Hillel held its annual elections for student board positions this past week, with only three of the eleven positions contested. Additionally, this upcoming year will see the first female president of Mesorah (the Hillel Orthodox community), Orly Elstein.
Discussing her decision to run for the position, Elstein wrote CampusJ in an e-mail, “I see [Mesorah], down the line, becoming a dominant force on campus and a forum for Orthodox Jews in Rutgers to come socialize with each other and learn from each other. I hope that by running programs and creating an active community, we will grow and attract other Jews to our campus, and have Rutgers become knows as viable option for religious Jews.”
When asked about her becoming the first female Mesorah president, Elstein answered, “I think it’s a great thing that a female is president, but I’m not here to boast women’s rights or to push the envelope on women’s religious issues (although there is a time and place for that). Being a religious woman is something that obviously defines me, but I’m approaching this position as just another individual looking to make a difference.”
Elstein also noted that “the task of Tefillah is traditionally the [Mesorah] president’s job to oversee and so it will stay that way.”
Here is a list of the new Hillel Board.
President - Nina Sherman
Treasurer - Julie Greenberg
Secretary - Debbie Shaw
Religious Life Coordinator - Jeremy Davis
Israel Coordinator - Molly Salovitz
Education Coordinator - Naomi Gold
Social/Arts Coordinator - Ariella Prince
Community Service Coordinator - Avi Smolen
Mesorah (Orthodox) President - Orly Elstein
Koach (Conservative) President - Ilana Katronetsky
Kesher (Reform) President - Jill Necky
Both the Rutgers Hillel and Chabad House are offering services and meals for students over Passover.
The Hillel will “offer an inclusive Passover seder for the first night (Monday April 2) and home hospitality in local towns around Rutgers for the second night on Tuesday.” There will also be free food at the Hillel building for Lunch on Thursday and Friday and Dinner on Thursday. Lunch will be at 11:30-1:30 pm and Dinner 6:30-8:30pm. There will also be a meal on Friday night at the Hillel building.
The Chabad house will have free meals on the first two and last two days of Passover, in addition to Shabbat. There will also be Kosher for Passover meals available on Thursday and Friday at the regular meal plan cost and time.
Rutgers Hillel is yet to find a new Jewish Learning Initiative couple, with the academic summer a little over a month away, and the current JLI couple at Rutgers Hillel is due to depart shortly.
In the beginning of the semester, the Hillel interviewed a potential candidate, but this candidate “was not the right fit for Rutgers” according to Andrew Getraer, the executive director of Rutgers Hillel. Since then, no new interviews for the JLI position have taken place. However, Getraer said, the Hillel is expected to interview several candidates after Passover.
On April 11th, the day after Passover, Lea Melamed and her five children will depart from New Brunswick to return to Israel. Lea Melamed, along with her husband, Rabbi Ori Melamed, are the Jewish Learning Initiative family at Rutgers Hillel. The rabbi will not be leaving until the end of the semester.
The Mesorah, the Orthodox community at Rutgers, will be hosting a farewell party in her honor on Monday March 26th, from 7:30-9:30 pm.
Tonight at 7:30 pm and Tomorrow at 8:30 pm, Hillel will hold sessions on how to become involved in Hillel leadership. Elections will be held on March 27th for new student board members. In addition to the elected board positions available, there are also community leadership positions (Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform) and unelected programing positions, such as Israel director or Shabbat director. Letters of intent for those who want to be considered are due on March 20th.
For more information contact Sarah Lewis at sjlewis -at- eden.rutgers.edu
Khaled Abu Toameh, an Israeli-Arab journalist and documentary maker came to speak on Wednesday night at the Rutgers College Graduate Student Lounge.
He lectured only for a short amount of time, and began by describing his start in journalism at the PLO’s newspaper. He explained that after he graduated from Hebrew University, it was an obvious choice to leave and go work for a “real” media outlet.
Much of what Toameh spoke about revolved around the lack of freedom of press within the Middle East. He explained that when people ask him how he can work for the Israeli press, he explains to them that to him, it doesn’t matter, since they merely publish what he writes without censoring it, unlike most of the press in the Middle East, which is controlled by dictatorial regimes.
He said he found it sad that there was no free Arab press in the Palestinian territories. He noted that there were many Palestinian journalists who work for the Israeli press, due to lack of an Arab alternative.
Toameh also made some political statements. He said the refusal by some governments to give money to the Hamas-led government is a good idea. However, he criticized the American and Israeli governments for funding and giving weapons to Fatah in order to undermine Hamas. He asked what kind of message that gives to people, when they’re asked to have free and fair elections and then results are disregarded because the conclusion isn’t liked.
Afterwards there was a question and answer session where students asked about journalism in the Middle East and Toameh’s opinion regarding issues from the past year’s Lebanon war to the renovations to the ramp leading to the Temple Mount. He also discussed the positive aspects to Al-Jazeera, that while it serves as a mouth piece for Muslim extremists, it also serves as an open forum to criticize corrupt governments in the Middle East.
Lana Raykin, one of the organizers of the event and a Rutgers Hasbara fellow, explained that she wanted to bring Khaled Abu Toameh because she wanted to show that there are Palestinians with moderate views. Mr. Toameh’s writings are often cited by Israel advocacy groups. Joshua Reback, the previous Hillel Israel Committee president, said that the talk was fairly general and may have merely comforted the crowd into thinking that at least some Palestinians have similar viewpoints. However, he said, he would have preferred to see a more diverse audience which could have engaged in more productive dialogue.
