H eadlines
Campus Continued from Page 1
the first day of the fall semester.

But for rabbis leading
branches of those mainstays of
campus Jewish life, the fall has
been an invitation to “double
down on our values,” as Rabbi
Isabel de Koninck put it.

“Just watching students’
commitment to trying to make
the best of this, and trying to
figure out who they want to
be, as leaders and as people,
through this pandemic, has
really been a huge bright spot,”
said de Koninck, executive
director of Hillel at Drexel
University. At Drexel, de Koninck, her
staff and the Hillel student
leaders, with guidance from the
Drexel Hillel board of direc-
tors and Hillel International,
have spent the last eight
months trying to figure out
how to create meaningful
Hillel experiences, just like
they always do. That whole
“can’t-be-in-a-room together”
element, however, presented
some novel challenges.

By the summer, de Koninck
said, the prospect of basing the
entirety of a Hillel experience
on Zoom sounded undesir-
able. Thus, a workaround was
needed, something that would
12 NOVEMBER 19, 2020
allow pods of Jewish students,
safely seeing each other in
person, to have a Hillel experi-
ence that wasn’t mediated
by a screen. What emerged
from brainstorming sessions
were “Jewish life kits,” as de
Koninck put it. More than just
care packages, they included
recipes (and their constituent
ingredients), engaging discus-
sion prompts (and a journal
in which to reflect upon them)
and even holiday cards to send
around to friends and family.

The kits allowed students,
“whether they were living with
roommates or living with their
parents,” de Koninck said, “to
touch and feel and taste and
experience the holidays, without
necessarily having to be in
front of a screen.” That method
of connection, plus Drexel
Hillel’s student-led “Wellness
Ambassador” program, has
more than softened the blow
of this semester. It’s helped to
chart a path to the next one.

A similar dynamic is at play
at Penn Hillel. In the spring,
the staff contacted every single
Jewish undergraduate at the
school to see how they were
doing. Like the staff and
student leaders of the Drexel
Hillel, they understood that
ensuring the well-being of
their community would mean
that sort of care, in perpetuity.

Rabbi Mike Uram, execu-
tive director of Penn Hillel,
landed on one similar solution:
themed baskets of food and
discussion questions, distrib-
uted to trained discussion
leaders, spread out among pods
of Jewish students. Just like
that, over 200 students were
spending time each week in
groups of 10 to 15, talking
about topics like the presiden-
tial election and Israel.

Such comforts weren’t just
provided to students who had
decided to live near campus,
though. Miniature versions
were sent to Jewish students at
their homes across the country,
and they were also invited
to drop in on the frequent
Zoom-based lectures, from the
likes of the aforementioned
Dr. Ruth.

For Shira Silver, a senior
and co-president of Penn
Hillel, her fonder memories of
this bizarre semester will be
from the “To-Go Tuesdays.”
Every Tuesday night, for eight
weeks straight, more than 100
students came to a socially
distanced distribution line
outside the Hillel building for
“hot meals and warm smiles,”
Silver said. Indulging the
Jewish mother inside of her,
Silver added, was the cherry
on top of a slew of increas-
ingly precious face-to-face
interactions. At Chabad at Temple
University, Rabbi Baruch
Kantor attributes this semes-
ter’s successes to flexibility. As
the medical and legal reali-
ties of the fall shifted, and
then shifted again, it was the
ability to remain nimble that
allowed Kantor and his team
to respond to student needs,
to drop what wasn’t working
and invest more deeply in what
was. In Temple’s case, some
of those successes have been
at-home Shabbat kits for pods
of students combined with
semi-regular face-to-face inter-
action from a safe distance.

“Thank God, we’ve seen a lot
a lot of students,” Kantor said.

JEWISH EXPONENT
Student leaders at Penn Hillel distribute meals to over 100 students each
Tuesday night. From left: Sydney Lewis, Allie Shapiro, Allison Gorokhovsky
and Shira Silver
Courtesy of Penn Hillel
Just watching students’ commitment to
trying to make the best of this, and trying to
figure out who they want to be ... has really
been a huge bright spot.”
RABBI ISABEL DE KONINCK
At the Rohr Center for Jewish
Life - Chabad House, serving
Jewish students at Haverford
College, Bryn Mawr College
and Swarthmore College, two
signature programs that have
traditionally attracted high
interest were adapted for the
pandemic, according to Rabbi
Eli Gurevitz, co-director of the
Rohr Center.

A popular program that pairs
students with local Holocaust
survivors has actually become
even more popular, expanding
the number of students involved
and the pool of Holocaust
survivors. And the loss of a
Birthright trip, usually a huge
enthusiasm-generator, has been
somewhat offset by increased
attendance and interest in Israel
programming. No one knows what the
spring will bring. Cases are
up across the country, and
colleges that make decisions
now may be reversing them
soon. And though no one is
blind to what’s been lost this
semester, their eyes are open to
what’s been found, too.

“Some good things come
out of this craziness,” Gurevitz
said. l
jbernstein@jewishexponent.com; 215-832-0740
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM