News

eJP: The Sword Has Been Unsheathed Again

Author

Rabbi Ben Berger

Date

September 18, 2025

Originally published on September 12, 2025 in eJewish Philanthropy, “,” written by Rabbi Ben Berger, ĚÇĐÄvlogl’s senior vice president of Jewish education, community and culture, shares the importance of respectful, vibrant disagreement in Jewish tradition and in the present. Read on for selected excerpts:

“In a recently published essay in Sources,Ěý‘ I reflected on a troubling Talmudic story about an arcane argument between Hillel and Shammai that leads to fierce disagreement. At a moment of reckoning, Shammai drove a sword into the ground at the doorway of the beit midrash, signaling that the disagreement had become dangerous and that the possibility of rupture and violence was close at hand…

That image has been on my mind in my work at Hillel, where I see Jewish students and Hillel colleagues navigating the pressures of polarization. College should be a place of curiosity and connection. Too often, it feels like a battleground, with the sword hovering at the entrance…

It is a good time for a reminder of the well-worn but always urgent Jewish teaching that every person is created b’tzelem Elohim, in the image of God. The Mishnah in ł§˛š˛Ôłóąđťĺ°ůžą˛ÔĚý(4:5) teaches that one who destroys a single life is considered to have destroyed an entire world, and one who saves a single life is considered to have saved an entire world. This is not just rhetoric — it is a framework for how we reckon with tragedy, insisting that every life carries infinite value and that every loss tears at the fabric of creation…

In our work with students at Hillel, we see the hunger for this kind of pluralism. It requires courage to stay in hard conversations, humility to hear voices that unsettle us and discipline to resist the satisfactions of outrage. And it is from students who engage in robust yet civil debate — even and especially with those with whom they strongly disagree — that we continue to learn what is possible.”

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News

A Time for Return: Teshuvah, Pluralism, and the Year Ahead

Author

Rabbi Ben Berger

Date

September 16, 2025

Each year, the beginning of a new academic year coinciding with a new Jewish year leaves us wondering — what can we learn from each new beginning to inspire reconnection, growth, and well-being for the year ahead? In the first installment of our High Holiday series, “A Time for Return”, Rabbi Ben Berger, senior vice president of Jewish education, community, and culture at ĚÇĐÄvlogl, offers guidance on returning to each other and to ourselves amid challenging conversations. 

As the new academic year begins and Rosh Hashanah approaches, we find ourselves standing at a threshold — a time between what was and what could be.

This moment, on campus and in Jewish life more broadly, is charged. In conversations with students and Hillel colleagues, I hear the mix of excitement and uncertainty.

Rosh Hashanah, and the season of teshuvah, offer another path. It’s frequently noted that teshuvah is often translated as “repentance,” but its deeper meaning is return. It’s about the courage to revisit our choices, repair relationships, and reconnect with what matters most. It’s also about acknowledging what cannot be undone, and choosing how to move forward with more integrity, compassion, and purpose.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the story we’re writing on campus — what it means to be a Jewish student (or staff member, or rabbi, or educator) in a world that feels increasingly polarized and reactive. And how teshuvah might offer us not just a personal spiritual roadmap, but a communal one as well.

We live now in a world that, just a few years ago, many of us couldn’t have imagined — today marked by disruption, polarization, and grief. Some of what we’ve lost, we won’t get back. Some of the changes are irreversible. That doesn’t leave us stuck, rather it invites us to move forward. Not blindly, but thoughtfully. Not alone, but in relationship. We may not be able to return to what was, but we can still build something sacred in the world as it is.

This is the deeper work of teshuvah. It’s not about erasing the past or pretending everything is fine. It’s about acknowledging what’s broken and choosing, day by day, to repair what we can. To renew what still holds life. To create new possibilities when the old ones have closed. On campus, that might look like students reaching across lines of difference, participating in multi-faith bridge building and choosing dialogue and curiosity over silence or hostility — especially in a time when disagreements can so easily harden into anger or even violence. Teshuvah invites us to meet those new thresholds not with fear, but with integrity and hope.

The liturgy of this season offers a simple, powerful plea, “,הֲשִׁיבֵנוּ ה’ אֵלֶיךָ וְנָשׁוּבָה” “Hashiveinu Adonai eilecha v’nashuvah” — Return us to You, God, and we will return.

Teshuvah isn’t always something we can do alone. Sometimes we need help returning — to ourselves, to one another, to the values and communities that sustain us. It’s not about snapping back to how things were. It’s about returning to the kind of people we want to be, even in a changed world.

For students arriving, or returning, to campus, that kind of return can feel very real. Maybe you’re stepping into a Jewish space for the first time in a long time. Maybe you’re wondering if there’s room for someone like you — with your questions, your politics, your background, your story. Maybe you’re already deeply involved, but you’ve felt the sting of disagreement or exclusion, even from people you care about.

