eJewish Philanthropy: Becoming, Belonging and Building: Thresholds for Jewish College Students
Editor’s Note: Hillel International’s Senior Vice President of Jewish Education, Community, and Culture Rabbi Ben Berger and Hillel International’s Senior Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience Mollie Feldman shared their thoughts with eJewish Philanthropy on what Jewish young adults need from Hillel today.
“Becoming, Belonging and Building: Thresholds for Jewish College Students” was originally published in eJewish Philanthropy on March 26, 2025. Below are excerpts from the article. To read the complete op-ed, please visit ejewishphilanthropy.com.
“For over 100 years, we in the Hillel movement have wrestled with a basic yet complex question: ‘How can we create Jewish flourishing on campus?’…
We at Hillel — and everyone who cares about today’s Jewish college students — must establish a path for what Jewish development and maturation toward adulthood during these years might be, especially under the type of stress and challenges that many students are experiencing…
While the path to Jewish adulthood will always be charted by each individual student for themselves, they are most often within a community and guided by a mentor-educator. Jewish Threshold Development Theory provides a vocabulary and a blueprint for three thresholds:
Becoming: Who am I?
This threshold speaks to the critical stage of identity formation, offering opportunities for students to encounter the breadth of Jewish experience in ways that feel authentic, explorative and personally resonant. As a space of self-exploration, students are supported to grapple with fundamental questions about themselves and their identity, as Jews and humans. This might look like experimentation with different Jewish practices, deliberate exploration of a personal Jewish story and history, and the ‘trying on’ of different ways to relate to and engage with Jewish life. Within the experiences of ‘becoming,’ students are empowered to develop personal meaning, spiritual growth and a strong sense of self.
Belonging: What am I?
Experiences of ‘belonging’ invite students to discover and deepen their place in community and in relationship to others. Students might explore both the concepts and applications of Jewish peoplehood, connection and communal responsibility. This threshold goes beyond the formation of individual relationships, bringing students into a sense of belonging and proximity to something beyond themselves. This might look like enhancing one’s understanding across difference, deepening relational bonds and experimenting with the boundaries of responsibility to and for others. The exploration of ‘belonging’ allows students to define for themselves a sense of value and obligation as it pertains to their roles and responsibilities within the community, both in relationship to the Jewish people and more broadly.
Building: How will I?
The ‘building’ threshold invites students to move beyond exploring Jewish identity and community to actively creating and shaping it. As students are supported to stretch and expand their ability to create Jewish experiences, students begin to see themselves as ‘producers’ — not only consumers — of Jewish life (referencing Jon Levisohn’s paradigm of ‘producers, not possessors’). This might look like bringing communities together around Jewish time, space, ideas and rituals. It might look like engaging people in conversations that matter to them as a Jew. Importantly, this is not always about formal leadership; rather, it is about cultivating a sense of agency, confidence and empowerment, advancing the message that everyone has the capacity to meaningfully contribute to the fabric of Jewish life.
Regardless of how a student progresses through these thresholds, those who care for them (as individuals and as Jews) have an opportunity to meet them where they are and guide them to grow as independent individuals, community members and contributors to the world around them…”
Rabbi Benjamin Berger is the senior vice president of Jewish education, community and culture at Hillel International.
Mollie Feldman is the senior director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience at Hillel International and is studying towards rabbinic ordination in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Beit Midrash for a New North American Rabbinate.