Shalom From MIT Hillel!

MIT Hillel Update

Hillel’s focus is always to ensure vibrant Jewish life on campus, regardless of world, national and local events. As our Rosh Hashanah “density” greeting expressed, “We are here for our students through thick and thin.” To that end, I have three themes to share. First, how celebratory the fall Jewish holiday season has been. Second, to give a brief update on campus climate for Jewish students. And, finally, some info about the spring term.

It has been a great start to the year, and our fall holidays were amazing. I wrote last month to you about the strength of our community gatherings for Rosh Hashanah and then to memorialize the events of October 7. A week later for Sukkot, we were blessed with beautiful weather. Hundreds of students, faculty, and staff came outside to enjoy the Hillel sukkah over the holiday. A spotlight of some events included: multiple Hillel classes and first-year student cohort gatherings; the weekly MIT Jewish community lunches, which continue to be sponsored by the Administration; a baby animal petting zoo (including baby goat “yoga”); a Jewish faculty/staff “open house;” and so many holiday and Shabbat meals. A large group of graduate and undergraduate students ate dinner together in the sukkah and then joined the crowd on the street in front of Tremont St Shul in Cambridge for Simchat Torah, an annual local tradition going back decades. Every time I walked into the sukkah, I saw different – smiling – faces and had incredible conversations with so many members of our MIT Jewish community.

Two weeks ago over MIT’s Family Weekend, I appreciated meeting the parents who came to Hillel’s Shabbat dinner as part of their campus visit. Students celebrating with their families adds such warmth to a Shabbat meal. While I had coordinated with MIT to ensure accommodations for any traditionally observant families who wanted to attend Family Weekend, given the fall holidays, that official weekend did not work for everyone. Therefore, we created an “alternative” Family Weekend a week later. Over 45 family members chose to spend that second Shabbat at Hillel: eating, davening, and learning together. Both weekends were incredible for their positivity, gratitude, and love. Continuing to pack in the visitors, next Shabbat is our annual prospective students’ Shabbaton, with high schoolers from day schools coming to experience the vibrancy of Jewish life at MIT.

All of this illustrates that Jewish community, joy, and connection are thriving. I’ll expound and develop that differently: the larger MIT campus climate is back to being an environment where students, staff, and faculty can focus on academics and research. While anti-Zionist groups continue to demonstrate their point of view, their numbers, activity, and appeal have greatly diminished since last spring. Without giving their actions further publicity, I will note that as their numbers have decreased, the narrative rhetoric they present has gotten more extreme. What is notable and important is that the MIT police and administration are quickly responding to time, place, and manner violations, and to language that promotes violence. Discipline processes appear to be moving swiftly, too. Jewish and Israeli faculty and I are in continued conversations with the administration, advocating when necessary; no one is being complacent. The campus atmosphere is significantly better for Jewish and Israeli students this year.

On that final point, given the vastly improved climate, I will be taking my planned sabbatical this spring term. I have created detailed plans for my team. And, I leave Hillel in the very capable hands of my staff. Specifically, Rabbi Joel Dinin, Hillel’s Director of Education, will be Acting Director in my absence. I will be learning and volunteering in Israel for some of the time, and look forward to returning with new ideas, rested, and rejuvenated.

L’shalom,

Rabbi Michelle H. Fisher SM '97 (V)

Executive Director

[email protected]

Mentshn of Mention

Having lived in Newton, MA for my entire life, the distance to Cambridge was not a long one. Yet, despite the short distance away from my home, upon arriving on campus, I faced a fair amount of culture shock. Since kindergarten, I had attended the same small Jewish day school and graduated with a class of 29 students. Coming to MIT, this expanded to a class of over 1,000 students. In such a vastly new and different environment, it would have been easy to feel lost, but the Jewish community at MIT became my home (not so far) away from home very quickly.

Walking onto MIT’s campus on move-in day already knowing some of the incredible individuals in the Jewish community made the transition so much easier. Upon arriving in my new dorm, I was greeted by so many familiar and friendly faces who all knew me as Eli’s sister. The community welcomed me with open arms and became a support system of friends who have helped me learn and grow these past two years. Throughout my first year at MIT, I had the opportunity to explore my own Jewish identity in an environment vastly different from the one I grew up in. Hillel has afforded me the perfect, supportive place to explore my Jewish identity and find my own way.

Freshman spring, I joined the Hillel Student Board as a Vice President of Programming. My dad, an MIT alum, served on the Hillel Student Board during his time as an undergraduate and currently serves on the Hillel Board of Directors. Seeing my dad in Maseeh Hall attending Hillel Board of Directors meetings every few months is always a highlight of my day and reminds me of his continued commitment to the MIT Jewish community. When I began my term, my brother served as Hillel’s student treasurer, cementing my path of following in the footsteps of my family members.

