The Campaign for MIT Hillel

The Campaign for MIT Hillel's goal is to guarantee MIT Hillel's success and growth in the 21st century. Join us in reaching our goals. For more information contact hillel@mit.edu.

MIT Creates Leaders
MIT Hillel Creates Leaders Who Are Jews
MIT is a world leader in research and education. Indeed, its mission is to advance knowledge and educate students in science, technology, and other areas of scholarship that will best serve the nation and the world. By attracting the best student talent and the academic leadership to transmit the skills, ideas, knowledge, passion, and rigor that will serve its graduates for life, the Institute plays a preeminent role in the creative and intellectual revolutions of our time.

The Jewish students among this select population represent our primary constituents at MIT Hillel. Within MIT's environment of excellence, Hillel's mission is to create a vibrant Jewish community on campus, characterized by a pluralistic respect for individual approaches to Judaism.

Jewish Continuity at MIT
Jewish Continuity to us is not just a slogan. It is our ultimate goal. We strive for our students to remain Jewishly involved on campus and in their lives beyond MIT.

In the 20th century members of our community were involved on the cutting edge of the technological revolution. We would like our graduates to remain on the forefront of the technological advances of the 21th century as well. Therefore we want to ensure that there continue to be a significant and meaningful Jewish presence at MIT.

Hillel Space at MIT
The Norman and Muriel Leventhal Center for Jewish Life at MIT Hillel is part of the Religious Activities Center at 40 Massachusetts Avenue, in the heart of the campus. This center is a far cry from our old facilities on Memorial Drive and in the basement of Walker Memorial. With the generous support of our alumni/ae, staff, faculty, and parents, we have furnished a large multi-purpose room and installed two beautiful arks for religious services. The multi-purpose room is a site for our Judaic library, classes and study groups, religious services, social activities and student lounge.

The Center also has meat and dairy kosher kitchens, several spacious dining/meeting areas, and office space. The new location has truly enhanced our ability to provide both regular and special programs through MIT Hillel.

MIT Hillel Today
As the focus of Jewish life on campus, MIT Hillel is a community that is filled with celebration, learning and creativity. With our programs of engaging and meaningful Jewish experiences, MIT Hillel offers a social, intellectual, and spiritual home on campus for undergraduates, graduates and MIT community members from the entire spectrum of Jewish observance. Our initiatives of the past few years to attract more talented Jewish students, and thus stem the tide of a declining Jewish enrollment at MIT since the eighties, have led to a resurgence of the MIT Jewish student community.

The Campaign for MIT Hillel
Giant Step
In order to keep the MIT Jewish student body interested and involved, and to provide the Jewish students at MIT with the leadership opportunities and outlets for their creativity, MIT Hillel campaign seeks to provide funding for

A major enhancement of our existing program
and
The Technology and Tikkun Olam Program

Even though we are proud of MIT Hillel's accomplishments of the past decade, the time has come for a cutting edge approach by Hillel that will match MIT's own efforts for the new millennium. More than ever before, Hillel now needs to complement the passion conveyed academically by the Institute to its students with a passion for the all important Jewish values we would like them to espouse as they impact the world beyond MIT. Our numbers are small, but this elite group of Jewish students will be leaders of industry, research, and technology in the years to come. By stepping up the level of quality programming at MIT Hillel today, we hope to provide the tools and instill the desire in our Jewish students to apply the outstanding technological and analytical skills they develop at MIT to make the world a better place -- the mitzvah of Tikkun Olam.

Enhancement of our Existing Programs
Hillel's five-year plan, which was adopted in 2000 call for:

• Increase Jewish undergraduate enrollment by at least 20%
• Augment the Hillel staff with programming and development professionals
• Provide rabbinic support for each of the major religious communities
• Secure additional space for religious services and informal social and educational interaction

MIT Alumni/ae and Friends are the Key to our Success
Our goals are clear. Financing these goals is our challenge. Our financial objective for this campaign is $4-million. Norman B. Leventhal, '38, our Board Chairman, together with his wife, Muriel G. Leventhal, have made a generous initial gift of $1-million.

We now seek the help of aumni/ae, parents, and friends to build on our success and to secure the continuity of Jewish Life at MIT and beyond.

All current Hillel activities and more are being achieved on an annual budget of $350 per student. This is not enough! MIT Hillel intends to increase its financial commitment to programs for the Jewish community on campus to $500 per student per year. This is equivalent to an endowment of $10,000 per student.

We are fortunate that our Campaign for MIT Hillel coincides with the Institute's $1.5 billion Campaign for MIT. The Institute will recognize all gifts to MIT Hillel as part of its Campaign and extend class credit to alumni\ae donors. For more details about these and other funding opportunities, please refer to Hillel's pamphlet, Specifics of Funding Opportunities at MIT Hillel. You may also feel free to call the development office at MIT Hillel at 617 253 2982 or contact hillel@mit.edu.

The Technology and Tikkun Olam Program
By a renewed emphasis on educational and leadership development programs, our Jewish students will be given the opportunity to deepen their Jewish knowledge and improve their understanding of Jewish values through seminars, lectures, conferences and projects on campus and across the country.

MIT Hillel wants to provide the resources to allow students to:

• Develop their Jewish knowledge, skills and experiences;
• Become key contributors to student-run programs, both within Hillel and for the MIT community at large;
• Apply technology to the betterment of human life; and
• Infuse their professional decision-making as well as their life's choices with Jewish ethics and values.