Sustaining Our Segment of the Home Front

Dear beloved fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,

I hope my message finds you, and those you love, well.

Alongside each of you, I and every member of the Hillel community has spent the past week consuming the news voraciously and anxiously; and unceasingly praying, verbally or otherwise, for the safety and victory of our brothers and sisters in Israel. The scale of uncertainty, due to the width of the cone of possibilities, is so wide – that we cannot, and should not, focus on anything else.

And we are not only reading and praying: Harvard Hillel is helping students caught in the upheaval and confusion of a regional war, in direct and concrete ways. It is a tiny contribution to what is needed – but in a time when our care is so great and our capacity to effect change so limited – it’s critical that you know what our community has been doing, and how and why.

A pair of Israeli students had participated in our annual Poland/Hungary trip which ended last Friday – and their return flights from Warsaw to Tel Aviv were among the first canceled when the war broke out. The generosity of our community meant that, among their many worries for their friends and family and country – their own ability to navigate travel disruptions wasn’t one of them. In booking hostels, and finding alternate travel arrangements; in making plans to return home, and having something to do in the interim – students have known they can draw on the resources of our entire community, as channeled through Harvard Hillel. And they have drawn on these resources.

Another student found herself in Israel, about to begin a program: when the war broke out, the program closed, taking her housing with it. As she scrambled to find a place to stay that night, our staff connected her with the leadership of the Harvard Club of Israel, and conveyed a simple and clear message: know that if you can’t find a place to stay, Hillel can and will book you a hotel room. This student found somewhere to stay for the week, and yesterday traveled to Cyprus. She knows that no matter where her journey home takes her, she’ll have the support of Harvard’s Jewish community every step of the way.

This is in addition to the dozen students we’re in regular communication with as they navigate a war zone, often in a foreign country – checking in, offering perspective, and letting them know that we’re all thinking of them, even from across the world.

These connections are possible only because our staff know students well, and because these students in turn trust our staff and turn to us in moments of need. In this time when there is so little most of us can do to help Israel, or Israelis – I want you to know that your support of Hillel has made a real difference to students whose lives have been upended by this war – and will continue to do so.

Connection-to and caring-for the Jewish people at large is one of the core sensibilities we hope students will take from their years at Harvard Hillel. The goal of creating a community of care shapes our commitments to pluralism, our theory and practice of leadership as Professor Sandel put it so well, and our educational work about Israel and Jewish communities throughout the world. And it is one we put into action at moments like this – sustaining bonds formed in Cambridge Massachusetts, across the globe, and calling on them in the most trying of moments.

While we read and pray for the safety of Israel – a concern so central and so vast that there is little our commentaries or even our calls to our representatives can do – we are able to contribute to crafting something else: the integrity, welfare, and integration of the Jewish people across the globe. That includes material support, the warmth of community, and freewheeling debates about ethics and politics and Jewish values – and Harvard Hillel supplies each generously.

Thank you for creating this community of care, together: one that at this very moment is supporting our students. The effect of this is greater than replacing anxiety with relief in one of the most difficult weeks of their lives: it is teaching them, at this formative and fraught moment, what it means to be Jewish, and to be a member of this generous and principled community. Part of our faith in them is that they will remember this lesson for decades to come, and repay it many-fold.

May we see long-lasting peace in Israel, and a Jewish future shaped not only by the absence of threats, but by something we are creating within: an abundance of care and concern.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director