What Begins in Cambridge Continues – and Grows
The first Shabbat dinner of the year at Harvard Hillel is the start of so much more than a new school year. As I look out at a room of first years, I know that for each of them, somewhere in this room – are the friends and confidants who will accompany them through life. At age 18, these students yearn for, even if they can’t yet fully grasp – the depth of trust and companionship they will find and create with and for one another as they navigate the world with one another’s company.
The friendships that form over challah and chicken, the companionship of spring break a cappella tours, the never-ending arguments about philosophy and politics – begin during four years in Cambridge, and find their fullest meaning as friends, years from now, will stand under one another’s chuppahs, visit each other’s newborns, and show up when life gets hard.
This is what we’re actually building at Harvard Hillel. Not just programs. Not just “a college experience.” We’re creating a space where students build the relationships that will deepen and sweeten their lives, and which they will treasure as the heart of what they found at Harvard.
Last week these images came to vivid expression as hundreds of Jewish Harvard alumni gathered in New York and Washington, D.C. on the second and third nights of Hanukkah. In these lively celebrations, as members of our community reunited with old friends and met new ones – the potential of those opening Shabbat dinners filled the room, expressed in smiles, laughter, and warm embraces in defiance of the cold winter night.
Please watch our video below to experience some of the magic for yourself, and to hear directly from our alumni about what the event meant to them:
I met my wife, Arielle, at Harvard Hillel when we were undergraduates – and so no one has a deeper appreciation of how the relationships students form at Hillel become the most important and most treasured parts of our lives. Last Monday night, away from my family, I recognized our joy in the faces of the young couples at Monday night’s celebration – early in their journey of building faithful homes among the people of Israel.
As we close out 2025, I’m asking for your support. A year-end gift to Harvard Hillel helps us build the links so that the students lighting Shabbat candles together this year will still be part of one another’s lives for decades to come. When you invest in Harvard Hillel, you’re not just funding this coming semester’s programming. You’re supporting a community that connects hundreds of students during four years on campus to a community of tens of thousands of alumni across the world for the rest of their lives.
Over the next week, you’ll hear more from our community: from our incoming undergraduate president and vice-president, Miriam and Charlotte; from our Senior Director of Jewish Student Life Rachel Eilbaum; and from me again as we close out 2025. I hope together our words convey what we experience here every day – that something genuinely good is happening here, and that your support makes it possible.
Thank you for being part of this.
Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director, Harvard Hillel
