One of the few Hillels in the country controlled by the local Jewish federation, the University of Chicago’s Hillel board was fired late last month by the Chicago federation in a disagreement over governance. Still controlling the university’s Hillel, the federation has appointed an interim executive director as they conduct a national search for a new Hillel director.
“This was, I think from my perspective, essentially a disagreement over governance between an advisory board and a Jewish federation of which this Hillel is a department and a branch. And a desire on their part to no longer have a relationship with the Federation,” said Paul Saiger, the interim executive director. “They didn’t want to keep the connection, they wanted to start their own organization and they’re going to do that,” he explained.
The decision wasn’t sudden, but rather developed after a number of conversations and great efforts to avoid this outcome, according to Saiger. Ultimately, however, the federation fired Executive Director Daniel Libenson and the advisory board, which included some students, at the end of March, the culmination of a long battle over responsibility for debts incurred during the renovation of the UChicago Hillel building.
Libenson and members of the former Hillel board have set out to start a new Jewish student organization at UChicago where he will duplicate the approach to programming that was widely seen as highly successful in his former job.
“We are now actively engaged in setting up a new organization that will work on Jewish engagement and leadership training initiatives at the University of Chicago, among other things,” explained Adam Levine-Weinberg of the University of Chicago. “Dan Libenson, who was the Executive Director of the UChicago Hillel for the past six years, will be the head of the new organization. If [the federation] is ultimately unwilling to come to the negotiating table, we are confident that this new organization will continue the success of Dan’s program at Hillel,” he said.
Others have reacted similarly, confident that the new organization will be better off with its independence from the federation.
“We deserve the respect of having self-determination and autonomy from a micro-managing umbrella organization,” said Michael Lipkowitz. “I don’t think that an independent Hillel is the worst-case scenario — if the rest of the country’s Hillels can manage it, so can ours,” he said, before asking rhetorically why one multi-million dollar non-profit should monopolize Jewish life in one of the biggest cities in the world.
While Libenson and other board members who were fired are working to create a new organization, Saiger says nothing has changed in the relationship between Hillel and the federation. “Those people who wanted to make the change were fired. They are no longer a part of Hillel at all. And Hillel is [maintaining] the same relationship to federation as it has had for the last 40 years,” he explained.
Though the federation has never consulted students in their decision making process, according to UChicago junior Stephen Lurie, students have assembled in the past weeks in an effort to make their voices heard. About a dozen students participated in a “Meet and Greet” at the Hillel with Saiger and John Lowenstein, who oversees the Illinois Hillels.
Students also ran a town hall meeting, which 60 students attended. No federation or Hillel staff was present.
“It was purely a meeting for students to organize and come together to talk about: A. what happened, B. what people think about it and C. what students should do moving forward. It is C. that we are still working on,” Lipkowitz said.
For now, decisions are still being made as some students consider how to move forward in the coming weeks. “A small group of students is considering moving forward with protests — contacting [federation] donors and faculty and alerting them of the situation and what students think about it — depending on what takes place in the coming weeks,” said Lipkowitz, who described the firing of the board as “un-mensch-like.”
Last week a group of more than 30 Jewish UChicago faculty members signed a letter of rebuke to the federation.
