Jason Leivenberg

By the time I got to Berkeley Hillel, there were so many parts of the Jewish world I had never explored.

Israel wasn't really on my radar.

I had never been to Jewish camp.

I hadn't been part of youth group.

Then suddenly, during college, all of these doors started opening.

Through Berkeley Hillel, I went to Israel.

I traveled twice to New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and participated in service learning and rebuilding.

I met people who became close friends.

I started thinking seriously about values, service, justice, and what it meant to build community.

And then I studied abroad in Rome.

My friend Sam and I went abroad together.

By that point, Hillel had already taught me something that had become almost instinctive:

If you want Jewish community, you don't always have to wait for someone else to create it.

You can make it happen.

Before leaving Berkeley, I had an idea.

Passover was going to happen while we were abroad.

There would be Jewish students scattered across study-abroad programs throughout Europe.

So why not have a Seder?

I wrote a long proposal and sent it to Berkeley Hillel and Hillel International.

Essentially, I was asking them to fund a Passover Seder for students studying abroad.

And they said yes.

That simple yes made something possible.

Sam and I created a Seder in Rome.

It wasn't only Berkeley students.

There were plenty of Berkeley students and friends, but we also used the broader Hillel network to reach students who were studying in all kinds of places.

People came from everywhere.

Some traveled surprisingly far.

We even had people coming from places like Jerusalem—which, if you're thinking purely geographically about celebrating Passover, isn't exactly the direction you'd expect people to travel.

But they came.

We gathered.

We celebrated Passover.

And once again, Hillel had become something much larger than a building in Berkeley.

It had become infrastructure for Jewish community.

I could be thousands of miles from campus and still say:

I have an idea.

Could we make this happen?

And there were people and resources on the other end willing to say yes.

I think that sense of possibility shaped me profoundly.

Between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, I became enamored with what could be done at Hillel and because of Hillel.

There were so many entry points.

Leadership.

Service.

Learning.

Travel.

Israel.

Friendship.

Ritual.

Justice.

Community-building.

It didn't feel like there was one predetermined Jewish experience waiting for me.

It felt like a platform.

If I was curious, there was somewhere to go with that curiosity.

If I wanted to lead, there was an opportunity.

If I had an idea, someone might help me build it.

Rome was the perfect example.

Nobody handed me a flyer for a preexisting Rome Seder and told me to sign up.

There wasn't already an event waiting for me.

We imagined it.

We asked.

Hillel backed us.

And then students gathered around a Passover table in Rome because a couple of college students had decided Jewish community should exist there.

I think that's also part of the story of how I became a Jewish communal professional.

At Berkeley, I started having conversations about values in a way I hadn't before.

Jewish values.

Universal values.

What actually anchors you?

What do you care about?

What kind of work matters?

On service trips, on Birthright, in leadership programs, and through community-building experiences, I started developing a language for those questions.

By senior year, I was interested in social impact and mission-driven work.

After graduation, I initially took an internship with the Dodgers' charitable organization.

On paper, it sounded perfect.

I loved sports.

I was back in Los Angeles.

I was working with a charity.

And then I discovered that the actual job was incredibly boring.

So I started applying elsewhere.

Including to Hillels.

I remember thinking:

I'll do this for a couple of years.

Then I'll get a real job.

Instead, I went to Santa Barbara Hillel.

Then I spent several years at UCLA Hillel as Director of Student Life.

Eventually I worked for Hillel International.

And nearly twenty years later, I've spent much of my professional life in the Jewish communal world.

The reason is deeply personal.

I knew what Hillel could do because it had done it for me.

I sometimes describe myself as a poster child for what Hillel can make possible.

I arrived at Berkeley without knowing that Jewish community would be meaningful in my life.

Hillel connected me to something I didn't even know I was looking for.

And once I experienced that, I wanted to help other people have the same opportunity.

Especially people who might arrive the way I did.

People who don't have all the Jewish language.

People who haven't been to camp.

People who don't already know where they fit.

People who might need someone to translate the Jewish world a little.

People in what I think of as those shipwrecked moments of early adulthood, trying to figure out who they want to become.

I knew that experience.

I had lived it.

And I had also learned something else:

Wherever you are, you can build community.

Even in Rome.

Sometimes all it takes is an idea, a table, and someone willing to say yes.