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Support FSU Hillel During Hillel Global Giving Week

 

We are well underway of our third annual Hillel Global Giving Week. We are closing in on our $10,000 goal and we couldn’t do it without you.

After an incredible year of serving 300+ students each holiday and a FULL FSU Birthright Israel bus leaving early next week, we are looking for your support – whether you are able to make a gift or share with your networks. To see our donor roll and to make a gift, visit donate.hillel.org/FSUHillel. Thank you.

Since 2018, FSU Hillel has seen tremendous growth. During our pre-pandemic era, we would have never imagined the growth we have seen during the most challenging two years that were filled with remote programs and the void of not gathering together in Tallahassee. From then, our students have shined a light on the need for a thriving Hillel. With this incredible momentum comes an increase in the number of students we serve and our offerings to them. FSU Hillel has found our specialty in building micro-communities amongst Jewish students and discovering ways to make Judaism accessible to all.  

Make a gift today during Hillel Global Giving Week and it will go 2x as far!

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Changes Coming to FSU Hillel

Change is coming to FSU Hillel: our Director of Jewish Student Life, Kal Marcus, is leaving after three years of incredible service to the Jewish students of our community. Kal joined us in June 2019 as a Springboard Fellow specializing in Jewish Learning and in 2021 advanced to the position of Director of Jewish Student Life. In that time, he has weathered a pandemic, excelled in his role, grown enormously as a professional, and (nearly) completed a Master’s Degree in Jewish Non-Profit Management from Hebrew Union College. Toward the end of this semester, he is moving on to exciting new challenges and opportunities with Evolve Giving Group as an Associate Consultant.

Kal joined our team at a transformative moment, as we quadrupled our staff, updated our programming and operations, reconfigured our physical space, worked to fundamentally shift our organizational culture, and dramatically increased both fundraising and student engagement. During that time, he has achieved remarkable results at FSU Hillel, including:

  • Overhauling student leadership: growing from 8 to over 40 leaders and interns in three years; guiding a culture shift toward excellence, inclusivity, and service; and developing a clear plan for student leadership development and advancement
  • Strategic outreach: by focusing on sub-sections of campus life, such as Freshmen engagement and Greek Life outreach, Kal helped us achieve unprecedented gains in both breadth and depth of student engagement
  • Building Jewish educational initiatives: Kal launched, recruited for, and co-taught our first-ever Jewish Learning Fellowships. FSU Hillel has now offered more than a dozen unique cohort experiences and engaged more than 100 students in this high-impact program that provides in-depth Jewish education, fosters friendships, and serves as a pipeline for cultivating student leaders.
  • Pivoting during the pandemic: When the pandemic hit after only 9 months on the job, Kal guided our student leaders to shift seamlessly to online programming. His team began with programming exclusively on Zoom, then shifted to hybrid and outdoor events, and ultimately innovated a dispersed small-group student-hosted event model that is both in-person and COVID-safe. Despite essentially closing the Hillel building for two years, we have nonetheless hosted our biggest-ever events, such as Rosh Hashanah for 360 students in Fall 2021. 
  • Skyrocketing engagement: Kal led our team in doubling engagement even during COVID. This rate of growth in on-campus engagement is rarely achieved in any circumstance – much less during a pandemic, when programming was almost entirely online and and/or outside the Hillel building.  

Kal’s achievements are many, but his persona is just as remarkable. If you’ve met him, you might know his easy charisma, his unbeatable Jewish geography network, and his quick wit. He is a sharp observer of human behavior and unparalleled at remembering not only the faces, but also the names, connections, backgrounds, talents and hobbies of almost everyone he meets. “It’s a gift and a curse,” he is known to say with a sly grin, when recalling yet another precise detail from memory. 

Although Kal is leaving FSU Hillel, the structure, strategy, and changes he has affected will remain. We are well-positioned to continue to grow and strengthen our student leadership, to maintain and grow engagement, and to deepen our reputation as a place that is truly by students, for students. Our core staff will remain, and we are excited to hire excellent new team members in the coming months – with Kal on the hiring committee! 

