Today is the day: watch, and give
Before anything and everything else, I invite you to take 3 minutes – and watch this video. If you care about, and especially if you are worried about, the Jewish future – you’ll be glad you did:
WATCH: Why they call Harvard Hillel home
Nathan Gershengorn ‘26 was the president of Harvard Hillel’s student board in October of 2023. He describes carrying Harvard Hillel through the months after October 7th as the hardest thing he’s ever done – and the thing he’s proudest of. Miriam Goldberger ‘28 is our current student president, and her friends joke that if they can’t find her anywhere else, she’ll be at Hillel. It’s been her home since the day she arrived.
WATCH: Welcoming the Class of 2030
This past April during Visitas, our students welcomed admitted members of the Class of 2030 to Harvard Hillel. They ran events, answered questions over piles of bagels, and showed these prospective students what Jewish life here actually looks like. We put together a recap of this year’s Visitas events for you:
Help us welcome the Class of 2030
…what we are building with and for Jewish students at Harvard [is] a place where we travel together, knowing that others have our back, and that we will be called on to aid one another – and will answer that call when it comes.
Hillel Global Giving Week: A Place to be Seen
For four days this spring, The People’s Plate – a huge upright seder plate interweaving the stories of members of Harvard’s Jewish community with the traditional images of the seder – stood at the heart of Science Center Plaza… This week, you can help us keep telling our story, loud and proud.
Hillel Global Giving Week: A Place for All of Us
What is beautiful about Hillel is that it allows friendships to form between people who, at any other time in their lives, wouldn’t overlap in their religious spaces.
Hillel Global Giving Week: A Place to Become
Each day next week, you’ll hear from a different voice in our community, about a different aspect of what Harvard Hillel does. I hope you’ll read and watch along to understand what’s happening today, and every day, on campus. And I hope that you’ll support Harvard Hillel – because what we are creating is not just what the Jewish community needs. It is what our students need.
Who We Become When We Bear Witness
This past Monday, Harvard Hillel and Harvard Chabad jointly welcomed Bronia Brandman, a survivor of Auschwitz, to share her story with our community for Yom HaShoah.
In Every Generation – Including today’s students
Passover begins tonight, and teaches us that forever, in every generation, each person must see themselves as if they personally went out of Egypt. Our people’s greatest story is one that we not only remember, it is one we re-live – and one which our children and students will come to make their own. Over the past few weeks, I’ve gotten to watch this happen in real-time, before my eyes, here at Harvard Hillel.
A Mirror, a Seder, a Story Still Unfolding
This program was part of The People’s Plate, our broader initiative using art and conversation to explore identity, memory, and belonging across campus. Throughout the week, thousands of passersby encountered the eight-foot tall installation at Science Center Plaza.