Welcoming Elisha Gechter
Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,
I am delighted to announce that Elisha Gechter has joined Harvard Hillel as the Senior Director of Community Engagement.
Elisha’s arrival is a major step for Harvard Hillel and, more importantly, for Harvard’s Jewish community. In this vital role, Elisha will build a cohesive, interconnected, and vibrant community among Harvard’s Jewish alumni – and find new ways of bringing alumni and students together. What begins at Hillel – friendships made over meals, worlds expanded over searching study, and a life of purpose lived in community – can and should extend over a lifetime of ever-deepening connection to this community.
In the year and a half since 10/7, we have felt the need for this type of tight-knit, supportive, and understanding alumni community more sharply than ever before. Elisha’s work will focus on sustaining long-time friendships and building new connections across our generations of alums and families. In this moment of polarization, we have an opportunity to build a community of Jewish Harvard alumni that is stronger for its differences, a global home that transcends distance and age, and one that can voice and act on its principles and values to address the challenges our community faces.
I cannot imagine someone better prepared for this undertaking, in terms of temperament or training, than Elisha Gechter. For ten years, Elisha ran the Wexner Foundation Programs at Harvard’s Kennedy School, supporting hundreds of Israeli civil servants through an immersive, wide-ranging, and life-changing educational experience – and coming to know Harvard from the inside. Elisha’s experience and passion encompass the fullness of our shared vision for Jewish life: she leads trips for Honeymoon Israel, bringing young couples with at least one Jewish partner to Israel as they create the templates of their shared lives; is a past board chair of Mayyim Hayyim, the path-breaking community mikveh in the Boston area; and she is receiving rabbinic ordination in a few months, deepening her work of opening the world of Torah to an ever-widening circle of students. She is worthy of the trust we are placing in her, and of the work ahead.
I encourage you to reach out to Elisha directly to welcome her and share your hopes and ideas for our community. Her message below offers a glimpse of the commitment and skill with which she will build and lead our community.
Brachot,
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director
I am honored to step into the new role of Senior Director of Community Engagement at Harvard Hillel and eager to embark on this journey with all of you. Throughout my career in Jewish leadership I have been dedicated to fostering vibrant, inclusive, and engaged Jewish communities. Now, I am excited to bring that passion and experience to Harvard Hillel, a place that plays such a crucial role in shaping the next generation of thoughtful Jewish leaders and leading Harvard’s far-reaching Jewish alumni community.
My work has always centered on building relationships rooted in trust, connection, and inspiration. Whether coaching students at HKS, guiding interfaith couples through Honeymoon Israel, or teaching Jewish texts in communal settings such as Mayyim Hayyim and elsewhere, I have sought to create spaces where people can explore their Jewish identities in meaningful and authentic ways. And that is what I intend to do in this role too. This spring I am set to be ordained by Yeshivat Maharat, a school for Modern Orthodox women, and I bring a commitment to warmly sharing knowledge and experiences in ways that are empowering and respectful of diversity. I also bring experience in alumni engagement, curriculum design, and strategic leadership from my years leading the Wexner Israel Fellowship, and am excited to partner with you, our alumni, to create new and meaningful opportunities for our global Harvard Jewish community.
Now more than ever, our students need us to help navigate the enormous shifts and challenges to Jewish life on campus, and I am dedicated to creating compelling places and ways to come together both on and off campus. We will do this in a variety of ways – developing educational and social programs to foster closeness and shared purpose across different branches of our community; designing flagship student-facing initiatives in partnership with alumni; and building cohesive and effective teams of alumni around specific needs and initiatives.
The potential of our community – to support one another in school and after graduation, to work together on issues that matter, and to produce a lifetime of world-expanding ideas and experiences – is vast, and I am eager to create all of this in partnership with you. I look forward to meeting and getting to know each of you—your experiences, your concerns about and hopes for Jewish life, and the role you would like to take in building Harvard’s Jewish community, on campus and beyond.
Warmly,
Elisha Horen Gechter
Senior Director of Community Engagement
Harvard Hillel