In English, the word is “bittersweet;” in Hebrew, mar u’matok. The bitterness of Kal’s departure will be felt strongly across the FSU Jewish community; however, we will hold on to the sweetness of our memories with him and of our excitement at seeing all that he – and we – will accomplish in the future. We truly wish him all the best.

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The Birthright Trip That Was Meant to Be

B’shert is the only word for our Winter 2021 trip Birthright trip to Israel. Hours after take-off from Miami to Tel Aviv, Israel reinstated their travel ban for all Birthright buses. This meant we were one of only three Hillel Birthright buses that made it to Israel this winter!

After combining with University of Miami Hillel, we brought 27 Jewish students together to make new friends, explore connections to Israel, and delve deeper into their Jewish identities.

When last-minute changes to COVID protocol meant quarantining on arrival, we lightened the mood with nostalgic summer camp activities and ice-breakers at our Kibbutz near the Golan Heights. We created a strong bond that only grew throughout our trip.

We were joined by nine Israeli soldiers in Safed amidst the celebration of a Bar Mitzvah in the street. Israeli and American participants explored the differences between their Holocaust education, Shabbat observances, and early career exploration. Our conversations reflected Hillel’s pluralistic approach to Judaism, and led many to the conclusion that there is no such thing as “not Jewish enough.”

While in Jerusalem, we visited the Kotel (Western Wall) and brought in Shabbat together. Before entering the Kotel, students reflected upon the blessings they wished to leave in the cracks of the Wall while others wrote letters-to-self to be read at the school year’s end so that in future they could look back on this pivotal moment see the progress they had made. As Shabbat marked the halfway point of our trip, students had the opportunity to become a B’Nai Mitzvah and/or join the Hebrew naming ceremonies, further sanctifying their personal growth and symbolizing their connection to the Jewish homeland.

Our Birthright Israel experience felt a lot like the story at Masada. The story of resistance reminded us all that despite the odds, FSU Hillel’s trip to Israel was b’sheret. Posing proudly for photos with the Israeli flag atop that ancient fortress overlooking the vast Dead Sea, I was awed by the symbolic resonance with all that our students overcame to make this trip happen.

Now back at FSU, our students are working on initiatives that will welcome Israeli food, culture, and people (virtually) to our Hillel and the FSU community. We will reunite to reflect on our time together and remember the unlikely triumph of making it to Israel this Winter. Intellect, compassion, and ahavat am (eternal love) for Israel shine brightly in all of our participants, and I am confident that each one will be vital to cultivating and creating the Jewish future at FSU and beyond.

 
 
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Update: KKK Flier Incident at FSU Hillel

This week a hand-written flier was taped to a light post adjacent to our building that announced an upcoming “KKK meeting” and gave a local phone number. Several Jewish sorority sisters found the sign and were understandably horrified. They sent us a picture of the flier and then destroyed it.

We are saddened and disturbed by this incident and immediately reported it through FSU’s harassment reporting tool (report.fsu.edu), shared the image with Florida ADL and Hillel International’s security office and met FSU campus PD at the building. Here is what we learned right away that night:

  1.  The flier by our building was not the only offensive message posted around campus and especially in CollegeTown – the social night life hub near campus;
  2. Other fliers targeted other minority ethnic identity groups and women

We have subsequently been in close communication with our student community, campus leadership, and concerned Jewish parents, communities and stakeholders around the country.

The FSU police have complete their preliminary investigation, but some key facts of the case seem still to be unclear. What we do know is that there is no upcoming KKK meeting or any credible threat to student safety or FSU Hillel. We are in close contact with campus police and other authorities and are gratified that this is being taken seriously. It appears that those responsible for this incident are local teenagers with no connection to FSU. Further, we understand that the phone number on the fliers belongs to a local teenager – a child – with no involvement and who is bewildered at his number being used/targeted.

Unfortunately, after images of the flyer were shared to social media and immediately went viral a local Tallahassee teenager was inundated with threats and harassing messages. By posting and sharing the image without blurring the phone number, countless social media accounts ended up furthering the harassment intended by the students who posted the flier in the first place—giving it much greater distribution and attention than the physical flier ever would have garnered on its own.

