My name is Josephine Sullivan, and I am a Jewish first-year student at Florida State University from Miami, Florida. Coming from Miami, I have always been accustomed to Jewish influence because of the large and growing Jewish population in the Miami vicinity. Coming to Tallahassee, an immediate culture shock was felt when I was the only Jew in a sea of students, whereas in Miami, it was almost uncommon for people to be anything other than Jewish. Being hit with the reality that I am no longer apart of a majority, I felt more connected with my religious identity now more than ever. In order to stay closely tied with my religious affiliation, I will be further investigating the establishment of the Jewish community globally and locally through Hillel at Florida State and the genres surrounding it.
What is Hillel
The Hillel at Florida State University is a community for Jewish students and those wishing to convert to Judaism to learn and practice Jewish traditions in a safe and welcoming environment. The Hillel creates a strong sense of fellowship amongst Jewish undergraduate students to assist them in their transition into a large public university. The Hillel partakes in numerous community service events to give back to the community and reach out to as many students as possible to educate non-jews about the culture and lifestyle of Jewish individuals.
The Jewish community heavily values good deeds and giving back to the community as part of our “Tikkun Olam” or “Mitzvah.” A mitzvah is essentially a commandment that we follow, while Tikkun Olam, according to the Torah, is most commonly referred to as committing selfless acts to better the community and act constructively. For instance, when donating money, religious Jews often do not put their name attached to the donation but instead send it anonymously as part of their Mitzvah or Tikkun Olam. The Hillel takes these Jewish values and enacts them within all of their community service endeavors including Challah for Hunger, the Dance Marathon, and Habitat for Humanity.
Out of Florida State’s undergraduate population of over thirty-three thousand, only 3270 students identify as Jewish. This is one of the problems that the Hillel faces quite often. With the lack of Jewish students on campus, the Hillel regularly faces a shortage of members because students may not be able to locate the Hillel, which is off-campus and struggle with gaining a foothold in the community. Despite identifying as “Jewish” many students find themselves unwilling to join the Hillel because they see it as a sort of isolation from the rest of the communities that Florida State has to offer. The Hillel has acknowledged this issue and actually partners with Jewish Greek Life to get more students involved and have a larger platform for philanthropic goals. Greek Life such as Sigma Delta Tau who is a current partner with Hillel and are predominantly made up of Jewish students who are looking to gain a brotherhood and/or sisterhood alongside staying connected with the rest of the Florida State community.
The Hillel attempts to reach out to, and provide information to, current members in a variety of ways. One of their primary ways for member recruitment is club fairs and setting up tables across campus. Florida State holds club fairs for students to engage in the school in categories other than just academics and the Hillel Club sets up a table to inform people passing by about how to get involved and how often meetings are to promote club involvement and gain new members who may be interested. Eager members wanting to join who may have missed the club fair may learn more about the Hillel through their website, Hillelatfsu.org, this website provides a plethora of information about Hillel’s goals, their greek partnerships, trips to Israel, and their Tikkun Olam (community service). This website also gives you the contact information for the President of Hillel, Lara Tessler, alongside the other board members. For members who are already acquainted with the club, Hillel frequently sends out not only Reminds but texts to individuals to make you feel more welcome. These texts and Reminds contain information about upcoming meetings, club activities, and special events that may be occurring at the Hillel’s weekly Shabbats.
Shabbat is observed every Friday evening and starts a few minutes prior to sundown. Shabbat is a Jewish celebration of the week ending and the day of rest that follows. During Shabbat, a series of prayers and songs are conducted in honor of Hashem (Hebrew for “the name” which is referring to G*d), life, family, and Judaism as a whole and a large meal is eaten. The meal is typically composed of dishes from Israel and the middle east but the entire meal must be kosher. For a meal to be kosher it has to satisfy and abide by Jewish law: dairy and meat cannot be mixed, pork and shellfish are not permitted, and certain items need to be blessed by a Rabbi. Shabbat is a major component of the Jewish faith alongside High Holy Days. Since Shabbat is conducted on a weekly basis it also gives the members of Hillel time to interact with one another and gain more connections but it also allows Hillel’s executive board to provide information about upcoming events.
