New Semester, New hillel.harvard.edu

Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,

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

Our community begins as students in Cambridge – and extends out in time and space, for our whole lives, wherever life takes us. And so today, with students returning to Harvard’s campus to begin their new semester, it is fitting that a new home for our community, one accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime, is opening as well: Harvard Hillel’s completely redesigned hillel.harvard.edu is live.

This website matters because a community needs informed members: people need and deserve to be informed about what’s happening. This website isn’t a brochure or an advertisement — it’s a way for thousands of us to participate in, understand, and make our contributions to Harvard’s Jewish life.

Telling the story of this community turns out to be a complicated task. We include students, faculty, alumni, and parents across generations and continents; Jews of every denomination and none; people deeply integrated in the social fabric of peers and those considering becoming more connected. Our work helping students find meaning and inspiration within Judaism – and with Harvard’s administrators advocating for our community’s needs – is intrinsically difficult to narrate, since each story contains a richly textured starting-point, an intervention, and only then an outcome. Communicating all of that coherently, and beautifully, requires thought and skill about design and structure – and many rounds of revision.

You’ll notice the site’s visual language reflects the unity that emerges from this multiplicity. The site is organized to help you find what you’re looking for — whether that’s upcoming programs, ways to get involved, resources for students and families, or opportunities to support Jewish life at Harvard.

I also encourage you to explore the site beyond what you came for. You’ll find our calendar, photos from recent events, blog posts from staff members, and coverage of our work in the news. For the first time in a long time, Harvard Hillel’s website can be a place you return to regularly — a way to stay connected to what’s happening here, even from a distance.

Please take a moment to thank Elazar Fine, our stellar Communications Manager, for the months of meticulous work that have brought us to this new chapter. And then take a look around the new site, bookmark it, and send us your thoughts and suggestions.

Brachot,

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein
Executive Director