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New Hillel Professionals Attend NPI
August 1, 2006Comments (0) | Add | E-mail this to a friend
 Hillels new professionals attend workshops and sessions at NPI.
“Hillel seemed like an exciting opportunity for me,” she said. “The future of the Jewish people is with college students and Hillel has the ability to break outside of the box and figure out how to take a four-year experience and hook the students into Jewish life.”
Rabbi Pine is one of many who chose to make Hillel their professional home this year. In late July, she joined her fellow incoming Hillel directors, as well as incoming assistant directors, campus rabbis, Jewish student life coordinators (JSLC), and development professionals for Hillel’s annual New Professionals Institute at the Schusterman International Center in Washington, DC.
Sahar Oz also joins Hillel professionally for the first time as the assistant director at the Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh. However, Oz is not new to Hillel. He served as the AIPAC liaison while a student at Wayne State University. After transferring to Penn State University, he resumed his duties as liaison and founded the Israel Student Association. Oz went on to receive his MBA at the University of Rochester where he continued to remain active in Hillel. “I chose Rochester because of its Hillel,” he said.
As a college student at the University of Rochester, Kyley McClain found her family at Hillel after deciding to convert to Judaism. Growing up in a fairly Jewish area of New Jersey, McClain was exposed to Jewish life through Shabbat dinners with her friends and celebrating their bar and bat mitzvahs. Immediately after college, McClain became a Steinhardt Jewish Campus Service Corps Fellow for the Rochester Area Hillel and will continue as its JSLC. “I wanted to give back to the community I started my Jewish journey with,” she said.
Michael Rothbaum, a recently ordained rabbi, hopes to challenge stereotypes while working as a JSLC at the Hillels of Westchester. “I don’t want to work with individuals expecting me to fit the mold of what a rabbi should be,” he said. “Through Hillel I can work with intelligent and educated Jews who are open to all the possibilities of what a Jewish life could be.”
The New Professionals Institute proved to be a valuable experience for Melissa Bergman, a recent graduate of Cornell University and a new JSLC for Cornell Hillel. “This being my first professional experience, it was great meeting people I’ll be able to work with during the year,” she said. “I was amazed at how similar we all were and how quickly I was able to make personal connections.”
“The goal of the institute was to give the new professionals a broad orientation to Hillel, introduce them to colleagues and provide them with some direction in pursuing their own goals,” said Jennifer Zwilling, Hillel’s associate director for professional development.
New professionals spent three days at the Schusterman International Center networking and attending various workshops and sessions. The structure of the institute grouped the professionals by title allowing the programming to be position specific. Among the many workshops to choose from, participants received engagement training and an overview of Hillel’s Strategic Plan as well as learned how to facilitate meaningful Jewish experiences, build student leadership and plan development campaigns.
“One of the great things about the institute was bringing in colleagues from the field to train the new professionals,” Zwilling said. Faculty included director of Cornell Hillel, Ed Rosenthal; assistant director at Hillel of San Diego at UCSD, Keri Copans; and senior associate for professional development and former assistant director at the Hillel of Broward and Palm Beach, Raina Goldberg.
Overall, Zwilling was impressed with the high caliber of the new professionals. “It bodes well for Hillel as an organization,” she said.
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