Shlomo Riskin had the toughest sell. After all, audiences who come to hear panels on pluralism usually bristle at Orthodoxy\’s seeming exclusivity.
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