Senior Director of Jewish Student Life

Harvard Hillel

Role Overview

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.

What You’ll Do

On-Campus Jewish Student Life

• With the Executive Director and Campus Rabbi, design and implement a way to reach every Jewish student, and to engage hundreds in leadership roles each year
• Mentor and support undergraduate student board members
• Foster a Jewish life that is vibrant, authentic, and compelling across diverse modes: food, music, study, travel, social justice, Israel engagement, etc.
• Make the Hillel building an attractive, ‘sticky’ destination in which numerous students of all backgrounds spend multiple hours each day - studying, relaxing, eating, etc.
• Design a diverse, accessible, and compelling set of Jewish activities throughout Harvard’s physical campus and social institutions - in Houses, the Yard, with athletics, etc - to bring Jewish life beyond Hillel’s walls into students’ homes
• Create meaningful Jewish opportunities at major moments in the academic calendar: first-year welcome, farewells to seniors, weekends for prospective students, etc.
• Facilitate staff and students leaders’ creation of widespread meaningful partnerships throughout Harvard, so that Hillel is a popular destination for non-Jewish students, and a fully integrated part of campus social, religious, and intellectual life
• Mentor individual students through one-on-one conversations, with the potential to grow into life-long connections
• Seek out and build relationships with students who are not ‘regulars’ in Hillel, and for whom an active Jewish life is not a given - and find ways to connect with and empower them

Jewish and Israel Education

• Partner with the rabbinic team to make Shabbat and holidays into times tha