by Anonymous, updated 2025
Penn Hillel, the branch of Hillel International that serves much of Penn’s Jewish community, has fallen far short of embodying the inclusivity that it advertises. While Hillel supports groups that lavish Israel with praise and celebration, they banish anyone who dares to challenge the injustices of the Israeli occupation, apartheid, and genocide.
Hillel International, founded in 1923, used to be officially neutral in the debate about Zionism. Rather than pushing a political position, it focused on offering welcoming cultural and educational spaces for Jewish students of all backgrounds and beliefs. In 2002 however, Hillel International’s official stance changed when donors connected to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) influenced Hillel to become an explicitly pro-Israel advocacy organization. AIPAC is a powerful Zionist group known for lobbying U.S. politicians to support the Israeli government unconditionally even as it continues to commit war crimes and genocide against Palestinians. In an attempt to silence calls for an arms embargo on Israel, AIPAC has funneled record amounts of Republican donor money into Democratic primary races this year in order to unseat progressives who have condemned the unchecked destruction in Gaza.
Penn Hillel is similarly ensnared in Zionist and right-wing donor relationships. According to their 2023-2024 annual report, the far-right Maccabee Task Force is one of Penn Hillel’s largest donors. Disturbingly, the Maccabee Task Force is also one of the biggest donors to PragerU, the ultraconservative media organization that chronically spews false, racist, anti-LGBTQ views. Other major contributors to Penn Hillel include Adam Beren, a consistent Republican donor (including to Donald Trump), and Vice Chair of the Penn Board of Trustees Julie Platt, who has recently donated to AIPAC. Penn Hillel’s fiscal relationships undermine its message of inclusion and diversity, especially as this money has directly led to the proliferation of pro-Israel programming at the expense of non-Zionist Jewish students.
Hillel’s unequivocal commitment to “standing with Israel” prevents it from genuinely providing support to all Jewish students. A number of students who felt unwelcome at Hillel due to its hostility towards anti-Zionism founded Penn Chavurah in 2021, a group that provides community for progressive, non-Zionist Jewish students. Attempting to save the image of Hillel as an inclusive place, Penn Hillel’s Executive Director Gabe Greenberg told the Daily Pennsylvanian that Hillel is “here for [Penn Chavurah] and we would love to support them more substantively and more robustly, however we can.” Yet when Chavurah organizers faced disciplinary action from Penn and police intimidation simply for organizing a screening of Israelism, a documentary directed by Jewish filmmakers about growing disillusionment with the Israeli state, Penn Hillel remained utterly silent.
While it is apparently too controversial for Penn Hillel to speak up for Jewish students screening a movie, it seems to have no problem with hosting the Penn Israel Public Affairs Committee (PIPAC). Essentially a miniature AIPAC, PIPAC is a student organization that lobbies U.S. politicians to support destructive pro-Israeli policies in addition to hosting Israeli soldiers on campus and organizing fundraisers for the Israeli Occupation Forces.
Neither is it too controversial for Hillel to host fellowships like the Habibi Fellowship, which is heavily biased towards Israel, normalizes the occupation, and excuses apartheid in the name of appreciating the purported ‘nuance’ and ‘complexity’ of the matter.
Nor does Hillel take issue with hosting Birthright programs, the free trips to Israel that depict life there as one giant utopian adventure while ignoring the brutal realities of the Israeli occupation and the crimes against Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank, and Jerusalem. Far from an innocent, apolitical return to ancestral homeland, Birthright trips are made possible by conservative billionaires. Behind a facade of celebrating heritage, the trips seek to create or strengthen ties between young American Jewish people and Israel with the strategic intention of encouraging migration and marriage there at a time that attendees are contemplating their career and life goals. While any Jewish person can freely become an Israeli citizen, Israel violates international law by denying over 7 million displaced Palestinians the right to return home. Barred for decades from the food, water, land, and shelter that Israel seized from them, most displaced Palestinians live below the International Poverty Line and are unable to generate their own livelihoods. Before the latest genocide in Gaza even began, the United Nations spent about one billion dollars a year on aid to displaced Palestinians just to meet their basic needs. Meanwhile, Birthright visitors party in Tel Aviv.
Hillel has become so fixated on purifying Israel’s image and shrouding its atrocities that since 2010, local Hillel chapters have been banned from hosting or affiliating with anti-Zionist people or organizations despite the robust history of Jewish anti-Zionism. The restrictions have led to the alienation of a substantial portion of the Jewish population from what is supposed to be the primary center of Jewish life on Penn’s campus. Hillel International’s suffocation of honest dialogue about Israel, Palestine, and the violence of the occupation has driven some Hillel chapters to join the Open Hillel movement to allow open criticism of Israel. Some have even cut ties with Hillel entirely, with Swarthmore Hillel renaming itself Swarthmore Kehilah in 2015 after then-president of Hillel International Eric Fingerhut threatened legal action against it for declaring itself an Open Hillel and hosting anti-Zionist speakers. Reiterating Hillel’s completely intolerant standpoints, Fingerhut proclaimed that “‘anti-Zionists’ will not be permitted to speak using the Hillel name or under the Hillel roof, under any circumstances”.
Jewish students who condemn Israel’s cruelties should not have to retreat to the margins in order to find community and speak out. If the people of Penn Hillel want to create a place where all Jewish students can feel welcome, safe, and supported, they must follow in the footsteps of Swarthmore Kehilah. The only morally responsible path forward demands cutting ties with Hillel International and any donor or organization that obstructs justice for Palestine.
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