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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



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would not be opening again
soon, she started looking for
another job and studying for
an advanced wine certification,
but she couldn’t focus.

“It just seemed kind of
stupid, with everything going
on,” she said. “It was the first
time in the last eight years that
I wasn’t, like, eating it up and
super excited about it.”
She lived alone in Old
City, and the days of isolation
blurred together. She started
practicing Judaism with more
intention, keeping kosher and
thinking about finding a career
that would make a difference
in people’s lives. Her grand-
mother, who founded the
Juvenile Diabetes Foundation
(now JDRF), had always been
an inspiration to her. She
applied and was accepted to
master’s programs in counsel-
ling at Rosemont College and
La Salle University.

Lees is one of thousands of
professionals who have made
job switches or career changes
during the economic upheaval of
the past eight months. Whether
due to layoffs, furloughs or a
change in perspective brought
about by a national crisis, Jewish
professionals and organizations
are pivoting to adapt to a new
job market.

Jewish religious centers,
nonprofits and cultural organi-
zations have not been immune
from rounds of pandemic-in-
duced layoffs and furloughs.

Ilana Aisen, CEO of JPRO
Network, said organizations
that relied on earned revenue
have been the hardest hit.

“JCCs were under extraordi-
nary stress almost immediately.

So were synagogues, which rely
on membership dues around
High Holiday times,” she
explained. To help those coping with
job loss, the Jewish Federations
of North America partnered
with JPRO Network to
create Rise, a career services
program for professionals in
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM the American and Canadian
Jewish world.

“We just felt it critical, given
our mission and our mandate,
to support people who go
through the process of losing
a job, which is often practically
and emotionally shattering,
and to make sure that our
colleagues would land on their
feet,” Aisen said.

Rise connects furloughed
and out-of-work professionals
with career coaches, financial
information and mental health
resources to build resilience.

“For people who work in
the Jewish community, they’re
here because they’re passionate
about the mission, they love
the work,” she said. “For many
of us, it’s so deeply personal,
and people go through all the
stages of grieving because this
is a major loss.”
While the goal is to keep as
many professionals working in
the Jewish world as possible,
Rise also helps them find place-
ments in other areas with the
hope of keeping them in contact
with other Jewish professionals
until the economy improves.

JEVS Human Services has
partnered with Rise to offer
career counseling to clients who
worked in the Jewish world.

They have also been working
with clients from various
backgrounds and industries who
need to make a job or career
change during the pandemic.

Peggy Truitt, director of
career strategies, noted that
people with higher education
who have been able to work
from home have been less
drastically impacted by job loss
than those in the hospitality,
retail and restaurant indus-
tries. Many of those job losses
are becoming permanent as
businesses are forced to close,
and there is no way to know if
they will ever come back.

“We know that so many
restaurants have closed that
there will be a lot less opportu-
nity for those positions,” Truitt
said. Women
across the
economic spectrum are also
more vulnerable to job loss due
to the lack of available child
care from schools and day care
centers. “Taking on the whole home
front has been really impactful
to their careers,” she said.

Truitt said JEVS career
counselors work to help people
identify whether they need a job
change or want to change careers
entirely. If the latter is necessary,
they identify transferable skills,
study the competition in other
fields and assist with networking
and rebranding.

People who worked in restau-
rants, for example, typically
have excellent customer service
skills and sales skills. Truitt
said JEVS has helped these
clients transfer to e-commerce,
an industry that has boomed
during the pandemic.

JEVS client Kathy Blum
worked as a restaurant manager
in the Scranton area for over
30 years before she moved to
Northeast Philadelphia to be
closer to family. At 62, she
struggled to find another job
due to her age, and she had no
idea how to approach her job
search when the pandemic hit.

“I was really drowning,”
she said.

With the help of JEVS career
counselor Jackie Savoy, she
found a job working remotely
as a contact tracer
for Insight Global,
which contracts with
Pennsylvania’s state
government. She plans
to work there until the
pandemic ends and
then pivot into another
customer service role.

Interest in trades
like carpentry and
plumbing is
also booming among those
looking to pivot into
pandemic-proof fields.

Orleans Technical
College, the trade
Stephanie Lees
Photo by Steven Auerbach
school run by JEVS, has
seen a spike in enroll-
much wanting to change careers,
ment and wait lists.

“We all live in houses that because I could have stayed and
need repair and work in build- could have grown with the
ings that need maintenance,” company and continued in that
said Debbie Bello, director of path, but given a whole handful
of things made the decision to
admissions. Class size has decreased to leave,” she said. She quit her
accommodate social distancing job during Sukkot and is now
guidelines, but students are a full time graduate student at
still able to learn how to build Rosemont College.

Lees estimates her master’s
an entire two-story house on
in counselling will take two
the premises.

After dining restrictions years to complete. She hopes
were lifted, Lees got another to work with people who have
job working at White Dog Cafe experienced domestic violence
in University City, but helping and family trauma once she is
people find escapism in dining qualified. l
out during a national crisis no
spanzer@jewishexponent.com; longer felt meaningful.

“It showed me that I was very 215-832-0729
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JEWISH EXPONENT
NOVEMBER 19, 2020
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