Many people in the United States remain in a state of substantial pain, turmoil, and fear, particularly our Black, Indigenous, Asian-American, and Latinx friends and colleagues. With increased visibility and overdue attention on racial justice issues in our country, we recognize that some in our community are encountering issues of identity in a new way, while many know and feel the pain of racism, bias and injustice all too well. As we continue to move forward and recommit ourselves to racial justice, we must continue learning how best to be allies, to take responsibility for our own learning, to support our staff and students in meaningful and sensitive ways, and ultimately to be a positive force in repairing what’s broken and continuing to break in our world.
As we expressed in our June 2020 statement in support of racial justice, Hillel International is committed to providing guidance, training, and opportunities for discussion on topics of race, power, and privilege in our society. This page exists to be a living resource for our Hillel community. Here you’ll find opportunities to learn, discuss, and act. We will continue to update this page with the latest opportunities in this area. Please stay tuned for those updates.
Hillel International’s mission is to enrich the lives of Jewish students so that they may enrich the Jewish people and the world for all. Today’s world is broken in many ways and there is much work to do. Here are some of the ways we’ve recently made progress in efforts to pursue racial equity:
- We have committed ourselves to do our part in building an anti-racist Jewish community and to doing so in partnership with Black Jews and Jews of Color within and outside of our Hillel movement.
- We are providing ongoing educational content, training, and learning for staff, students, and community members on issues of racial justice, implicit bias, power & privilege, including movement- wide training opportunities.
- We are developing a multi-year plan for diversity, equity, inclusion, and antiracism, integrating these into the fabric of our organizational values, practices, and operations.
- We are developing short and long-term measurable goals and strategies to combat racism and to diversify our Schusterman International Center staff, Board of Directors and Student Cabinet as well as to support diversity across the Hillel movement.
- We have established a Hillel International Board of Directors Task Force to guide our efforts at addressing issues of diversity and racial equity.
Review Hillel’s Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion.