You Asked, We Listened: Harvard Hillel’s Online Speaker Series Returns Wednesday Night

Dear fellow members of Harvard’s Jewish community,

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

A dialectic, full of both promise and tension, sits at the heart of what it means to be a member of the Harvard Jewish community. On the one hand, we are a community like each and every other community: people come (and stay) because of friendship, shared identity and hopes, and the deep need to travel with those we trust and love, and who trust and love us. At the same time, Harvard carries with it a responsibility that goes far beyond our friendships and personal concerns: leading the work of thinking through the hardest, most complex, and most urgent questions facing the world – with the awareness, sometimes dim and sometimes blindingly apparent – that a significant portion of our welfare, security, and happiness depend on the quality of our collective thinking and advancement in knowledge.

At Harvard Hillel, we hold both of these callings close: you’ve seen and heard how centrally we prize the friendships that begin over meals and study, and grow and blossom into a lifetime of ever-deepening support. And we also take seriously the potential, and therefore the responsibility, of our community to do the hard work of untangling the problems facing the Jewish people and the world – and of taking up the mantle of leadership.

Today I’m writing to highlight, and invite you all to join in, a restored and enhanced contribution Harvard Hillel is making in this second register. During the pandemic, we started one of the most successful online speaker series, with thousands of alumni attending virtual talks organized by Rabbi Dani Passow, by the likes of Noah Feldman, Danielle Allen, Bret Stephens, and other leading thinkers. And over the last year, we’ve heard from many of you about how you learned from and enjoyed those talks – and how they kept you connected to our community.

This coming Wednesday night is the first installment of that series, restored. You will again regularly see and hear online sessions from Harvard Hillel that bring you some of the most interesting and important thinking about being a person, and a Jew, today. You’ll also notice a new, sustained element: we will be drawing on our community’s intergenerational depth, bridging the too-often-isolated conversations going on between those who are over 30 on the one hand, and under 30, on the other.

I hope you’ll join me, as Jack Lew, Sarah Hurwitz, Jason Furman, and Elana Farbiaz ‘29 together think through the moral stakes of Jewish life today – and the pressures and dangers we face in walking the tightrope of defending our community from Michigan to Israel and beyond, while also refusing to allow our hearts to become calloused over and unmoved by the suffering of others. Each of them is a person and thinker of depth, courage, and precision – and the interplay of their experiences.

Stay tuned for future installments – including one on the intergenerational divides in the Jewish community and another on the changing landscape of American religion. We’re also always eager to hear your suggestions: what topics are on your heart and mind, and who do you think has a view that our community will grow from encountering?

I look forward to thinking together with you all – Wednesday and always.

Shabbat shalom,

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein ’04
Executive Director