UCLA Hillel will be 1st U.S. facility named for Rabin

NEW YORK — The University of California at Los Angeles will soon get a Hillel building.

Hillel: the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life recently announced plans to build a $6 million building on the UCLA campus.

The building will be called the Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA — the first facility in the United States to be named for the slain Israeli prime minister.

The Rabin Center "will become a focal point for Jewish life at UCLA," said Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller, director of the UCLA Hillel.

The center — which is intended to serve 5,000 students — will house a chapel, library, study areas, a computer center, meeting rooms, a kosher kitchen and dining facilities and offices for staff and students.

Contributions of $1 million each are coming from Edgar Bronfman, president of the World Jewish Congress and chairman of The Seagram Company, Ltd. and of Hillel's International Board of Governors; Lew Wasserman, chairman-emeritus of Universal Studios; and filmmaker Steven Spielberg.