Hillel, the Campus Jewish Group, Is Thriving, and Torn by Conflict

The war in Gaza brought more students into the Hillel fold, but has sown divisions among Jewish students over the group’s mission.

It was chicken tenders night at Yale’s chapter of Hillel, the Jewish student group, and the basement dining hall was packed with boisterous, hungry students attracted by overflowing vats of kosher fried chicken and vegan mac and cheese.

Some students kissed the mezuza on the way in. Others were not even Jewish, but came for the food and companionship, a sign of the pluralism that Hillel — the dominant Jewish campus organization in the United States — says it embraces.

Yet under the surface, there were signs of strain, after months of divisive protests on campus over the war in Gaza. A silent question hung in the air, several students said: “Which side are you on?”

Few American organizations have been touched by clashes over the war quite the way Hillel has. The movement, founded in 1923 at the University of Illinois, now has chapters at 850 colleges and universities around the world, from highly selective private schools like Yale to big state universities like Texas A&M. The Hillel movement, including Hillel International and the campus Hillel chapters, had $200 million in revenue in 2023, received from tens of thousands of donors.

Hillel centers are where college students go to cement their sense of Jewish identity, or to discover it. Its slogan is “all kinds of Jewish,” and it aims to be welcoming to all.

But as the conflict in Gaza continues, some Jewish students believe that Hillel is not critical enough of the Israeli government’s conduct of the war, and too defensive in its support of Zionism, a belief in the right of Jews to a Jewish state in their ancestral land of Israel.