Senior Director of Jewish Student Life at Harvard Hillel
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About The Position
As the Senior Director of Jewish Student life at Harvard Hillel, you will bear primary responsibility for supporting Harvard Jewish students as they create a Jewish community of meaning with and for one another. You will be in equal parts committed to an outcome - an inspiring Jewish community that deepens and sweetens students’ lives Jewish students - and a discipline of student empowerment, whereby students take responsibility for one another and their community, gaining life-shaping first-hand experience of the integrity and dignity of caring for others. This role means painting on a big canvas: ‘what,’ ‘how,’ and ‘who’ of all of Harvard’s Jewish students, undergraduate and graduate: how students (within and beyond the Jewish community) receive information about Hillel’s offerings; what trips (to Israel and elsewhere) students are designing, and their itineraries; making Shabbat and holidays into sacred communal moments that are widely accessible; nurturing a respectful and vibrant culture of religious (and other types of) pluralism; supporting the Campus Rabbi’s creation of a curriculum of Jewish education that draws on Hillel’s staff and the university’s Jewish faculty; forging a community of kindness and purpose; and presenting Israel to both Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. For the ‘how’: it will not be you or the staff, but students whom you mentor and guide, who will do this work - and you will always be looking beyond who is included or showing up, with the self-starting initiative to imagine and create new initiatives that expand the circle of belonging. From beginning to end, you will be a personal and Jewish role model for students and staff - leading with energy, brilliance, integrity, curiosity, and humility. The SDJSL leads a staff of 5.5 full-time employees, which is poised to grow over the coming years, and a budget of roughly half a million dollars (again, with potential for significant growth). The ideal candidate has extensive and intensive experience in immersive Jewish educational leadership - such as multiple summers as a rosh eidah at a summer camp - and has developed their own method of building tight-knit Jewish community through diverse registers including food, study, music, travel, and fun. Harvard Hillel sees Israel - the land, the people, and the state - as a pillar of Jewish identity, creativity, and complexity; alongside Shabbat, Torah study, and hesed. We are aware of, and respectful of, our student body’s vast diversity of experience, thought, and feeling related to Israel as reality and idea - and aim to both educate and empower, knowing that at times there will be an irreducible tension between these two values. This person will be a member of the senior leadership team, along with Executive Director, COO, Campus Rabbi, and Director of Development. Success in this job over several years will equip you with experiences, a reputation, and a network that will enable you to take on exciting and growing leadership in the Jewish community in the subsequent stages of your career.
