I sat down recently with a few prospective students who were interested in Jewish life on campus. They were only juniors in high school, and Brandeis was the first campus they visited on their tour of colleges across the Northeast. Despite this, they already had a pretty good idea about what Jewish life should look like on campus going into the conversation. As a leader of the Orthodox Minyan, or prayer group, I was able to answer the typical questions — those regarding the quality of Kosher food on campus, keeping Shabbat and campus opinions in Israel discussions — with ease. Yet one question resonated and took me a little bit longer to answer than the others: “Why is there no Hillel building on campus?”

As I have become more involved in Jewish leadership on campus, I have started to feel Brandeis’ lack of a Hillel building more profoundly. The Orthodox Minyan, as well as every other Minyan on campus, is shuffled around campus regularly because the school does not have a permanent space for the multiple Jewish prayer groups on campus.

While the Berlin Chapel — a beautiful building with a rich history and even richer acoustics — would seem to be the obvious choice for such a space, it alone cannot support the needs of all seven Jewish prayer groups on Shabbat, each of which have attendances ranging from ten to over a hundred regular members. 

The Minyans are therefore tucked into the International Lounge, Perlman Lounge, the Lurias, Levin Ballroom, Feldberg Lounge or wherever else we fit because there is no central location that can accommodate all the Jewish prayer groups. 

Instead of all walking to this central location, students must walk in opposite directions to attend their respective services, creating physical distance between the already ideologically insular communities.

Friday night is a time that has been unifying the Jewish community for thousands of years, yet the lack of a Hillel building does not promote unification; instead, it furthers any existing separation between the prayer groups in the Jewish community.

With more than 20 prayer, social and service groups, it is no surprise that Hillel must book spaces every week, multiple times a week, for multiple groups and therefore has trouble finding spaces for them. Hillel Lounge in Usdan is big enough for a board meeting or a small social event, but it is not big enough for events that Hillel member groups have that are larger than 20 people. Consequently, the designated Hillel space currently available at Brandeis cannot even achieve the simple task of providing a useful space for all Jewish groups on campus.

The lack of a Hillel building is felt not only in scheduling conflicts and lack of seating but also through the discomfort of certain groups occupying certain spaces. For example, in the basement of Shapiro Residence Hall, the Brandeis Orthodox Organization maintains a room called the Beit Midrash, or House of Study. The Beit Midrash offers an extensive library of Jewish texts and a place for Brandeis students to study these texts comfortably. However, because it is not a neutral space, non-Orthodox students have often said to me that they do not feel comfortable studying in the Beit Midrash, despite their interest in having a space dedicated to the studying of Jewish texts; consequently, non-Orthodox students rarely study in the Beit Midrash. Due to the absence of the safe space that a Hillel building would create, only a fraction of Jews on campus are able to fully enjoy all the resources that exist here. A Hillel building would create a space where Jews of any denomination can enjoy studying Jewish texts comfortably without fear of entering a non-neutral space.

Other campuses of similarly sized student populations and Jewish populations have responded to these issues with a Hillel building. In our own backyard, Tufts, Harvard, Northeastern and Boston University all have Hillel buildings, yet Brandeis does not. Brandeis does not usually pride itself on not adequately meeting students’ needs, and yet it often champions its lack of Hillel building, pointing out that the entire campus is like a Hillel building. While this argument acknowledges the safe space that Brandeis has been able to create for Jews on campus, it fails to acknowledge that the University is incapable of providing adequate physical spaces for all of the Jewish groups on campus. Minyans are often asked to relocate services from their booked locations to make room for other campus groups, and board meetings have had to meet in dorms because the Hillel Lounge was double booked. Other opponents would argue that a Hillel building on campus would make the campus “too Jewy” at the expense of other groups. While a valid concern, this argument operates under the false assumption that providing resources to strengthen the cultural and religious identity of one group of students inherently entails weakening another group. Resources for the Jewish community on campus can be expanded without encroaching on the resources of any other groups.

In fact, a Hillel building would actually help other groups too. Multipurpose rooms and social halls in the Hillel building could be available to other student groups and could provide more venues for student groups on campus. Additionally, the vacated spots on campus previously used by Hillel member groups would be opened, providing even fewer scheduling conflicts for all kinds of Brandeis groups.

At a Hillel event last spring, amid a failed search for a Hillel director, Senior Vice President for Students and Enrollment Andrew Flagel assured a group of students that they would have a Brandeis Hillel building by 2018. The crowd broke out in cheers, yet there was an air of cynicism in the room. 

Flagel was referencing a plan to raise money to build a Hillel building in place of the Berlin Chapel instead of renovating the existing 60-year-old building.

This is a plausible solution for an old question. Although it is a beautiful building, the Berlin Chapel is unable to fulfill the needs of the Jewish community at its present state. Building a fully equipped Hillel building in place of the Berlin Chapel would bring together the Jewish community and offer a centralized location for Jewish life on campus, and an architect could work carefully to integrate the new building with the Bethlehem and Harlan Chapels in order to ensure that Jewish unity does not come at the expense of the unity of the three chapels. 

Members of the administration say they are in support of a Hillel building, but it is time that they start acting on it. There has been no follow-up from Flagel or any other administrator regarding his plan for a Hillel building. Brandeis administration and Hillel at Brandeis should actively pursue donors to fund the Hillel building to show their support for the entire Jewish community on campus. It seems that the primary obstacles to building a Hillel building are lack of space and lack of money, but building in place of the Berlin Chapel can solve the former and seeking donations specific to the construction of a Hillel building can solve the latter. Consequently, there is not a good reason why Brandeis does not have a Hillel building yet, so as I sat in Sherman and tried to answer the prospective student’s question, all I could muster was, “I don’t know."