Think about what’s best for the students
Too often, Hillels are buildings rather than communities. Wealthy Jewish alumni ensure their legacies by lending their money and their names to the construction of shining new Hillel fortresses. At the same time, Hillel leadership — both the professionals paid to come in every day and student leaders with the innate compulsion to seek out the edifice on their own — often wonders: Why don’t more students come to Hillel programs?
The answer to their quandary is that a beautiful building is fine, but you have to meet students where they are. Daniel Libenson knows that. He is the beloved miracle-worker who helmed the the UChicago Hillel as the executive director until he and the board were unceremoniously pushed out at the end of March by meddling overseers from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago. In an otherwise unheard of arrangement, the Chicago federation has hegemony over all 17 Hillels in the state of Illinois.
It is ironic that acrimony around the question of who is responsible for debts incurred while renovating the Hillel building pushed Libenson and the Hillel board, which included several student board members, over the edge and convinced them to resign.
In response, the federation said, essentially, “You can’t resign! We fire you!”
But where are the students in all this?
Mostly, they’re unhappy with what’s happened so far. Under Libenson, UChicago Hillel gained a well-deserved reputation for being among the best Hillels in the country. Numerous students interviewed by New Voices, the Forward, the Jewish Week and the Chicago Maroon agree: They have great affection for Libenson, admiration for his work and love for the innovative programming they enjoyed under his leadership.
A Jewish Week editorial pegged the Jewish population of the school at 800, adding, “Monthly mega-Shabbat dinners attract 200 students.” For most Hillels the idea that one quarter of their school’s Jewish students would show up for the same event is unfathomable. In short, UChicago Hillel has flourished under Libenson’s visionary leadership. The federation is now committed to squandering that success.
Summer is in sight and campus organizations across the country are entering their annual bout of anxiety over continuity. The Chicago federation has exacerbated this recurring problem by throwing away Libenson, whose work was a guarantee of continuity.
In a Chicago Maroon op-ed, UChicago student Taylor Schwimmer said, “At the end of the day, the [federation] needs to realize that settling an administrative dispute is far, far less important than continuing to provide a robust center for Jewish life.”
Everybody but the federation agrees on this point. Students clearly do. Libenson and his board do. And now 37 Jewish UChicago faculty members have signed a letter to the fedation roundly condemning their actions. And since the federation is the only one of these four groups that isn’t a true stakeholder, isn’t a true member of the UChicago Jewish community, they should swallow their pride and butt out.
Unpalatable is it may be, the federation should choke down its own pride. As the board suggested before they resigned, all parties should enter mediation with the goal of granting independence to the Hillel and Libenson should be reinstated
Libenson may not be willing to work under their thumb again, but he’s not going anywhere: He and the former Hillel board are starting a new organization for the Jews of UChicago. They call it JUChicago and plan to resume Libenson’s innovative work under that banner in the fall.
And therein lies the unexpected silver lining: A great experiment in comprehensive independent Jewish student life. There are a variety of organizations out there on American campuses that focus on this aspect of Jewish life or that, but there has been no serious challenger to the dominating influence of Hillel.
At UChicago, we may have one. And with Libenson and his proven track record at the steering wheel, the results could be very good.
Editorials reflect the opinions of the New Voices Editorial Board.
