BY ROGER FEIGELSON | AUGUST 2, 2023
As I enter my sixth month as executive director of San Francisco Hillel, I think back to my second week here, when I experienced what is all too common on the campus of San Francisco State University — antisemitic and anti-Israel sentiment. That problem is one of our main areas of concern at S.F. Hillel, but it is not the only challenge for the graduate and undergraduate students we serve at S.F. State, University of San Francisco, UCSF and other schools.
Many of our students have trouble meeting their basic needs, some struggling with food insecurity and even homelessness.
Students come to us for assistance because they desperately want to focus on their studies and not worry about stretching their work-study earnings to pay rent or purchase groceries. One student at UC Law San Francisco told us that their work-study job was not allowed to exceed 10 hours a week, so their earning potential was capped, forcing them to rely on their limited savings to pay rent. In another case an S.F. State student said, “I have been working 30 hours a week with school, which still doesn’t cover my basic needs, and I’m now accruing debt.”
In the most heartbreaking cases, students go hungry.
“I’ve been cutting back on my food spending. The food here is very expensive. … I don’t get lunch and usually feel hungry through the day,” a University of San Francisco student told us.
One USF student’s family situation weighed heavily on them. Their father was unemployed, and their mother was the sole income provider, which included supporting a younger brother in high school and their 80-year-old grandmother. A Covid-19 layoff forced the mother into early retirement.
The student’s anxiety was elevated as they worried about all the bills they had to pay, between living expenses and tuition, jeopardizing their ability to focus both on college and their own health. They took two jobs in addition to enrolling as a full-time student, as well as researching available scholarships.
Now I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to eat tomorrow. I can focus on school instead.
International students at S.F. State and USF have additional challenges: restrictions on getting jobs in the U.S. As one USF student told us, “I am dependent mostly on food pantries and am not able to buy groceries myself much. I would like to buy some meat and fruits for myself [items not in food pantries] to get enough basic nutrients for the upcoming month. Next month, I should be working on campus, so I can better take care of my needs. However, finding a job on a small competitive campus as an international first-year student was pretty challenging and took me longer than expected.”
Thanks to community partners such as the Jewish Community Federation and Endowment Fund, we can issue some small grants to assist these students to address these situations. The money also allows us to run grocery “shuks” for students to come to Hillel and shop (for free) for perishable and nonperishable items. We’ve hosted two of these and had upward of 30 students attend each.
With this amazing support, we are able to make a difference. After receiving assistance, one student said, “Now I don’t have to worry about how I’m going to eat tomorrow. I can focus on school instead.”
And then there’s mental health: Our students continue to face a crisis in securing mental health support. Though campus resources are stretched, we can offer a limited number of sessions to students thanks to a partnership with Jewish Family and Children’s Services. It’s never enough. Some Hillels have funding or endowments to have mental health professionals on staff, but we’re not there yet.
This support is a critical part of what we do and is embedded at the start of our new mission statement: “We’re here to support all Jewish college students in San Francisco and fortify the future of the Jewish people.”
If you’ve read the Pew reports, you know Jewish engagement has been on the decline. S.F. Hillel is on the front line of solving that problem. While our mission is to meet each student where they are in their Jewish journey — to help them explore their Jewish identity, help them build Jewish community and, in turn, build them into our future Jewish leaders — we can’t do that if they’re hungry and in turmoil.
We must support them with their basic needs, too. It’s not only the right thing — the Jewish thing — to do, but it helps exemplify to them the importance of being part of the Jewish community and how important it is to live our Jewish values and be there for one another.

jweekly.com/2023/08/02/some-jewish-college-students-face-a-more-basic-problem-than-antisemitism-hunger/

This letter was emailed to SF State administrators on Wednesday, September 9th. 

Dear Dr. Mahoney, 
First, we would like to thank you for meeting with us yesterday. We appreciate you taking the time to hear directly how Jewish students and our allies are feeling about the upcoming lecture hosting Leila Khaled. We’re writing you this letter to name the actionable steps we discussed and with which we expect the university to move forward.  
As we articulated in the meeting, we agree with you that it is important for universities to ensure academic freedom and viewpoint diversity. As you know, our community has experienced viewpoint discrimination in recent years – our speakers have been interrupted, our peers have been alienated in courses, and our views have been discriminated against and excluded. We all directly benefit when we can learn with and from individuals who see the world differently. And, SF State can protect our learning environment while upholding our mission to “require students to engage in open-minded inquiry and reflection”, and “become productive, ethical, active citizens with a global perspective.” This is not achieved through academic freedom alone; we also expect academic responsibility and are still deeply distressed by this blatant violation of that responsibility.

As we shared with you, we are worried about the normalization of violent rhetoric. We live in a world with rising violent hate crime rates against Jews and other minority communities, where divisive rhetoric emboldens teenagers to take up arms and threaten acts of violence. Seeing someone who engaged in terror be held up as a role model, we are worried about the potential for hateful or dangerous backlash. We are upset to hear from some of our friends that they are “grateful to be home” right now with distanced learning, where they are at least physically safe. But as you also believe, everyone on our campus deserves to feel psychologically safe. Inviting an individual who used violence against innocent civilians and who regularly endorses antisemitism does not make us feel safe and does not create a healthy learning environment.

We are saddened that so many in our campus community, and the broader Jewish world, are not surprised to see this happening at SF State. Our university made a commitment to address the systemic antisemitism and anti-Zionism on our campus; students should not expect these occurrences. This endless cycle needs to stop, and we have the mechanisms in place to do so.

So where do we go from here? 

In our meeting, we discussed what can happen. We acknowledge campus professionals are already moving forward on some of these pieces. Our intention in naming what we agreed to here is to hold the university accountable to these action items: 

1. Work in partnership with student leaders from SF Hillel and our allies, and commit university funds to host a speaker series, educating our campus about non-violent activism, peace-building efforts in Israel and Palestine, antisemitism, and the many different forms and expressions of Zionism.
2. To address and track the incidents that don’t meet the threshold for the current student complaint process, create and publicize bias-incident reporting procedures for students who experience marginalization because of their Jewish identity or relationship to Israel. This process can also serve any individual or community on campus experiencing exclusion and/or identity-based discrimination.
3. Provide training for all staff in the Division of Equity & Community Inclusion around rising rates of antisemitism, its intersections with anti-Zionism, and the diversity of Jewish identities. 
4. Engage in ongoing learning and training to ensure the university is improving its ability to respond to these divisive events on our campus, as part of our ongoing dismantling of systemic antisemitism and anti-Zionism. 

We did not discuss it directly in our meeting, but another piece that came up in conversation with our peers is that we were promised by the university a full-time Jewish Student Life Coordinator. In order to move forward in these action steps, our community feels it is necessary to speedily fill this position with a qualified, dedicated leader.  

We are grateful to be students on a campus that protects academic freedom and welcomes diverse viewpoints and identities. And, we are hopeful that you and the university will uphold and protect the values of a safe, inclusive, and academically engaged campus environment. 

Sincerely, 

Ocean Noah, Class of 2021
Student President, SF Hillel 

Zachary Weinstein, Class of 2022
Student President, I-Team and SF Hillel Design Tribe leader

Connor MacLennan, Class of 2022
SF Hillel Design Tribe leader, StandWithUs Emerson Fellow 

SFSU student leaders Jack C. Weinstock and Brenda Ellizabeth Robles attended the David Project's Inaugural Interfaith Summit in Washington DC from November 9th - 11th. Joined by 30 other students from 10 schools across the United States, the cohort represented 5 different faith traditions. The weekend created space for student bonding, learning best practices in interfaith outreach and making plans for new initiatives on campus.