Shelley Hébert remembers her first day at Stanford University in 1974. Not knowing anybody on campus, she walked into the basement headquarters of Hillel.
Not only was she welcomed warmly there, but after mentioning she would be studying journalism, she was made editor of the Hillel newsletter on the spot.
“It was my first place of welcome, the first place anybody knew my name,” said Hébert (née Smolkin), a longtime Hillel at Stanford board member. “It was where seeds were planted that, although I didn’t know it at the time, would lead me in my adult life to deep passion and involvement in Jewish life.”
Hébert and Stanford alumni across the country are getting ready to honor Hillel’s five decades of service to the campus Jewish community with a yearlong series of events and fundraisers.
Although there was already one dinner in New York, the golden anniversary will kick off in earnest on Sunday, Oct. 11 with a celebration at Stanford that will include the inscribing of the first letters of Hillel’s newly commissioned Torah. Hébert and her husband, John, helped make the scroll possible, pledging $50,000 toward its creation. It will be completed in Israel and returned to Stanford in time for the High Holy Days next year.
Several other events have been scheduled, such as an Oct. 23 Shabbat dinner at Hillel, one night before the Cardinal football team’s homecoming game, and a gala next April. Highlights of that will be a guided tour of rare books and archival collections of Judaica in Stanford’s libraries, a dinner for alumni, staff and supporters and a performance by the Jewish Women’s Theatre.
The Koret Foundation and the Taube Foundation for Jewish Life & Culture are underwriting the Half-Century Celebration with combined grants of $100,000, according to Rabbi Serena Eisenberg, executive director of Hillel at Stanford.
In addition, Hillel trustees also have launched the Half-Century Fund, which, according to Hillel board president Susan Wolfe, will “support investment in the next generation of Jewish leaders at Stanford.”
The funds will be used to sponsor programs related to Jewish life, innovation and Israel — such as bringing more Israel fellows to Hillel at Stanford or employing a training program that uses design-thinking skills to better understand the needs of unengaged Jewish students.
Stanford’s Jewish history is a mixed bag. Although Louis Sloss was invited to join Stanford’s inaugural board of trustees in 1891, and Rabbi Jacob Voorsanger of Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco participated in the 1903 dedication of the university’s Memorial Church, Stanford for decades had an “environment [that] was not so welcoming” to Jewish students, according to a history page at stanford.hillel.org.
In the mid-1940s, a group of Jewish students formed the Brandeis Club, which in 1949 evolved into a Hillel Council, the fourth Hillel in California and one of 200 in the United States at that time, according to the website. The 1955 Stanford yearbook included the B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundation and a photograph of 14 of its members, but it wasn’t until 1965 that a full-time Hillel director was hired.
The birth of the Stanford Hillel chapter is credited with changing the university’s Jewish complexion. Today, under the leadership of Eisenberg and Rabbi Daniel Silverstein, Hillel at Stanford offers more than 300 programs a year to help students explore and deepen their Jewish identities.
In conjunction with the golden anniversary, a Half-Century honorary committee has been formed. It includes former Secretary of State George Shultz, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, judge and scholar Abraham Sofaer, philanthropist Tad Taube, and Lela Sarnat, the daughter of Harold and Libby Ziff, for whom Stanford at Hillel’s center is named.
As for the new Torah scroll she and her husband are helping to finance, Hébert calls it a “give-back.”
“I’m in my ninth year on the [Stanford at] Hillel board,” she said. “As president a few years ago, I began to think about what I could do that would have an impact beyond my years of the board. The Torah is a unifying and transcending symbol of our Jewish community. To bring that to this college campus is very meaningful.”
Half-Century Celebration. Kickoff event at 12 p.m.
Sunday, Oct. 11 at Hillel at Stanford, 565 Mayfield Ave., Stanford. Free with RSVP to [email protected] or (650) 723-3337.
www.stanford.hillel.org/halfcentury