Regardless of the identity or the intent of those who posted the flier, the incident raises several larger questions for our community:

  1. Was the only flier mentioning the KKK posted near our building intentionally because we are a Jewish institution? If so, and even if the primary intent was to harass the phone owner with angry responses, it was also clearly a hateful act designed to upset and threaten campus Jews.
    a. Or was it a coincidence, meaning that the poster either was unaware of the history of KKK violence targeting Jews or ignorant of the fact that the Magen David on our outside wall meant that we are a Jewish institution?
  2. How do we acknowledge the terror that the KKK invokes for many members of our community, who may have seen this sign on campus or social media? As distressed as we are that this sign was placed near Hillel, its existence at all is a potential terrifying event for any BIPOC member of our community. No matter where the sign was placed, it invokes the horrific history of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists in America. This is not ancient history – we need only to look to recent events such as the rally in Charlottesville to acknowledge that white supremacy poses a clear and present danger to all those of us who are despised by bigots.
  3. Even if this was a hoax, why do so many supposedly “random” acts of vandalism target Jews (eg. The carving of swastikas on walls and bathroom stalls)?
  4. How do we support and comfort our Jewish student community that faced this act on the eve of Simchat Torah, in a trying COVID-infused year, at the end of a very meaningful but exhausting first month of school and High Holiday period?
  5. How do we as a Jewish community respond meaningfully to this incident to both comfort the Jewish student community and build bridges of understanding and allyship with others who were harmed, and even with the responsible parties themselves?
  6. Because those responsible are local teenagers unconnected to FSU, this also highlights the connection of our seemingly insular campus to the broader community around us. What does this mean for our connection to Tallahassee, its history, and its future?

In any case, we are so grateful for and gratified by the support of our allies, and we extend the same support to all who have been hurt by this event.

Remember, students, we are here for you. Please reach out to us directly to talk or for support (DM us, call 850-222-5454 or email jwilliams@fsuhillel.org).

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High Holidays 5782!

Offerings For High Holidays

 
FSU Hillel
  • Rosh Hashanah Dinner, Monday 9/6 (individual meals to go, student-hosted small groups, and in-person at Hillel for Freshmen only. Update: sold out!)
  • Yom Kippur Yizkor service, Wednesday, 9/15, 2 p.m. (in-person at Hillel and online hybrid: details will be posted on Instagram and Linktree)
  • Yom Kippur Break Fast, Wednesday, 9/15, 6pm (bagels to go from the Hillel building: details will be posted on Instagram and Linktree)
Community
Hillel International
 

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Rosh Hashanah Dinner 2021

Rosh Hashanah 2021! Wishing You a Sweet New Year.

We are so excited to share our sign up form for this year’s
Rosh Hashanah celebration in partnership with the FSU Jewish Student Union.

Due to virus concerns, we will not be hosting the dinner inside our building; instead a multitude of small group meals will be hosted by students. Please sign up and join our program on Zoom!

Click here to sign up. 

Rosh Hashanah Sign up
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Welcome Week 2021! Can’t Wait to Meet You Class of ’25.

We are thrilled to welcome the class of 2025 to Tallahassee!

And, to welcome back all of our other old and new friends. There are lots of opportunities to engage, so please come find us at one of our Welcome Week events or drop us a line so that we can treat you to coffee!

Also, don’t forget to follow us on social media! That is the best way to connect and learn what we have coming up.

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Pikuach Nefesh, Preserving Life

The Jewish principle of Pikuach Nefesh, preserving human life, overrides virtually any other consideration within Jewish communities. Because of our commitment to the health and safety of all of our community members, FSU Hillel has updated its COVID-19 protocols. We encourage and invite everyone who can get vaccinated to do so, for the safety of those who cannot.

