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Throughout The Hillels of Illinois system, students are participating in a variety of Alternate Spring Breaks (ASB) designed to give students powerful experiences relating to Jewish values of tzedakah, helping others and building community.
“There are a variety of goals addressed by these trips,” said Rabbi Paul Z. Saiger, executive director of The Hillels of Illinois. “We expect that such experiences will help students grow in their capacity for empathy and deepen their Jewish identity. But there is also a teaching and learning dimension. This is an important tool for helping students learn how they can personally make a difference in the lives of others. Both the orientations and the trips themselves help students understand the Jewish community and the manner in which the Jewish Federation engages in helping others. Indeed, this is precisely the reason that the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago subsidizes and promotes Alternate Spring Breaks along with so many other dimensions of Jewish campus life.”
For the first time, Levine Hillel at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) sent students to New Orleans for an ASB focused on rebuilding and cleaning up areas affected by Hurricane Katrina.
“It’s an opportunity to learn what Judaism says about social justice and helping the needy, but it’s also about the concrete issues—what are urban and rural poverty, what are the needs and weaknesses in our society,” said Ruth Schachter, Jewish student life coordinator at Levine Hillel, of the March trip.
The ongoing program for the 11 UIC students involved a three-part training program before the trip. Now that the students are back, follow-up programming will serve as a reunion for the group while linking them to social issues happening here in Chicago, explained Schachter.
“Our students are by and large from Chicago. They often stay here. We have a vested interest in getting them to see themselves as responsible, young Jewish adults in Chicago. This is part of that process,” she said.
Students from a number of campuses within the Hillels of Illinois system took part in similar trips this spring. Eleven students from the University of Chicago went to New Orleans with the Newberger Hillel, Hillels Around Chicago sent 10 students, and the Hillel at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) sent seven, with another 12 headed for Uruguay.
Since 2005, Hillels from across North American campuses have sent over 2,700 students to the Gulf Coast, while also sending students to other international spots for humanitarian work and Jewish education. Projects in the Gulf Coast area include work at homeless shelters, rebuilding New Orleans and rehabilitating wetlands. Immersive experiences, like ASB trips, play an increasingly important role in Hillel’s way of engaging students in Jewish life.
“Social justice is one of the leading ways we see Jewish identity developing,” said Rabbi Josh Feigelson, of Fiedler Hillel at Northwestern. In March, Fiedler Hillel brought 28 students to Cuba for social service work, a program in its third year, and 23 more students to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
Jewish students, Feigelson said, “do a ton of social justice activity. The question is: How are they doing it? Are they doing it as Jews, with a Jewish consciousness?” Helping students understand the Jewishness of their social concerns and activism, said Feigelson, is a “big part of my job.”
Feigelson and many other Hillel professionals believe that working with students in the area of social action is critical in their mission to engage students in Jewish life. “It’s one of the most meaningful ways of Jewish engagement, in terms of interacting with text and traditions,” said Feigelson. Students, he insisted, are inclined to think critically about these social concerns, and, more, to understand such activism through the lens of Jewish tradition. Through ASB trips, students have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others as part of a Jewish group.
Daniel Arnold, a Northwestern senior, returned home from his second ASB trip with Fiedler in March. In 2008 Arnold traveled to Brazil and this year he joined other Jewish students in Buenos Aires.
“Tikun olam and tzedekah—it’s always been a part of me. The Jewish part of me has always been driven to social action,” said Arnold, from Miami.
Growing up involved with his synagogue, Arnold initially experienced a drop-off in his Jewish involvement once reaching college. The trips, however, “revamped a sense of Judaism and social action,” he said. They also provided a “fantastic way to bond with other Jewish students.”
Romi Barta, a junior at Northwestern from Los Angeles, also recently returned home from ASB in Buenos Aires. Last year she went on the Cuba trip.
Barta, who explained that her background is “really culturally Jewish and family-oriented,” said her social service in Cuba “expanded my knowledge of how Judaism works in the world, rather than just in my home.”
Since her entrance to Jewish life on campus with last year’s ASB, Barta became a participant in the Campus Entrepreneurs Initiative, a national project of Hillel empowering students to network and develop their campus Jewish community, at Northwestern—an experience she has greatly enjoyed.
About her interest in social action, Barta explained, “I definitely see it is as a part of who I am as a Jew, part of my Jewish identity.”
Jordan Roth is staff associate for The Hillels of Illinois.
The Hillels of Illinois, a partner in serving our community, is supported by the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. Alternative Spring Break trips to the Gulf Region have been subsidized by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, while the Northwestern University Fiedler Hillel trip to Argentina was made possible through a subsidy from the Jewish United Fund/Jewish Federation of Metropolitan Chicago.