Khaled Abu Toameh is currently on a speaking tour for Hasbara Fellowships, a part of Aish HaTorah. The lecture was sponsored by the Rutgers Hillel, The Journalism department at Rutgers, and Caravan for Democracy. He currently writes regularly for the Jerusalem Post and U.S. News and World Report.
Before the usual Hillel Thursday night learning program last week, the Hillel dedicated its new beit midrash.
As students ate Dunkin’ Donuts to celebrate the occasion, Hillel Director Andrew Getraer explained that a few years ago the Beit Midrash was situated on the 3rd floor of the Hillel, and a mere unfinished attic. However, Kesharim, an organization run by graduates of RIETS, offered to help build a Beit Midrash and establish a learning program. Kesharim also runs programs at Queens College, Barnard, NYU, and Brooklyn College. Rabbi Shalom Axelrod, the founder of Kesharim, helped purchase books, Bookshelves, food, and paid for teachers to come to Rutgers such as Karen Hochhauser, who currently teaches there. After Getraer’s speech, there was a brief speech by Rabbi Abraham Mykoff of Poile Tzedek, about the man whose donations help run Jewish learning at Rutgers and at other institutions in the area and abroad.
Rabbi Claudio Kogan of Anshe Emeth in New Brunswick spoke about bio-ethics in Judaism on Wednesday night at Hillel. A doctor, mohel, and a HUC-ordained rabbi, Kogan spoke to a diverse audience of students, representing the various religious communities in Rutgers. He emphasized the need to learn about ethics via discussion with all of the different denominations.
The program began by Rabbi Kogan making a delineation between morals and ethics, and after a short discussion he broke the students up into groups to discuss specific cases, specifically asking students not to be in groups with others who share the same Jewish upbringing. After about fifteen minutes of loud group discussions, everyone got back together to discuss the topics as a whole where there was more lively debate. The topics ranged from popular bio-ethic issues such as Euthanasia, Abortion, and Genetic selection, to more ignored issues of organ transplants and scarcity of resources.
Talya Judovits, the president of the Kesher (Reform) community at Rutgers Hillel and the organizer of the event, told CampusJ she was very happy that the event “created an open form to talk about various medical issues.” Judovits said that there is not necessarily a space, every day, for people to hear the intellectual ideas of people from all the different Jewish communities.
The Rutgers Graduate Lounge was packed Wednesday evening for a screening of alumnus David Aslan’s documentary film, Beyond Inspiration .
Initially created as Aslan’s Henry Rutgers Senior thesis, Beyond Inspiration takes a critical look at the events which took place leading up to and including the Israel Inspires and Palestine Solidarity Movement conferences in 2003. The movie’s main focus was showing the raw tensions that were exposed on campus that year. In addition to showing parts of the conferences and demonstrations, the movie also contains interviews with some of the leaders on both sides.
From the pro-Israel perspective, interviewees discussed questions of how to support Israel — with unquestioning love or informed love with criticism. Hillel staff members, students, and other Jewish communal leaders were interviewed.
On the pro-Palestinian side, Charlotte Kates, author of articles such as Israel has no “right to exist”, was a prominent figure, amongs other leaders.
The movie also documented a split that occurred within the NJ Solidarity group prior to its conference, with many of the Muslim and Arab students leaving the group in response to NJ Solidarity’s statement that it supported all actions of resistance from Palestinians, including the killing of Israeli civilians. In the end, the PSM broke ties with NJ Solidarity and held their conference in Ohio, while Charlotte Kates and NJ Solidarity ran its own conference at the same time as Israel Inspires here in New Jersey.
In a question-and-answer session, many students said they were impressed with the film and felt that it represented a fairly decent picture of Rutgers during that time. However, a number of students questioned the filmmaker’s decision to focus on certain leaders on the pro-Palestinian side. Bethany Shondark Murphy, a Rutgers College Junior, felt that although the movie was good, it “portrayed NJ Solidarity as the major Palestinian viewpoint, though it changed a bit in the end.” Karim El-Badrawy, a Rutgers Sophomore echoed that sentiment, saying he felt that “the Palestinian view was simplified, [because] Charlotte Kates does not represent the entirety of the Palestinian viewpoint; There are a lot of different Palestinian viewpoints.”
Aslan explained that finding a balanced viewpoint in the film was a very difficult task, that he had revised the film many times, and showed it to multiple people for their input during that process. In the end, he said he needed to “eyeball it.” Aslan said the movie’s goal was not to present a balanced viewpoint of the Israel/Palestinian conflict but to capture a moment in time at Rutgers with all the rancor and extremism that it included. For Aslan, this explains the preponderance of appearances of Charlotte Kates in the movie, since she was one of the loudest voices, who literally locked barred all the internal critics from NJ Solidarity.
A preview of the film can be seen here.
Those interested in hosting a screening can contact the film crew at info -at- aslander.com.
Itamar Kremer, a Masorti Shaliach working for work MERCAZ USA, spent the last Shabbat at Rutgers. In addition to spending time with the Koach (Conservative) community at Rutgers, Itamar was the featured speaker at a lunch for both the Koach and Kesher (Reform) communities.
At the lunch he spoke about the current status of the Reform and Masorti communities in Israel and the issues they face in the political sphere. He also led a discussion about what Zionism means to each student. Avi Smolen, a Rutgers College Sophomore, told CampusJ that Itamar “made us, as campus students, think about how we should feel about Israel and [made us] ask the hard questions — like what needs to be changed in Israel.”
Itamar told CampusJ that his goals are to help educate the American Conservative community more about Israel and to help those who want to make Aliyah find a Masorti community where they can live. He said his goal is not to have all Conservative Jews move to Israel, but to educate them on the issues and work with them to help foster Jewish pluralism within the Israeli government and public.
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