For Fall 2021, our updated COVID-19 policies are as follows:

  • Your vaccine affirmation form must be on file to attend in-person events. If you can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, let us know.
  • Masks will be required for all events. We are happy to provide a mask if you forget yours.
  • You will need to pre-register for all Hillel events. Registration forms are always on LinkTree (see our bio or linktr.ee/hillelatfsu).
  • We will limit participants at indoor events. In addition to small indoor gatherings and Zoom, we’ll also gather outside.
  • All Hillel staff are fully vaccinated and we cannot wait to welcome you back to campus this fall!Fall 2021 Covid Protocols

VACCINATION: Only those who have submitted a vaccination affirmation will be allowed to enter the building for Shabbat services, programs, or meetings. People are considered fully vaccinated 2 weeks after their second dose in a 2-dose series, such as the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines, or 2 weeks after a single-dose vaccine, such as Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine. If you don’t meet these requirements, regardless of your age, you are NOT fully vaccinated.

ILLNESS: If you have any symptoms of illness, we ask you to stay home and attend events via Zoom. (If you need a delivery of matzo ball soup, we gotchu!)

At events, Hillel Staff will be refraining from embraces and maintaining 6 feet of distancing in interactions. Thank you for doing your part to protect the health and life of your fellow students and community members. We are so excited to warmly welcome you back to campus this fall!

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Dedicating Tallahassee’s Lynching Memorial

Remarks delivered by Dr. Dan Leshem (our ED) at the dedication ceremony of the Tallahassee Community Remembrance Project’s Lynching Memorial on July 17, 2021

 

I would like to thank the organizers of the Tallahassee Community Remembrance Project whose work started years ago and has brought us to this moment and this monument. My name is Dan Leshem and before becoming director of Hillel at FSU, which promotes Jewish life on campus, I was a scholar and teacher of the Holocaust. My role here today is to dedicate this memorial site. I do so as a white-passing, cis-gendered Jewish man becoming aware of my own place within the structures of power and privilege that perpetuate our unequal society. I am humbled and overwhelmed by this task.

 

I think back to the perpetual doubts I felt while studying the Holocaust — an event that decimated my family yet somehow also drew me close to my grandmother who was a survivor. She was my first teacher about the Holocaust and about life: she taught me about resilience in the face of trauma, and about the dangers of forgetting. Yet still I would ask myself periodically: “why do I force myself to confront humanity’s deepest evils by imagining–by putting myself in the place of, by remembering–the pain and suffering of its victims? And, what good am I doing by sharing the victims’ pain with others?” I realized that these traumatic stories teach us two invaluable lessons: (1) the capacity inherent in all of us to do great harm to others, and (2) the human capacity to persevere, to carry on, and to rebuild. Both the Nazis and their victims were human beings–no different from you and me–who inhabited the extremes of what it is to be a human being: unimaginable cruelty, and indescribable strength.

Tallahassee Lynching Memorial

This memorial we dedicate today tells another chapter in the same eternal story. The hatred of one group by another; defined by color and race; manifested as violence and terror; ultimately forgotten and denied. It is our role now to state clearly for all who are present to hear and remember that within a stone’s throw of the site where we now stand, four human beings were taken and murdered by a white mob. These men were lynched in Leon County as part of an organized campaign of racial terror: they were Pierce Taylor (1897), Mick Morris (1909), Richard Hawkins and Ernest Ponder (1937). This monument to their memory, their lives, and their murders tells us a great deal about what we inherit as residents of Leon County, as residents of Florida where at least 311 other lynchings were perpetrated, and indeed as Americans, where untold thousands of other people of color were lynched during the Jim Crow era.

 

The stories of these victims by-and-large have not been recorded; and we cannot hear their voices or understand what they went through just by being here today. Instead, we must apply what we know about human experience to the circumstances of their deaths: dragged out of small cells with the open collaboration or passive resistance of their jailors, often at night, often by masked men holding torches and weapons, knowing that they were likely about to die, having known that this might occur but having no idea what to expect. And we must imagine the society and community from which they were pulled, who were perhaps the truest audience for these homicides, since the murderers intended the spectacle of their violence to cause terror, to induce panic and acquiescence. A note found next to the bodies of Hawkins and Ponder, two teenagers read: “This is the beginning, who is next.” We also need to imagine the wider circle of perpetrators and accomplices: white audiences who came out to witness the killings, to find souvenirs, and to take pictures with the corpses.