Judaism in the World
The amount of Jewish individuals in the world is surprisingly insignificant in comparison to the other major religions of the world. As of 2010, there were about 14 million Jews around the world, representing 0.2% of the global population. In 2050, the Jewish population is expected to number about 16 million. The share of the world’s population that is Jewish is expected to remain about the same in 2050 as it was in 2010. (Pew Research Center). Britain took control over Palestine in 1917 and in 1922, the League of Nations granted Britain a mandate over Palestine which included provisions calling for the establishment of a Jewish homeland, facilitating Jewish immigration and encouraging Jewish settlement on the land. Following the Holocaust in 1945 the Jewish population of the world was at a low point and many fled Europe to start a new life elsewhere. Many Jewish people who died in the holocaust actually invested a lot of money into Israel through investments in banks and property and when they died no one was there to claim their valuables. In means of restoring the rightful property to the Jewish people who survived the holocaust and their family members, Israel was declared a nation on May 14, 1948, by David Ben-Gurion, the head of the Jewish Agency, prior to the British mandate ending. (Mor) While dozens of countries host at least a small Jewish population, the community is concentrated in a handful: Israel accounting for 44.5% of Jews worldwide. With just over 6.5 million Jews, Israel is the only Jewish majority and explicitly Jewish state. (Wikipedia)
Judaism in the United States
The United States is home to the second largest population of Jewish individuals, closely following Israel. The Jewish population found within the United States is 39.3% which is roughly about 6.5 million jews. (Wikipedia). Jewish people actually migrated from Portugal to New Amsterdam in 1654, due to severe religious persecution that they were facing and the threat of being killed for not converting. New Amsterdam, which was formally ruled by the Dutch, was sold to the English and was renamed New York. By the twentieth century, New York became the largest Jewish city in the world. With two million Jews, it was also the largest city in Jewish history. Democratic republicanism disrupted this colonial synthesis by empowering young Jews to experiment with new forms of religious expression. Reform Judaism emerged in Charleston in 1824 as a result. Then the arrival of hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands and finally hundreds of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Europe dramatically changed Judaism. By the 1950s Judaism achieved public recognition as one of three constituent democratic religions of America: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism. This acceptance encouraged Jews to mount successful legal efforts to remove religion from public places, especially public schools, to create a religiously neutral public sphere. (Moore).
Anti Semitism
Contrary to beliefs otherwise, antisemitism is alive and well. Despite the efforts of the United States Jews still, find it difficult to adapt and are conflicted between their different identities. Many Jewish people find themselves asking how can I possibly be White in American society if, as a Jew, my people are still being victimized and persecuted by those who are labeled as White? How can I be White if many White people in this country still dislike and distrust me due to my religious and cultural traditions? Jews oftentimes find themselves in the midst of being seen as the persecutor while still being continuously persecuted themselves. The lack of focus on Jews and Jewish issues is evident in various ways, such as their absence in major diversity and multicultural texts used at the university level. (Rubin). As a college student currently taking a Diversity and Justice course at Florida State I expected to delve further into the cultures of a variety of different cultures in which I was unacquainted with. After an entire six weeks of learning about the cultures of African and Latin Americans, I was prompted with the realization that not once were middle eastern cultures mentioned or represented in any of the lectures or readings. The lack of representation from a class intended to teach Diversity and justice was astonishing. I was very disappointed, however not really surprised by any means. Antisemitism has been a major aspect of many different cultures for hundreds if not thousands of years. A key theological rationale was that the Jews collectively were guilty in one way or another for the suffering of Christ. For at least 800 years, this was a filter through which hatred could pass and, in many contexts, it acquired legitimacy through Christian Church orthodoxy. Popular prejudice and religious authority coincided in ways that led to centuries of sustained persecution. A popular myth amongst Christian denominations is that of “The Wandering Jew” which taught children form a young age about the wretched jews. Therein the core paradoxes reside: the Wandering Jew is cursed and he resides within time and beyond it, belongs nowhere and everywhere. He is human but condemned to live forever until the Second Coming of Christ releases him. A shared characteristic is that he is condemned to rootlessness and a permanent state of movement as punishment for a crime committed against a sacred or iconic figure. The legend of the Wandering Jew is only tenuously connected to biblical sources, however. The figure first appears in early modern Europe in the 13th Century but becomes widespread in various guises in Europe only from the 17th Century onward. (Woolf). This early onset antisemitism in the form of myths and folktales has set the foundation for future generations of people across the world to have a preconceived notion about Jewish people that degrades the cultures and traditions of Judaism while simultaneously setting a precedent for the idea that Jews are an outsider, this created immense tension and the ‘us vs. them’ mentality where the “us” is the majority population and the “them” is the minority (i.e Jews).
Hillel @ Tally: What do the Board Members Think?