Being a Vice President of Programming on the Hillel Student Board has afforded me the opportunity to give back to the Jewish community which welcomed me so blindly and has become my second family. I plan events aimed at strengthening the community and fostering connections between students. I truly love the wide breadth of events Hillel offers ranging from classes on the ethics of public shaming, the petting zoos in the Sukkah, to paint nights. I love being able to connect with all those that Hillel serves, including Jewish students from backgrounds very different from mine, and learning about every person's own individual story.

Despite having continued on the same path my dad and brother both walked, I feel that the Jewish community has offered me a place where I can be my own individual and walk my own trail. As I create my own path at MIT, the tables have slightly turned. No longer am I always known as Eli’s little sister, but rather he is known as my older brother.

Abby Scharf '26

[email protected]

Torah From Tech

Michael Stiefel has an S.B., S.M, and a Ph.D. from MIT, and was undergrad president of MIT Hillel. He is mostly retired from his software consulting career. Among his interests are bicycle riding (outdoors and virtually indoors), learning and teaching Torah, collecting art, and reading on a wide variety of topics.

For Maimonides, the Talmudic idea that the Torah speaks in human language means the Torah uses not just metaphors, but is to be understood from a human point of view. Nowhere is this idea more apparent than in the dual depictions of creation that begin the Torah.

In the first, God creates humanity as just a part of the universe. While the idea of science is millennia in the future, the story adopts a primitive materialism.

In a materialistic world everything is casually related. All the great scientific discoveries, physics, thermodynamics, evolution, public health, antibiotics, neuroscience stem from the idea that one can reason from cause to result. Since everything is causally determined, the world could not be anything other than what it is today. There is no human agency.

In the second narrative, everything revolves around human action. The first human starts to classify the world - the first step in science, but becomes disenchanted, overcome by feelings of alienation from a world without companionship, and without God. Human freedom and agency appear as well as human fallibility. 

In a human-centered world, creativity predominates. All the great artistic discoveries, literature, music, plastic arts, theatre, film, architecture stem from the idea that humans have agency. Nothing is casually determined. Human agency can change history.

The second story also illustrates the creative ambiguity that appears in every crucial narrative in the Torah. Erich Auerbach, in his famous essay Odysseus' Scar, compares Greek and Hebrew narrative style. The former proceeds with clarity, leisurely, with little suspense. The Biblical narrative specifies only the critical points; thought, feeling and background are only suggested. Homer can be explained. The Bible cries out to be interpreted.

The subsequent story of Cain and Abel continues this theme that dominates the Bible - human agency in an imperfect world. Even books that engender skepticism (Job, Ecclesiastes), are composed from the perspective of the second approach - there is no Sartre or Camus here.

The first approach does linger in the background. The Jews in the time of the First Temple expected divine intervention to save them. It did not come.

The paradox, or dialectic if you wish, for the scientist or technologist in general, and a denizen of MIT in particular, is that you require the viewpoint of the first story to do your research, but you require the viewpoint of the second story to live your life. This is an irresolvable tension. The Torah does not resolve it because, as the Talmud puts it, the Torah does not reside in heaven, it is written in human language from the human perspective. We have to live with this dilemma.

Michael Stiefel '75, SM '75, PhD '81

[email protected]

MIT Hillel's 2025 Annual Fund

To Our Current and Future Supporters,

Thanksgiving approaches, and I thought I’d list some of the ways I am grateful for you, our community of supporters. 

I am always grateful for the strength of our community by any development metric - number of donors and beyond. I am always grateful for 100’s of you who have given annually going farther back than Hillel’s records. And I am always grateful for how you cheer on our work or voice your concern for our portion of student life on campus. So far this year I add these specifics:

I am grateful for

138 of last year’s 1,048 donors who have already renewed their annual support, and especially

13 of last year’s 288 first-time donors who are in that group.

I am grateful for

2 alumni who are in the process of establishing endowed funds at MIT to benefit Hillel in perpetuity.

I am grateful for

1 donor who told me that she hopes I will stay in touch personally if I ever leave MIT Hillel.

I am grateful for

Young alumni who are committing to a lifetime of philanthropy, which I infer when I see for the first time that their annual gift is now being made via a donor-advised fund. I think I’ve noticed this twice already this year.

I am grateful for

The alum who initially responded to an appeal letter by asking to be removed from our list, saying that Hillel had disappointed him in his student days decades ago… and who has since reconnected as a Jewish alum constituent and as a donor. 

I am grateful for

Our wonderful partners in the Alumni Association, who made sure Hillel’s appeal letter landed right around Rosh Hashanah, impeccably perfect timing. 

I am grateful for

The alum who let us know that he has a bequest intention for MIT Hillel.

I am grateful for

3 alumni who recently made five-year pledges for annual giving to Hillel.

THANK YOU, EACH and ALL, for your commitment to MIT Hillel.

Marla Choslovsky SM '88 (XV)

MIT Hillel Director of Development

[email protected]

P.S. My running 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

We are currently planning for future events. Recordings of past events can be found here - on the new alum community website!

Mazal Tov!

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]