Hillel began in 1923 with humble means, a noble mission and a breathtaking vision: to convey Jewish civilization to a new generation. Through the dedication of students, lay leaders and professionals, Hillel has grown from a handful of students in a rented room above a barbershop in Champaign, Illinois, to a worldwide movement with a gleaming new home in the U.S. capital. As important as Hillel’s size and scope is the organization’s success in helping the Jewish community to thrive through periods of travail and triumph. Hillel helped the children of immigrants find a place in the American Jewish community; it provided Jewish education for those with little background and nurtured young Jewish scholars; it helped Jewish
students overcome open discrimination on their campuses; it sent students off to war and welcomed them back to campus; it protested persecution of Jews abroad and helped to open the doors of civil rights in the United States; it celebrated Israel’s victories, mourned its losses, and spoke out on its behalf. Hillel has been the Jewish students’ “home away from home,” a place where they could share their fears and successes, where they could feel the comfort of a family while asserting their independence from it, a place where they could grow as individuals and as Jews. And now Hillel provokes a Jewish renaissance by creating thriving, valuable, multifaceted communities on campus, serving as a crucible for student leadership development, and a laboratory for Jewish engagement. It has never been easy. The great-grandparents of today’s Jewish students came to campus with many of the same hopes and fears, ambitions and questions as their 21st Century heirs. And then some.

Hillel Founder Rabbi Benjamin Frankel was known for his warm disposition.

Successful fundraising, such as the event described in Rabbi Frankel's 1926 telegram, enabled Hillel to maintain its first home on the second floor of the Champaign, Illinois building on the opposite page.

Hillel International Director Abram L. Sachar (l. to r.) confers with Prof. Edward Chauncey Baldwin and Champaign Jewish leader Isaac Kuhn who played critical roles in the creation of Hillel.

In the two years he served as a rabbinic intern at Temple Sinai in Champaign, Illinois, from 1921 to 1923, Benjamin Frankel became familiar with the 300 Jewish students at the University of Illinois. He saw a generation of young Jews struggling to come to terms with America and their Jewishness. Jewish students are in “intellectual flux” Frankel told B'nai B'rith leaders in 1924. “As a rule [the Jewish student] is passively Jewish and he is not sure of his Jewish learning. When he enters the university and finds what he interprets as anti-Semitism, he ducks his head in the sand like an ostrich and thinks he has solved the problem.” The lack of Jewish opportunities was so profound that Edward Chauncey Baldwin, a non-Jewish professor of English at the university, challenged Chicago Jewish leader Rabbi Louis Mann, “Don’t you think the time has come when a Jewish student might educate his mind without losing his soul?” Upon graduating from rabbinical school in 1923, Frankel accepted a part-time pulpit with the Champaign congregation under the condition that he could continue to work with college students. Baldwin, Mann and Champaign Jewish leader Isaac Kuhn set out to raise funds to turn Frankel’s part-time college program into a full-time organization. Mann secured the entire first-year budget, $12,000, in a single luncheon with Chicago Jewish business leaders, including Sears executive Julius Rosenwald. Local and national organizations already offered piecemeal programming for Jewish students. Frankel’s breakthrough innovation, the birth of

	The student executive board of Hillel at Queen's University, 1942-1943, the first in Canada.
	Hillel sponsors a Seder for military trainees at College Station, Texas in 1945 (background) and sends them off to war from Indiana University.

the Hillel concept, was to provide a structure that brought together a variety of student-run opportunities on a permanent basis under the guidance of a professional. Frankel and his board of lay leaders adopted the name Hillel. According to Frankel’s friend, colleague and successor,
Abram L. Sachar: “Frankel thought it up and it was a felicitous choice. Hillel is a symbol of the quest for higher learning. It was a beautiful name, too. It appealed to the Christian fellowship that pioneered the foundation, since Hillel was virtually a contemporary of Jesus. In those days the Jewish community still felt the need for the Christian imprimatur.” Sachar credited the birth of Hillel to Frankel’s “remarkably expansive, lovable personality, his genius for friendship, his courageous idealism and love for a great cultural heritage.” Seeking more secure financial backing, Frankel appealed to B’nai B’rith in 1924. Frankel explained that “Hillel’s establishment last September is designed in part to train the students for intelligent leadership. Through Hillel the Jewish student gets to know something about his people and their life. Responsibility for the activities of the Hillel Foundation is placed clearly on the shoulders of the students.” B’nai B’rith adopted Hillel at the University of Illinois, undertook a survey of universities and directed Frankel to open a Hillel at the
University of Wisconsin. Hillels opened at Wisconsin in 1924, at Ohio State in 1925, and at the University of Michigan in 1926.

