Hillel: The Foundation For Jewish Campus Life - Praise and Awards

Praise and Awards

The Hillel Foundation has received numerous praise and awards over the years. One example is from March 2011, the Hillel Organization was a recipient of one of the first nine grants from the Jewish New Media Innovation Fund, a pilot program of the Jim Joseph, Righteous Persons, and Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. The fund provides a total of $500,000 in grants and technical support to digital media projects designed to engage 18-40 year olds in Jewish life, learning, culture and community. Investment analyst David Cohen said in a 2006 fundraiser “We believe that Hillel is perhaps the organization in the Jewish community best equipped to educate the next generation. No other group so fully embraces the entire community the way Hillel does: kosher or not; observant or not; religious or not; Reform, Reconstructionist, Conservative, Orthodox — just Jewish."

Local branches and staff members that are part of the greater Hillel Organization are often recipients of both Jewish and non-denominational awards. As an example, in 2010, Bernard Steinberg, President and Director of Harvard Hillel received a 2010 Covenant Foundation Award for excellence in teaching. In 2008, the University of Kansas Hillel was named "KU Student Organization of the Year" out of more than 500 student clubs for the second year in a row. In 2007, Hillel at Virginia Tech received the University and Community Partnership Award for offering "students the means to explore and celebrate their Jewish identity in a dynamic and comfortable environment".