Shalom From MIT Hillel!

MIT Hillel Update

Shana tova! On Rosh Hashanah, during services a week ago, we recited the words ha-yom harat olam, “Today is the birth of the world.” We joyously reminded ourselves that creation – including, especially us – recreates itself each year. On Monday, we then marked one year since Hamas’ terrorist atrocities. Like Jewish communities around the world, the MIT Jewish community attuned ourselves to solemnity and memorial. Especially this year, we look back at the world we lived through these past twelve months, and we begin our journey into this new olam – world and time – with all of its possibilities. 

As more than one speaker alluded to at our October 7 Memorial on campus, we know that the Jewish future – all those possibilities – will thrive when we embrace life, with meaning and with joy. 

Last month I laid out MIT Hillel’s approach to this new year, our vision, our mission. A one-page overview of how we address the possibilities for Jewish life at MIT now lives on our webpage. Here is how it/we concisely describe our holy work:

At MIT Hillel, we are, first and foremost, passionate about building a vibrant Jewish community where every student can connect, grow, and thrive. We motivate lifelong engagement with Jewish community and Judaism as we:

• Forge deep friendships and relationships rooted in mutual respect, creating a welcoming space for all.
• Ignite a love for Jewish learning and wisdom, empowering students to form nuanced perspectives on issues that matter to our people.
• Inspire Jewish joy, encouraging students to explore diverse rituals, practices, and traditions and weave them into their daily life.

We celebrate the richness of our pluralistic community, embracing Jews from all backgrounds—all denominations, ethnicities, nationalities, and orientations.

Education is at the heart of what we do. We dive deep into Jewish texts. We encourage questioning and careful analysis. We embrace nuance and complexity, while welcoming diverse viewpoints. Our pluralistic approach to Judaism honors the diversity within our rich tradition. In our inclusive environment, respectful dialogue is the norm.

We also foster meaningful connections to Israel. For us, Zionism affirms the right of the Jewish people to self-determination in our historic homeland. We also affirm the democratic and humanistic values upon which the modern State of Israel was founded. We recognize the complexities facing our homeland today and celebrate its extraordinary accomplishments – including its cultural, technological, and artistic contributions to diasporic Jewish communities and the wider world. Given the interconnected nature of Israel and other Jewish communities around the world, we help students explore their own relationship with Israel, welcoming open conversations and differing opinions.

We stand firm against antisemitism, but we do not allow it to define us. Our goal is to inspire lifelong Jewish engagement, so that students leave MIT with an enduring commitment to Jewish life, learning, and community. We collaborate and forge partnerships with students, faculty, the administration, and other campus communities as we advocate for and create a safe and supportive environment where all students can flourish. We respond to hate by promoting Jewish pride and unity, recognizing the strength of our peoplehood.

At MIT Hillel, we are committed to nurturing a dynamic and joyful Jewish life on campus. Let’s do this holy work together!

With all these values in mind, here are some highlights of how we began our new academic year:

• New students are connecting and bonding. Our Kesher28 cohort creates community among first-year undergrads students, through social outings, learning, and meals. They began the year with an outing to the Prudential viewing tower (note to remind future years’ participants: one may not throw paper airplanes or anything from the top). Our First Year Grad Students (FYGS) initiative also builds connections among starting graduate students. We are already seeing new friendships develop, particularly through their first activity – a mapping and sharing of Jewish journeys.

• Jewish learning is so popular, we have been increasing our class food orders with every session! Some themes our students are exploring include: the ethics of cancel culture, can you be a good Jew and a bad person?, and individual vs communal responsibility. Our Torah Queeries group continues to meet and expand, as well.

• Not only did we have a Jew Year’s Eve toast and dinner on the first night of Rosh Hashanah with more than eighty students dipping apples in honey and then eating and celebrating late into the night, multiple sub-communities also hosted Jew-It-Yourself meals and study breaks in their homes and dorms. All supported by Hillel.

• On October 7, in coordination with MIT Chabad and the MIT Israel Alliance, our MIT Jewish community commemorated and memorialized, with a mostly internally-facing gathering attended by over 200. Continuing all week long, we also created an art display on Kresge Oval as a testament and educational piece:

May we experience peace, calm, growth, goodness, health, healing, and joy in this new year.

G’mar tov / May we be sealed for a good year,

Rabbi Michelle H. Fisher SM '97 (V)

Executive Director

[email protected]

Mentshn of Mention

cycling along the Charles, and folding origami. I am from Los Angeles, and my family actively engages with the modern orthodox community there.

