News, stories, and updates from Hillel communities worldwide
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Last night, the Yallapalooza 2024 concert series, powered by Hillel International and UJA-Federation of New York, brought together thousands of Jewish college students at the Beacon Theater in New York City for a night celebrating Jewish joy after an incredibly difficult year for Jewish students on college campuses.
Clara Grusq is a Jewish multidisciplinary artist, writer, and creative director based in New York. Born in Paris, France, and descended from Holocaust survivors and resistants of the Algerian War, Clara brings a deeply personal and historical perspective to her work. She made her Off-Broadway debut at the Actor’s Temple with the second run of her first play, The Oath.
During my sophomore year at the University of Southern California, I took a course focused on Jewish ethics and civic responsibility. While I grew up hearing about the importance of voting from my parents and grandparents, this was the first time I connected the dots between my Jewish identity and my role as a citizen.
Whether the High Holidays come at the start of the semester or run into midterms, a month of five back-to-back holidays means lots of activity at campus Hillels — and tons of opportunities for Jewish students to get involved. For first-years, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are often their first holidays away from home, while […]
Hi Friend, As Simchat Torah approaches, I find myself caught in a whirlwind of emotions. It’s been a year since that terrible day when joy turned to tragedy, and the festival that celebrates our love for Torah became forever linked with a massacre in Israel that killed over 1,200 people. But as I reflect on […]
Why celebrate one Jewish holiday when you can celebrate four?! After a month of observing the holidays of Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot, the Jewish calendar finally lands on Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, a combined celebration that marks the end of the High Holidays.
With Yom Kippur approaching, and with the intensity of this week’s commemoration of the October 7 attacks, I’ve been reflecting on what this holiday really means to me. Growing up, I heard all these daunting things about how I was supposed to act on Yom Kippur: fasting, wearing white clothes, and disconnecting from electronics.
On college campuses in the United States, Canada, and around the world, students came together one year after the horrific October 7 attacks on Israel: to mourn, to pray, to hope, and to gain strength from one another in community. Hillels serving students at hundreds of colleges and universities took a leading role in organizing […]
Memorializing tragic communal events is ingrained in our practice and our liturgy. Some historians believe that the Ashkenazi tradition of saying Yizkor originated to commemorate the victims of the Crusades. Each Jew is a monument to a great family tradition that has survived incredible odds. As Jews, we do not build monuments of stone; rather, we fill our sanctuaries with stories.
On the one-year commemoration of October 7, we reflect on profound loss and take comfort in what we can learn from our Jewish tradition of mourning. The Kaddish, a foundational prayer recited in memory of loved ones, offers a framework for understanding how Jewish mourning rituals provide space not only for grief, but also for […]