	Florida State College for Women students build their Sukkah.
	B'nai B'rith President Henry Monsky greet Mrs. Eleanor Rossevelt at the dedication of the Hillel Sara Delano Roosevelt Memorial House at Hunter College as New York Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia looks on.

Tragedy struck in 1927 when Rabbi Frankel died of endocarditis
after visiting Eretz Yisrael. He was 30 years old. Chicago Rabbi Louis
Mann served for five years as the acting national director of Hillel.
In 1933, Abram L. Sachar left his post in the University of Illinois
history department to become the first full-time national director of
Hillel.
Sachar was a skilled administrator who worked deftly with B’nai
B’rith and Jewish Federations to secure support for Hillel. As a
renowned scholar, Sachar created Hillels that were not only religious
and social centers, but were also centers of Jewish learning. In an era
when Jewish studies were rarely offered in an academic setting, Hillel
provided them. Hillel not only earned the respect of students, it
earned the respect of academia at a time when Jews were sometimes
accepted grudgingly. Hillel took pride in the fact that non-Jewish
students attended these classes, fostering understanding and good
relations with future American leaders of all faiths.

Havana Hillel, founded in 1945, sends delegates to the Southeastern Hillel Convention in Florida in 1948.

Hillel's third Summer Institute in 1948 brings together Hillel students and professionals.

	Hillel students at Queens College, New York, support the "Jewish resistance movement" in British Mandatory Palestine in 1947.
	An Israeli shaliach (emissary) discusses immigration with Rutgers Hillel students in December 1948.

Despite the Depression, Hillel continued to grow. By 1935, the
organization boasted 11 Foundations. A landmark B’nai B’rith study in
1935 found that Jews comprised 9 percent of college students in the
United States, two and a half times their number in the general population.
They were heavily represented in the fields of dentistry, law,
pharmacy, commerce and medicine. Excluded from other fraternities by
discriminatory policies, Jewish students set up dozens of social groups
on their campuses, but few cultural or religious organizations. Their
sense of social isolation was fueled, in many cases, by the fact that
many were New York-area students who were forced to travel great
distances in search of higher education. The report recommended a
vast expansion of Hillel across the country.
Sachar continued to build Hillel. In 1939, he created Hillel counselorships
in 50 locations. Led by part-time professionals, they were
designated to provide Jewish programming on campuses not served by
Hillel’s 20 Foundations. Hillel opened its first Foundation in the East
in 1939 with the creation of Brooklyn College Hillel. With an estimated
Jewish enrollment of 8,000, Brooklyn College posed Hillel’s greatest
challenge and Sachar personally oversaw its creation.
As conflict raged abroad, Hillel students’ attention turned toward
war, their persecuted brothers and sisters in Europe, and, increasingly,
the Jewish homeland. In addition to social, religious and cultural activities,
Hillel students participated in joint activities with the Avukah
student Zionist organization and raised money for the United Jewish
Appeal — $50,000 in 1944 alone.

	President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) attends the 1955 cornerstone George Washington University Hillel students perform "Purim Goes to College" on WTTG television in 1952.
	President Dwight D.Eisenhower (left) attendsthe 1955 cornerstone laying for the interfaith chapelatPenn State University where Hillel International Director Rabbi Benjamin Kahn (center) delivered the invocation.

In 1938, Hillel created its Refugee Student Program to save European students by providing them with scholarships to American universities. By 1940 there were 64 European refugee students receiving a college education in the United States thanks to the Hillel program. Local Hillels adopted these students and helped them adapt to American campus life. The program continued after the war, providing survivors with a chance to start new lives. In 1947, Tom Lantos, a Hungarian Jewish refugee, wrote,

“I AM PERFECTLY SATISFIED FOR HAVING THE OPPORTUNITY
OF LEARNING, WORKING AND FOR HAVING A WARM HOME.
NOW I CAN FULLY REALIZE WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS
WORD HILLEL! – GOODNESS, WARMTH AND LOVE, THOSE
FEELINGS THAT WE SO DESPERATELY MISS IN THE MORALLY
DESTROYED EUROPE.”