I was an active student leader at the Brown-RISD Hillel, so I looked forward to joining the Hillel community when I came to MIT. But I didn't have to go and find Hillel... Hillel found me first! I was approached by an exuberant Hillel student leader at orientation, who recognized me as the "new EECS student who requested a kosher meal." Before I knew it, I had joined the GradHillel board as a co-Shabbat Coordinator to organize monthly Shabbat dinners for our graduate student community.

From the start, MIT Hillel has significantly shaped my experience at MIT. Hillel is where I have met my closest friends, one of whom has also become a research collaborator. Our research meetings would even occasionally happen in the Hillel Center - sometimes scheduled, sometimes spontaneous (which sometimes left our Shabbat dinner company confused). When our efforts bore fruit, we found ourselves booking flights to present our work at a conference together in Japan. As a half Japanese-American Jew, a highlight was bringing the Hillel Shabbat spirit with us to the very welcoming JCC of Japan, where we were able to bring back a few Japanese-English-Hebrew Passover Haggadot!

What draws me to MIT Hillel is the community's strong commitment to religious pluralism. At Shabbat dinners, we can come together as one large Jewish community irrespective of background and practice. These dinners have been a wonderful way to experience Judaism as a graduate student and get to know Jews from across campus. To have been able to maintain and contribute to that pluralism by organizing those monthly gatherings has been a privilege and a blessing. While my time in that role has concluded, I look forward to continuing to serve the community behind the scenes as a student mashgiach and to build connections between Jewish students and faculty across MIT.

Seiji Shaw

Graduate Student

[email protected]

Torah From Tech

Michelle (Course XV 1993) is married to Jonathan Rosenberg (Course VI 1994) and remains an active volunteer in the MIT community. As empty-nesters, we are enjoying ourselves and have been able to catch up with a lot of MIT folks. 

Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are the start of the new year. I always think of the Jewish holidays as a time for family and community. At MIT, Hillel provided the community when I could not go home for the holidays.

To this day, both community and tradition make the Jewish holidays special for me. Sitting in the sanctuary for services with my close friends, making traditional foods from my childhood, breaking the Yom Kippur fast with bagels and lox. It is not just the act of going to shul and reciting the prayers, it is the traditions and food that complete our celebrations. What we try to do in our own homes, Hillel provides for our children who cannot return to celebrate with us.

I will date myself as being at MIT when Hillel sent a postcard of a Mac computer dripping in honey for Rosh Hashanah. That might have been my first experience with technology as part of the High Holidays. Nowadays, technology has made it possible to Facetime with our families when they cannot be with us and to participate in Zoom services during a pandemic. And the Internet has made it easier to replicate the foods we associate with the holidays. Whether it is placing an order to have favorites overnighted from Zabar’s gourmet emporium in NYC or looking to replicate your bubbe’s noodle kugel, it is now easier than ever to recreate the memories of however your family celebrated.

In 2010, when Facebook was young, I started a Facebook group “Passover Recipe Exchange” with my friends to exchange Passover recipes. It was literally just a handful of friends who were tired of a week of matzo brei and matzo pizza. But it got shared and spread and now a decade and half later, it has over 33,000 members from around the world. It became such a community, we had to create a "Kosher Recipe Exchange" for year-round recipes in 2017 with over 12,000 members. These groups are communities that are purely focused on recipes and kosher food and have members from all levels of observance. Technology has made it possible for people to ask specific questions about a recipe they might not remember the name for or exactly where it came from and get answers.

Sometimes I will learn something new from a thread that will make my own recipe better, such as pulling my chicken from my soup once it is cooked, removing the meat and putting the bones back in and letting it cook for a couple of hours more to make a better stock. As expected, when you put a group of Jews together, they will have the standard matzo ball argument over whether to cook your matzo balls in your soup or separately in water. As an MIT graduate, I understand that the broth gets absorbed into the matzo balls when they are cooked in the soup which gives them more flavor.

Not only do we learn how to improve our recipes, but we learn about other traditions and cultures. My tradition that I started for my family for Rosh Hashanah is to bake a dairy maple bundt cake instead of honey cake. I have shared it in the Kosher Group and many others have adopted it into their own traditions. An easy and impressive cake you can serve with a dairy meal during the holiday. Find the recipe here, and let me know how you enjoyed it!

Michelle Rosenberg '93

[email protected]

MIT Hillel's 2025 Annual Fund

To Our Current and Future Supporters,

This newsletter is being sent between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, covering all of those New Year themes and activities. But my favorite holiday is Sukkot, and I am already looking forward to that! 

