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Aug. 19, 2005
SFU Hillel House opens
Jewish campus space was decades in the making.
PAT JOHNSON
When Jewish students return to Simon Fraser University for the
fall term next month, they will have at their disposal the first
Hillel House on the Burnaby university's campus.
"The [Hillel] organization and the community have been attempting
to establish a Hillel House at Simon Fraser University for 20 years,"
said Eyal Lichtmann, executive director of Hillel Vancouver. "We
put in a concerted effort for the past two years, nonstop, to make
this happen. There was an enormous amount of hurdles to make it
happen."
Fund-raising was only one aspect, he said.
"It was a function of dealing with the university administration,"
said Lichtmann. In addition to a scarcity of available space, allocating
designated space to groups perceived as religious conflicted with
the university's objectives, Lichtmann said.
"It wasn't that they were against the Jewish community or Jewish
students," he said. "It was a function that Simon Fraser
University has a concept of inclusivity of all. They felt if they
were giving it to Hillel, they would have to give it to every other
group as well."
Jewish students on the SFU campus have been served by an interfaith
chaplaincy, which offers space for religious meetings and services.
But Lichtmann said the chaplaincy office was not ideal.
"When you have an enormous amount of Christian groups using
the facility – there was only one meeting room – and you
have Muslims praying three times a day, it left very little time
for Jewish students to meet," he said.
In convincing the university administration that Hillel should get
space in the newly constructed Cornerstone Building, the organization
took several approaches.
"We used the rationale of Hillel on approximately 150 other
university campuses in North America," Lichtmann said. "We
used the argument of how attracting Jewish students is good for
the university and its alumni retention and how Hillel contributes
to the university community overall, not just for students, but
for faculty and staff as well."
Now that the Hillel House is set to open, Jewish students on campus
are excited, he said.
"We've never seen such energy and enthusiasm from the Jewish
students on campus like we're seeing this year because of the facility
opening," he said.
There are an estimated 600 Jewish students at SFU, compared with
an estimate of between 1,500 and 2,000 Jewish students at the University
of British Columbia. The new SFU facility has about 1,250 square
feet, with an office for staff and a large meeting room and lounge
area with couches, a television, stereo and computers, as well as
a kosher kitchen.
Elad Guberman, Hillel's Israeli shaliach (emissary), will
serve as the staff member at SFU and the position will be evaluated
in a year, when he is scheduled to return to Israel.
"This is a learning year for us on programming and resources,
what we need to allocate effectively," said Lichtmann.
In addition to a vast range of contributors who made the SFU facility
possible, major donors include the Snider Foundation, the Diamond
Foundation, Isaac and Judy Thau, the Kahn family and Mordehai and
Hana Wosk, Lichtmann said.
An open house, to which everyone is invited, runs from noon to 4
p.m. on Sept. 11. The new Hillel House is located on the Burnaby
Mountain campus, in Suite 118 of the new Cornerstone Building, which
is directly adjacent to the campus's main transit loop.
Pat Johnson is editor of MVOX Multicultural Digest.
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