How Guilford Hillel Became Guilford Chavurah

By Nicole Zelniker May 5, 2015

At 8:17 a.m. on a rainy Thursday morning, a group of nine Jewish students at Guilford College decided to make a change. Rather than continuing to label themselves as a Hillel, the students decided to dub themselves Guilford Chavurah, meaning “group of friends” in Hebrew. “I want it to be a very flexible club,” said…

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Inside JVP’s National Membership Meeting

By Nicole Zelniker March 25, 2015

From March 13-15, Jewish Voice for Peace held its 6th annual National Membership Meeting in Baltimore. Formed in 1996, JVP has grown a lot in 19 years. “In 2011, 150 gathered [at the meeting],” said JVP Brooklyn Vice Chair Cindy Greenberg. “In 2013, 350 people were there. This weekend, there [were] over 600 of us.”…

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Beware of the Thought Police on Campus

By Holly Bicerano December 31, 2014

    Recent occurrences on campuses have greatly undermined freedom of expression and should serve as a forewarning of what will happen in the future. While the hardliners of any ideological camp will seldom admit it, the perpetrators and victims have been people on both the left and right; both Zionists and anti-Zionists. In a…

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Live Blogging the Open Hillel Conference Day 1

By Derek M. Kwait October 13, 2014

Though If Not Now, When? An Open Hillel Conference began at Harvard Saturday night, I wasn’t able to arrive until Sunday afternoon. When I got there, the swarm of familiar black t-shirts seemed to indicate my worst suspicions would be confirmed: This is basically a student JVP conference in disguise with some Jewish SJP activists…

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Why Palestinian Advocacy Groups Don’t Partner With Hillel

By Tom Pessah July 2, 2014

In his post on New Voices last week, Tomer Kornfeld recounts how he worked with his campus Hillel to set up “a debate, or ‘mock peace talk’ with Students for Justice in Palestine.” But “instead of reciprocating our goodwill, sitting down with us and working things out, S.J.P. sent out an email to club members…

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What About Non-Zionists?

By Tom Pessah January 20, 2014

In an interview with New Voices last week,  Jewish educator David Harris-Gershon expressed his support for Swarthmore’s Hillel brave declaration, and recounted his own experiences of being banned from speaking at the UC Santa Barbara Hillel chapter for his political views. In the interview, Harris-Gershon recognized students’ “right to a space free of anti-Israel activity,”…

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