What’s happening on campus? Hear from students, professionals, and Hillel community members whose lives have been impacted by Hillel and who impact the world with their voices and stories. Share your story with us!
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I got an email from GW Hillel saying, ‘Come join us in our vaccine efforts,’ so I emailed the people that run it and the JCC and Hillel. I previously worked for Joe Biden’s campaign on the Voter Protection Team in Florida, so I had that experience with the managerial side of this and told them I wanted to work with them.
I am a disabled, queer Jew with invisible disabilities such as ADHD—and I have faced a lot of challenges and successes with my identity. I struggled a lot with self-acceptance and finding a balance between my Judaism and two other identities that aren’t often discussed in the Jewish community.
I felt like ‘Oh my God there’s so many Jewish people that are in the States and they live such a different life and they have so much to say and I don’t know anything about it and I love my people,’ you know? I feel like we are one.
I’ve been thinking a lot about how Purim commemorates the survival of Jews who were marked for death. How many of us have felt that ominous shadow hanging over us, over our communities this last year? There were times when we thought anyone who went outside was asking to get sick and die.
In Jewish communities everywhere, they say, ‘Well, there’s nobody with a disability in our community that we need to consider,’ but I subscribe to the model of ‘If you build it, they will come.’
I think the music I write is a reflection of my story. A lot of it is about my conscious analysis of what it is to be Black and Jewish. It’s my commentary on that experience. Hillel has provided that support system for me, and it has also influenced the actual art itself.
I don’t see that my Persian identity ever has to stop for my Jewish identity to start. Iranian Jews have been in Iran since 586 BCE, so the Iranian and Iraqi diaspora are the most historic diaspora of the Jews. My family has been in Iran longer than we’ve been in Israel and longer than we’ve been in the U.S.
I think the best part of that whole conversation was they were so grateful that we educated them because they didn’t know something that we were able to teach them about. They weren’t apologizing profusely. They were sorry, but they weren’t like ‘Really? You have to make our lives more difficult?’ They were so willing to make this change happen with us.
The racial justice protests that swept across the country this past summer has prompted the American Jewish community to reckon with the racial disparities that exist inside and outside of our communities. My own life has been a masterclass in understanding these tensions. When I was two, I was adopted. Two years later, my adoptive […]
Following the Black Lives Matter protests this summer, student leadership at our Hillel had a discussion to figure out how we could move forward and support the movement.
