Hillel

On a cold, gray Thursday in the midst of finals, about one hundred Columbia students paused in the Satow Room to honor Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Hillel’s official policy supports a Jewish and democratic state in Israel. That policy encompasses the range of opinion among Jewish students concerning the Arab-Israeli conflict, as the policy calls for the unconditional support of the existence of the state of Israel, not the specific policies of the government of Israel.

This week, Palestinian students and others at Columbia will be mourning al-Nakba—the Arabic word used for the catastrophe suffered by Palestinians in 1948, when more than 700,000 were driven from their homes. Organizers invited both Hillel and one of its subgroups, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, to endorse.

This year’s pluralist and social justice-themed Hillel seder consisted of more than just the four questions and a lot of matzo. Co-led by two rabbinical students, one orthodox and one reform, the leaders of Saturday’s service attempted to develop a program that would appeal to reform, conservative, and orthodox Jews.

It is hard for many to see the swastika as a symbol of well-being. And yet, more than 75 undergraduates, graduate students, Morningside Heights residents, and religious leaders gathered Wednesday night at the Kraft Center to discuss two very different perspectives of a powerful symbol that was blackened by its connection with Nazi Germany.

At a Wednesday night discussion hosted by Hillel’s Orthodox student organization Yavneh, Barnard President Judith Shapiro engaged students in conversation on Jewish identity in the academic realm as the audience sounded off about attending college as observant students. In an audience made up largely of Orthodox students, Shapiro touched on questions of how to best embody feminism, pursue careers and families, and participate in activism and leadership, as well as the role of the college in accommodating observant students.

I often experience a strange pairing of uncomfortable and proud feelings when I tell people that I am an observant Jew.

It has been two and a half years since the levees broke. With all the recent natural disasters as well as campus hoopla, Hurricane Katrina is no longer a sexy topic. In fact, it’s no longer a topic at all.

Campus Jewish organization Hillel, Columbia’s largest student group, has elected its new executive board.