1980s

The 80s: Becoming Vibrant and Visible

To encourage High Holy Day attendance, Hillel tried a maverick, new tactic: free High Holy Day tickets were offered to the community with a requested donation but requiring no payment. That approach packed Memorial Auditorium’s 1,700-seat hall, Strober remembers, “so packed we had to have two sittings for each service. The students were involved, the community was involved,” she said, and the revised, egalitarian prayer book created by Rabbi Cartun was a huge draw, especially among the many community members who did not belong to a local synagogue.

Hillel’s persistence about the significant dilemma Stanford’s Jewish students and faculty faced when the first day of classes was scheduled without regard to High Holy Days finally gained traction: In 1986, University officials agreed to adjust the academic calendar to avoid a conflict. In 1987, Hillel dedicated a new library space in its Clubhouse headquarters, a place to house the group’s growing collection of 3,000 books. The library also housed an aron ha kodesh – a holy ark -- holding one of 1,564 Torah scrolls rescued in 1942 from synagogues across Czechoslovakia that would soon be decimated in the Holocaust.

 

By 1988, Hillel claimed a roster of 1,000 students—a remarkable accomplishment considering that Stanford had an estimated 1,500 Jewish students, according to then-Program Director Jocelyn Reisman.

The absence of kosher food on campus continued to pose challenges. In April 1988, just in time for Passover, Stanford’s first kosher kitchen opened as a co-op in the Elliott Program Center. The cost per quarter was less than what the University Food Service charged, but co-op members had to work several set-up, cooking, ad clean-up shifts each week. The co-op addressed a long-time, little mentioned problem, student Jessica Mahlab told the Stanford Daily—that talented students from traditional Jewish backgrounds had not considered application to Stanford because there was no kosher dining option.

In 1992, the co-op became the Kennedy Kosher Co-op, in honor of University President Donald Kennedy and his wife, Robin, who served as Hillel board president.  "Donald Kennedy has set the tone for how the University meets the needs of specific groups on campus, especially the Jewish community, and it was altogether fitting that something be named after him," Rabbi Cartun said, at the announcement of the name. For Robin Kennedy, the significance was more personal. “If there is only one thing that I could accomplish being the president's wife around here, if it is making Stanford more hospitable to Jewish students, it will be a source of pride for me," she said. "It's ironic for me because as an undergraduate, there was no Jewish life. (The co-op) is a real symbol of how different it is."

1970s

The 70s: Developing and Growing in the Basement of the Old Union

Hillel may have won its place on campus, but its cramped quarters in the basement of the Old Union Building were not exactly comfortable for its growing number of participants and activities. Myra Strober, a Stanford professor in the School of Education and the Graduate School of Business, recalls attending services there in the early ‘70s.  “I doubt there were more than 30 people there and the sofas we were sitting on had stuffing coming out of the seams. I was shocked,” she said. The service at Hillel was lovely and inspiring, she said, but she and her husband soon joined the local synagogue that had hosted services for Stanford students before Hillel won the right to hold services on campus. Hillel was beginning to burst forth in other ways, too, expanding its activities, its visibility and its social activism as if carried by a new wave of spirit and enthusiasm.

In the spring of 1973, the first issue of On One Foot appeared, describing itself as the literary, scholarly and journalistic quarterly of the Stanford Hillel Foundation. A few months later, came another publication edited and written by Jewish students: the Stanford Aliyah newspaper. In addition to a calendar of Jewish holidays and recipes for challah and matzo balls, its 12 pages included robust commentaries on Israeli politics and the status of Soviet Jews; news of a proposal for an interdepartmental Jewish studies major; and essays on being Jewish. In the mid-1970s, a weekly newsletter called Nu? provided timely information about events.

Other changes occurred: In April 1975, Rabbi Familant resigned and the following month, Rabbi Mark Cartun became Hillel’s new leader. He was 25 and filled with a desire to make Hillel even more a part of the lives of Jewish students on campus. “I want to involve Stanford Hillel in the whole Bay Area Jewish community,” he told a Stanford Daily reporter three months after his arrival in May 1975.

Ronda Spinak, co-founder of the Jewish Women’s Theatre, arrived at Stanford in 1976. “I was very open to being part of Hillel,” she said. “We were coming out of a period during the 1950s where people didn’t really speak about being Jewish. We were still trying to find our place.” None of her roommates or others in her circle of friends were Jewish. Hillel became “a way I could be Jewish at Stanford.”

“It was a place I could do the things I loved to do that made me Jewish,” said Spinak, whose many involvements as a Stanford undergraduate included a coveted position as one of the Stanford Dollies. “It gave people a way to be Jewish in whatever way they were Jewish. And it was a great opportunity to see how we could be Jewish in many different ways.”

By 1979, a Stanford Daily article reported that Stanford Hillel was second only to the Associated Students of Stanford University, based on scheduled activities each week and student attendance at those activities.