Learning Leadership From History and Each Other: The Matanel Fellowship
Gilad Schonberger is a second-year industrial engineering and management student at Ben Gurion University of the Negev. This year, Gilad is participating in the inaugural cohort of the Matanel Fellowship, a fellowship spearheaded by Hillel Israel, in partnership with Hillel International and the Matanel Foundation.
As a participant in the Matanel Fellowship through Hillel Israel this year, I have the opportunity to meet Hillel student leaders from around the world. Over the course of this year, I have been engaged with the beauty and complexity of pluralistic Judaism with the goal of leaving inspired and equipped with a renewed sense of purpose for addressing the most pressing challenges facing the global Jewish community today.
Recently, we traveled to Budapest to spend Shabbat together and reflect on both the year behind us and how we want to move forward. It was one of the most eye-opening journeys I’ve ever experienced. In times like these, it can be easy to forget what binds us together, to focus more on what divides us than on what unites us. But this program reminded me that connection, not division, is at the heart of our story. And it’s these moments of connection that are the true soul of the Jewish people.
Here are a few of the treasures I carried home from this fellowship, particularly from the time we spent together in Budapest.
I learned that unity is not about sameness. It’s about harmony.
Pluralism doesn’t require us to erase our differences. It invites us to let those differences resonate. Like the magnificent choir we heard at the Dohany Street Synagogue, where many voices joined in one song, the beauty wasn’t in uniformity; it was in harmony. We prayed, ate, and blessed together, each in our own way, without compromising our individuality. That sense of belonging without assimilation, created a powerful community.
I realized that leadership isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about asking the right questions.
I came to Budapest thinking that in order to lead, you needed clarity. But I left knowing that the best leaders are those willing to step into uncertainty. They ask honest, vulnerable, and sometimes unanswerable questions. When I had the honour of preparing a d’var Torah for our Shabbat dinner, I chose to center it around a question: “Why did God choose to give us the Torah in the desert?”
I didn’t offer a clear answer. The point was the question itself – an invitation to engage, to journey, to return to the wilderness year after year, wherever we are. Because it’s not about certainty. It’s about showing up willing to ask the important questions.
In addition, I learned that when you lead with vulnerability, you create authentic community.
At the JCC in Budapest, we met people who embody resilience and warmth. Marcel Kenesei, the center’s director, spoke to us about the challenges of building and maintaining Jewish life in a place with a complicated history. “It’s not just about bringing people through the doors,” he said. “It’s about making them stay. Making them feel like they belong to something larger than themselves”. Marcel showed me that real leadership doesn’t begin with charisma or credentials. It begins with honesty, with the courage to show up as a whole person.
And perhaps it’s no coincidence that all of this happened in Budapest, a city whose Jewish story is both visible and hidden, layered with memory and meaning. From the beauty of its synagogues to the subtle marks of history in its streets, Budapest is a place where the past whispers through the present. Choosing this city as the setting for a gathering on Jewish identity and leadership was itself a statement: that Jewish life is meaningful not only in currently thriving centers, but also in places where it once struggled to survive and is now being rebuilt. That context gave our conversations added depth, reminding us that our work as young leaders is part of a long and fragile chain of resilience and renewal.
This fellowship isn’t just a moment. It is a mirror. It reflects back the kind of leader I want to be, the kind of community I want to help build, and the kind of Jewish future I want to be a part of.
Thank you, Matanel and Hillel, for helping me remember who we are and what we can become when we work together.