Many of the students attending Florida State who identify as Jewish, like me, come from the south Florida region, particularly Miami and Boca Raton. In means of combating antisemitism and creating a safe and welcoming environment for Jewish students, Hillel of Florida State was created. After talking to a couple of the board members working within Hillel I got a better sense of what being in Hillel is really like and what being a member entails. I ended up interviewing Jason Randall, the secretary, and a current Florida State student, and Kal Marcus the program director and graduate of Florida Atlantic University, where they provided me with an insight on Hillel. I learned that both Jason and Kal came to Florida State eager to join a Jewish organization because of the Jewish life they had participated in at home. When I asked them what the main goal of Hillel was Jason provided me with an in-depth explanation about how vital it is for Hillel to assist students in creating “meaningful Jewish experiences in whatever that means to them” and he went on to explain that “[Hillel] focuses on getting you involved as a Jewish person” regardless of how religious you are or what sect of Judaism you identify with. Kal answered with a similar response about how the goal is to “engage as many [Jewish students] as we can and make them feel comfortable and excited about exploring Judaism”. Like any organization, Hillel encounters their share of problems and struggles within the club. Within the interview, I asked Kal and Jason what they believed to be the biggest struggle or problem Hillel faces and what was one thing they would want to improve on within the organization. Kal identified one of the major downfalls of Hillel is the stigma around levels of Judaism. He explained that many Jewish students are originally intimidated to join Hillel or any Jewish group because many students feel self-conscious about their level of faith (i.e whether or not they speak Hebrew, if they celebrate Shabbat weekly, or keep Jewish eating laws). For the most part, this is almost entirely true. As a freshman myself, I was originally quite scared to walk into a room of people I had never met before and become engaged especially since although identity as Jewish I do not always keep kosher nor do I speak Hebrew or know all the prayers. Kal seemed to be well aware of this dilemma and when asked about one thing he could change he went on to say that since many new students are intimidated by the thought of meeting new people in an unknown environment he wishes to change the way Hillel reaches out to new members and communicates. He says he would change the way Hillel communicates in a way that makes it more personal. Kal explains that he is attempting to change the way Hillel communicated and he works on sending individual messages to make students make more comfortable and feel welcome in Hillel so the students do not feel forced to “make the first move”. Jason had a slightly different idea as to what the main problem of Hillel was, unlike Kal, he did not think the problem was students being intimidated to join but he identified the main problem is Hillel being “unable to reach enough students and it is a real struggle to meet with a lot of them”, Jason definitely thinks of the problem more mathematically and, as a communications major, I do not blame him. Jason is definitely more concerned about actually getting advertisements out into the public in a way that targets incoming students more efficiently, but a major concept that they agree on is the dire need for more face-to-face interactions with students while also abiding by the time constraints that students face due to their school work.
Communications within Hillel
After the interview with Jason Randall and Kal Marcus, the lack of members and the complications that the club faces with recruiting new members is evident. One of the methods Hillel has adopted to overcome this problem is through their own personal genre: their website. Hillel at Florida State actually owns and manages its own site and it can be found at hillelatfsu.org. Hillel’s website is a platform in which members can be alerted and aware of upcoming events to get involved in and what exactly Hillel stands for and their goal on campus. This genre is especially effective for the recruitment of new members, many people looking to join who may have missed the club fairs or the sporadic table set-ups on Landis can find any and all information about Hillel at the click of a button. Even before I found the table on Landis, which recruited me into joining the organization, I was already looking further into their website to inform myself of what exactly I would be getting myself into. Generation Z, which the rest of the freshman class and I are apart of, oftentimes struggle to get themselves involved through means of going out and communicating verbally which is why something like their website is so vital. People crave simplicity and a way of gaining information quickly, students are typically too caught up in studies and other obligations to go out and search for a new organization to join. Websites make information accessible for students at all times and all locations, the set up of the website is also a major pull factor since everything is organized in a way that is very straightforward and easy to navigate. Another prime method of communication that Hillel carries out is through their social media. Hillel takes advantage of the opportunity to use social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram to adapt their media and content in a way where it is fully accessible to students. Their consistent news updates on these platforms allow individuals to engage further in a way that is popular to the masses. The majority of teens and students use social media on a regular basis so this way of communicated information captures the attention of students whether they want to be apart of Hillel or not. This stream of media about their current and upcoming events sets a basis in the minds of students so they know what to expect and look forward to. On their Instagram you can find yourself better acquainted with quirky photos from their meetings and table set-ups but you can also see when they post about their community service projects. In one of their posts from last year you can see a few members from Hillel making Challah for their Challah for hunger project where Challah is donated to homeless shelters. Challah is a traditional Jewish bread that is eaten every Friday at Shabbat dinner and holds a special place in the homes and hearts of Jewish families and is often a symbol of love and family tradition. This type of media is intended to capture the minds of our generation in a way that we are already familiar with which is why their usage of social media is so useful for recruitment and further engagement of members.
In a place as big as Florida State it can be difficult to find yourself in a place that is so different from what you are used to.
As the sunset draws near on this Friday night, I walk into Hillel and grab a seat by new Jewish friends and open my Torah… ready to praise Hashem for another blessed week.