Lantos, one of 124 young people sponsored by Hillel, today serves in the U.S. House of Representatives. After Pearl Harbor, a considerable part of the Hillel program was devoted to the service of military trainees on the campuses. Hillel worked with the Jewish Welfare Board to develop an initiative to cater to the social and religious needs of tens of thousands of Jewish soldier-students on 144 campuses. Every effort was made to integrate the trainees into the life of the Hillel community. As one brochure explained, this was not superficial “corned-beef Judaism.” At the end of the war, Hillel helped the vast numbers of servicemen and women who came to campus under the G.I. bill. Hillel gathered 57 professionals and 53 student
leaders together in August 1946 at a summer camp in Upstate New York for the first Hillel Summer Institute. Hillel opened its first Foundation outside the United States in 1942 at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, and its first Latin American Foundation in October 1945 in Havana, Cuba.
As the 1950s dawned, Hillel had Foundations or Counselorships on 200 campuses. In addition to a full range of social, cultural and religious programs, Hillels offered work-study scholarships and interest- free loans. Hillels embraced the new technology of television, giving students the opportunity to create and broadcast programs. Hillel leaders defied segregation to work with their black counterparts in the Jim Crow South.
The 1950s was a period of quiet growth for Hillel, but the 1960s burst on the campus to the sound of Rock and Roll. Hillel directors, working alone or with
one staffer, were deluged by waves of Baby Boomers. Campuses that once hosted small Jewish populations became viable Jewish communities in need of Hillel Foundations. In 1966, Hillel Pacific Regional Director Rabbi Jehudah M. Cohen told colleagues, “The students of the Fifties went to school when the stream of history was wide and moved slowly. Today, the stream is rushing through a narrow gorge. We are living in a period of rapid social change....” Hillel directors struggled to make Jewish tradition relevant to this iconoclastic generation. In the words of University of Illinois Hillel Director Edward Feld, “In an age when students protest against the establishment,
Hillel is the symbol of the establishment.” Spurred by pride in Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War, Jewish students created groups that championed causes from Soviet Jewry to Israel, Jewish feminism to chavurot, Ethiopian Jewry to the environment. Writing in 1973 on the occasion of Hillel’s 50th anniversary, Hillel International Director Rabbi Alfred Jospe observed: “thousands of young people, among them our best and most sensitive students... are searching for better ways to express and act upon their moral and spiritual concerns.” Jospe issued a plea for the necessary resources to meet the challenges of this generation: “What could Jewish life in America be like in another generation if the entire American Jewish community were to share in the work initiated and supported mainly by B’nai B’rith in the past to provide the human and material resources that will bring the potential for Jewish life on campus to full flowering?” But cutbacks to Hillel’s budget forced professionals to do more with less. Programs such as the Hillel Summer Institute, Hillel professorships at some universities and financial aid to students fell by the wayside. Jewish federations began to play an increasingly important role in the governance and funding of local Hillels. By 1988, Hillel as a national Jewish movement faced an uncertain future.

In 1988, B’nai B’rith hired a 37-year-old attorney and Yeshiva University dean to revitalize Hillel. As an outsider, Richard M. Joel could see aspects of Hillel less visible to organization insiders. “We thought Hillel needed a tune-up,” said Rabbi William Rudolph, former associate international director. “Richard knew it needed an overhaul.” Hillel’s rebirth was given additional impetus in 1990 with the release of the National Jewish Population Survey. The study shocked the American Jewish community with its finding that a small majorityof American Jews were marrying out of the faith and not raising their children as Jews. Since an estimated 85 percent of American Jews attended college, Hillel was a logical antidote.
Joel worked with professionals and a group of dedicated lay leaders to strengthen Hillel. Detroit business executive David L. Bittker served as a bridge between the Jewish Federations and B’nai B’rith. Rabbi Herbert Friedman, president of the Wexner Heritage
Foundation, supported the effort and introduced Hillel to gifted leaders such as Paul Cherner of Chicago, Louis Berlin of Miami, and Neil Moss of Columbus. Early lay partners also included Barry Levin ofPhiladelphia, Chuck Newman of Ann Arbor, Ellie Meyerhoff Katz of
South Florida, and Michael Rukin of Boston. Everything began to change. Hillel bolstered student, professional and lay leaders by providing them with training and encouraging them
to take ownership of the organization locally and internationally. Hillel established a process of accreditation to provide universal standards of excellence throughout the system. A new Hillel logo was created that formed the Hebrew letters for Hillel into a dynamic flame.
And to underscore a desire to engage all Jews on campus and beyond, Hillel adopted a new mission statement: “Maximizing the number of Jews doing Jewish with other Jews.”

In the background, Hillel's annual Charles Schustermanb International Student Leaders Assembly brings together over 400 students with Hillel professionals and top community leaders for five days of Jewish celebration and intensive leadership development.