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.