The fall weather, the harvest foods, my favorite recipes, hanging with friends, an indulgent nap in the sukkah, inviting my non-Jewish neighbors to bring their kids over for board games and cookies in the interesting structure. I love the Sukkot playlist my family has curated, and you’d be surprised at how many rock songs over the decades have lyrics that fit the theme. My own education on and observance of this holiday was elevated 32 years ago, when my oldest was born on the first day of the holiday, so Sukkot is personally meaningful on my Jewish journey as well. 

Two Sukkot themes also fit well with my development work for Hillel, and may inspire you.

On the one hand are the ideas of plenty, of literally building something together, and of nurturing each other. The microcosm experience of the sukkah teaches that we can then replicate these concepts on a larger scale during the other 51 weeks of the year. The temporary sukkah becomes a prototype for how we can create strong communities that are sustained over time. Whether you have the opportunity to sit in a giant communal sukkah like the one Hillel has near Kresge Oval or a tiny urban one squeezed onto an apartment balcony, or anything in between… being invited, included, and fed feels so special in that setting. 

On the other hand, in the sukkah we realize how tenuous and temporary things can be, and literally how quickly the winds can change and bring down what we have built. What sukkah builder has not had to toss a ruined decoration or even reinforce a tilting or collapsed sukkah after a storm? 

Over this past year, both of these holiday themes have been demonstrated to the nth degree. The lows of the horrific October 7 attack and the widening of blatant antisemitism and anti-Zionism have made us newly aware of our vulnerabilities, locally and worldwide. As a result, we have responded by reinforcing and reconnecting with each other, our communities, and our institutions in new and stronger ways.

Of all the things I read about Jewish philanthropy during this period, the one that resonated most with me was a piece by Yossi Prager in eJewishPhilanthropy.com last December. His key point: “The most important role of philanthropy is not in the moment of crisis. It is in the generation of ideas and the creation of structures that serve the community under 'normal' circumstances and can be ramped-up to meet the needs of a crisis as well.”

At MIT Hillel, the crisis response of our community was immense, and we cannot thank you enough for the outpouring of support last year that demonstrated solidarity, the strength of our community, and hope for the future with your gifts to invest in the next generation. Our donor base grew by 25%, from 800 to 1,000. The percentage increase is impactful because our base of decades of alumni and friends was substantial to start with. 

As the new Jewish, academic, and fiscal years are underway, and we enjoy this season of renewal, I ask you to renew your support of the organizations that are important to you, including MIT Hillel. Whether this year is “normal” or not - if we even know what that is anymore - your gifts build and reinforce the structure of Jewish life.

May you be sealed for a good year on Yom Kippur, and have a joyous Sukkot.

Marla Choslovsky SM '88 (XV)

MIT Hillel Director of Development

[email protected]

P.S. Saving you the trouble of asking, here is my family’s Sukkot playlist. 

P.P.S. Practical reminder: if you are making a gift by securities transfer, please Please PLEASE let me know! This type of gift is often difficult to match to the donor, and I can best work with MIT’s Recording Secretary if you let me know what to look for. For all gift types, you can never go wrong by letting us know what to expect.

Be a part of strengthening Jewish life at MIT!

Your generous support allows us to help keep Jewish life vibrant on the MIT campus!

Hillel’s FY23 donor report.

(FY24 report coming soon)

Tamid Initiative - Planned Giving @ MIT Hillel

We invite alumni and friends who care deeply about Jewish life at MIT to consider joining the Institute's Katharine Dexter McCormick (1904) Society (KDMS) and be part of the Tamid Initiative by making a bequest to MIT, for the benefit of MIT Hillel. Your generosity will help MIT Hillel engage tomorrow's students, securing our Jewish future with confidence.

MIT and MIT Hillel are eager to help you meet your objectives. For more information, or to inform us that you have already planned such a gift, please contact MIT Hillel Director of Development, Marla Choslovsky, [email protected].

From the Archives!

On the Calendar

Leading Jewish Minds @ Home

November 7, 2024: Jay Keyser: "Play It Again, Sam: The Role of Repetition in the Arts"

Formal evite to follow.

Recordings of past events can be found here - on the new alum community website!

Mazal Tov!

Mazal tov to Joe Schuman '16 and Annie Wilcosky on their recent marriage!

Mazal tov to graduate student Akiva and Allison Gordon on the birth of their baby boy, Moshe!

Mazal tov to Irene Kaplow '10 and Dave Held '05, SM '07 on birth of their baby boy!

If you have life-cycle events (a marriage, receiving an award, writing a book, etc.) to share with the MIT Hillel community, please let us know.

MIT Hillel

40 Massachusetts Ave

Building W11

Cambridge, MA 02139

[email protected]