Dr. Leshem speaking at dediation ceremony

The Hebrew Bible commands us to remember over 200 times, but why should we continue to relive and remember the most horrible things that have been done to us? Tonight begins the Jewish commemoration of the destruction of the first and second temples in Jerusalem with a traditional meal of bread and eggs dipped in ashes followed tomorrow with a day of fasting and mourning. Why?

 

I offer the following tentative suggestions to my friends and family of color: (1) because that past makes us who we are today (2) it reminds us that the injustices of the past have not all been rectified, and (3) remembering pain gives us empathy for the suffering and needs of others.

 

I invite us to make a new memorial tradition: Let’s all meet here, at this site next year and every year so that we never forget and never fail in our calling to remember all those who have been victimized by our country’s system of racial terror and oppression, and to change ourselves and our society one memory, one action at a time.

 

Thank you so much for lending your attention, passion, and, most importantly, your memory.

 

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Wishes For Our 2021 Grads

Blessing for our Grads on Parashat Shemini

Tonight’s Parsha is Shemini, which means eighth in Hebrew. In this text the eight refers to the eighth day of building and using the Mishkan, the mobile tabernacle that the Jews built while they wandered in the desert. For seven days Moses built the tabernacle and at the end of each day, he folded it up and put it away, but the eighth day was the first day that mishkan stayed built, the first day that Aaron, the High Priest, took over the priestly duties, and the first day that fire from the heavens came down to consume the burnt offerings Aaron prepared.

The rabbis interpret the importance of the 8th day as the day of the miracle [(Talmud, Erchin 13b) that “the lyre of Moshiach has eight strings.”]. For seven days Gd made nature and order of the world, for seven days Moses built the mishkan, but on the seventh day something different happened. And that different thing, that interruption of what had gone on before was the entry of the divine into the affairs of mortal men, women and children.

And similarly, you have spent 3, 4 or 5 years of college, or 16 years if you count grades 1-12, or 19 years if you go all the way back to preschool and daycare. This all represents the first 7 days of our parsha, the expected, the slow and steady work of preparing yourself, your mind, your being for the miraculous. Preparing yourselves for the possibility of something completely different, surprising, perhaps even disruptive.

At FSU you have chosen your classes with care. You paid special attention to which clubs, sororities or fraternities you would give your time. Which social justice projects resonated with you. Which extracurricular learning opportunities leapt out at you. Some of these you took advantage of, and some you let go by, saving that particular opportunity or learning for the future, for another time.

You have chosen your friends with care, your spring breaks, you took some opportunities to go home and some you passed up on. And of course, your experience was radically changed by a deadly and terrifying virus that grips the whole world in a panic we have yet to escape from.

These, my friends, were the first seven days, the time of setting the groundwork, preparing for the completely unknown, the unexpected, the “what’s next.” Coincidentally, there are now precisely 8 days until the first FSU graduation ceremony, and– like the 10 Days of Awe between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur, that Jews traditionally devote to reflecting on the past year and committing themselves to growth in the next year– I invite you all to treat the next 7 days as a moment of Havdalah. A time to draw a distinction between what has happened in your life so far, and to create a space, an opening for the next phase of your life to pour in, like a blessing. Each havdalah, each distinction and separation we make in our lives, allows us to become something new, we are no longer tied to who we were and what we wanted for the last 22 years. That was preparation. When we walk across the stage and accept our diploma, we will do so as new people, for whom the only limit is our openness to change.

Over the next week, find a few minutes to ask yourself not “what job do I want to have next month” but what person do I want to be when I look back five or ten years from now? What and who will I have allowed into my life. What causes will I stand up for, what friends, what strangers? Who will I care about and who will I allow to care for me? We are not limited to who we were in the past but we are informed by that person, so how will we improve the world in ways that younger version of ourselves never got to enjoy? How will we give back to our parents, friends, our communities? How do we make sure that paths we walked on are still clear and stable and sustaining for those who come after us?

You are our leaders now. We are your friends. We are your community, colleagues, well-wishers, cheerleaders, family. We will only be happy if you succeed and grow in ways we never did and reach heights we barely glimpsed. As you needed us in the past, we need you in the future. Do the work, prepare the path, but don’t forget to leave space for the divine interruption.

Mazal tov! We are so proud and can’t wait to see what you do next.