On the heels of a recent study that surveyed first-year Jewish college students on U.S. campuses said many Hillel Houses are not connected to campuses, Boston University Hillel is contradicting the results, saying the institution is in fact connected to BU.
The study by the Avi Chai Foundation reported that Jewish students surveyed felt they knew little about Israel and avoided formal organizations specifically for Jewish students. The study concluded that specifically tailored programs and Hillels should replace universal or general models.
Hillel Student Activities Director Kip Lombardo said BU Hillel does not fit into any of the survey’s generalizations.
“We are very much integrated into the university,” the Metropolitan College graduate student said. “We work closely with other departments, like [the Offices of] Student Activities, Residence Life and academic departments, so that makes us a little different.
“What makes us also different compared to most other universities is that … we’re in the middle of a city,” he continued, “so there’s much more integration that we try to do with community resources as well as the general university.”
According to statistics from Hillel.org, BU ranks second in the country in terms of total population of Jewish students at private universities and fifth among all universities. Lombardo said BU was not part of the Avi Chai survey, and that it may be flawed since it was geared toward students who may not have a complete understanding of what Hillel is and what resources are available to them.
Lombardo said BU Hillel makes efforts to reach out to freshmen to get them involved in Jewish life on campus, and that BU Hillel has “25 or 30 student groups affiliated with us.”
“The other thing that makes us different than a lot of other Hillels is that we operate more like the Jewish [version of the] Student Union,” he said.
But some students say the connection may not be as strong as it seems.
College of Arts and Sciences freshman Jonathan Salt, who described himself as “not the most religious person,” said he does not feel as connected to Hillel or Jewish life on campus as he could be. To get more connected to students, Salt said he thinks Hillel should use Facebook to advertise.
“I suppose they could advertise a little more, maybe even instant message people on Jewish Facebook groups, just to get the word out there,” he said.
However, College of Communication freshman Dena Lewittes said she thinks Hillel has done a lot to connect with her passion for Israel, and is part of what she described as a satellite group, “BU Students for Israel.”
Lewittes said she thinks Hillel is doing a successful job in getting in touch with more students on campus.
“I do think that Hillel has been going under a lot of changes lately to try and reach out to all kinds of demographics of Jewish students on campus,” she said. “More than that, I think they’re trying to make their building accessible to all people, not just Jewish people.”
Lombardo said another thing that makes BU Hillel unique is its location in a new building that opened in spring 2005.
BU Hillel Program Associate Seth Kroll said Hillel has numerous ways in which it connects to the large Jewish population on campus.
Kroll stressed the idea that BU Hillel tries to be as inclusive as possible, with numerous prayer groups catering to different sects of Judaism as well as having various cultural and social groups operating under the Hillel umbrella.
Lombardo and Kroll said Hillel provides students with opportunities to visit Israel through the Birthright Israel program, each summer.
Kroll said he thinks BU Hillel addresses the specific needs of the BU community by having a diversified programming agenda.
“Boston University is a huge university,” he said. “We definitely don’t have the ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach to how we do programming here.
“Even with this new building that’s not even a full-year old,” he continued, “you come in any day of the week and almost every room is being used by some student group, or students studying, or a speaker or some other type of program that’s going on.”
The study also reported that Hillels and Jewish groups on campus were not meshing well enough with campus administration and the college community at large, something Lombardo disputes.
“Part of what we try to do is that we work with the university as a whole,” he said, “so our programs that we do here are integrated as far as the university schedule … our students groups are affiliated with the Student Activities Office. All of our policies dovetail with the university’s policies. Those are the kinds of things that make us different.”
These are some of the ideas that make BU Hillel unique, Lombardo said.
“If we saw ourselves at Hillel as only being a religious entity, then we would narrowly define ourselves as a religious entity and only provide religious ideas,” he said.
“But because we understand that Judaism is not only a religious identity, but also a cultural identity,” Lombardo continued, “we try very hard to move along the [quadruple] axis of race, culture and spirituality and education. So we’re trying very hard to do these multiple things.”