What if teshuvah could help us hold those moments not as failures or rejections, but as invitations?

Teshuvah doesn’t demand perfection. It just asks us to return.

That work can take many forms. It might mean meeting with your Hillel well-being professional who can help on that inward journey to make space for your own return and returning to communities. It might mean the work of creating community through the support and guidance of mentors and educators, and through building relationships with people who will become lifelong friends. Through these efforts, teshuvah becomes not just an individual practice, but a shared journey of growth and renewal.

And at its best, Hillel is a place where people share that journey across difference — not by ignoring those differences, but by committing to learn through them. Students participating in cohort learning like the Jewish Learning Fellowship or Kol Yisrael deepen their understanding of our people’s story — where we come from, how we’re connected and how Jewish tradition calls us to turn both inward, toward self-examination, and outward, toward each other. That’s what real pluralism looks like. It’s not pretending we all agree, or flattening our identities to make things easier. It’s something harder and more holy. It’s the work of showing up, again and again, with curiosity and compassion and a willingness to keep learning. It’s the spiritual discipline of staying in relationship, even when it would be easier to walk away.

And that’s teshuvah, too.

So as the year begins, I want to offer a blessing — for all of us:

May we have the courage to return.
Return to ourselves, with honesty and gentleness.
Return to each other, even when it’s awkward or hard.
Return to the work of building Jewish community — not just as a comfort zone, but as a place of growth, learning, and repair.
And return to the deepest truth of this season: that change is possible, and connection is sacred.

May this be the year we walk through the year, not alone, but together. Shanah tovah u’metukah — may it be a good and sweet year.

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News

Me and My Shadow: A Peer Learning Model Helps Leaders Grow

Author

Rabbi Ben Berger and Shuki Taylor

Date

May 15, 2025

Originally published on May 9, 2025 in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, “,” is written by ĚÇĐÄvlogl’s Senior Vice President for Education, Community, and Culture Rabbi Ben Berger and M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education‘s Chief Executive Officer Shuki Taylor. Read on to learn more about a unique approach to professional development from Ben and Shuki.

Two nonprofit executives tried a different approach to professional development. Here are five key things they learned.

Professional development has long followed a predictable formula: Junior staff members learn from senior team leaders, managers enroll in structured programs, and organizations invest in top-down training efforts. These methods have their merits, but they often overlook one of the most powerful and underused tools for leadership growth — peer learning.

Job shadowing is typically seen as a tool for those early in their careers, an opportunity for emerging professionals to observe and absorb knowledge from those above them. But what happens when two senior leaders step into each other’s worlds to learn, not as mentors and mentees but as peers?

As leaders committed to professional development, we wanted to push beyond traditional models and try something different: peer shadowing on the job for high-level executives. Unlike mentorship programs or executive training, this wasn’t about following a curriculum or receiving instruction. There was no clear “teacher” or “student.” Instead, it was an immersive experience requiring international travel and a week outside of the office — no small commitment. But it allowed us to learn from each other with openness, curiosity, and a willingness to rethink how we lead.

Rooted in the Jewish tradition of havruta, a centuries-old model of paired learning that values both challenge and support, our experience revealed some critical insights that challenge many of the dominant assumptions about how professionals at the highest levels should grow. Here are five key things we learned.

The goal of partnership is mutual growth

Collaboration in leadership is often framed around achieving shared goals or outcomes, such as launching a joint initiative, securing funding, or driving a project forward. But true partnership isn’t only about what gets accomplished. It’s about how both parties grow in the process.

When we embarked on this peer-shadowing experience, we weren’t trying to build something tangible together. The value came from something deeper: seeing our own leadership through someone else’s eyes. Watching how another senior leader navigates challenges, engages with a team, and makes decisions forced us to reflect on our own habits and instincts in a way that traditional leadership training rarely does.

This idea is backed by studies on  that show how structured peer relationships help leaders become more self-aware and open to new ways of thinking. For example, one of us left this experience rethinking how to best structure daily priorities after observing the other’s approach to calendars and task management. The lesson here wasn’t about overhauling a system but adopting subtle changes that helped us feel more proactive and less reactive in managing time and responsibilities.

We also explored real-time examples of how AI can be used to streamline tasks, brainstorm, and solve problems, which opened new possibilities that we’ve both integrated into our daily workflows with excitement and impact.

Even more unexpectedly, the experience shaped how we think about our lives outside the office. We both travel frequently for work, and a single conversation about how to explain that to young children — shifting the focus from absence to purpose — left a lasting impression. This simple reframing prompted both of us to be more intentional in how we communicate with our families the meaning behind our work and why it sometimes takes us away from home.

Professional development should be actively shaped

Leadership training often treats development as a passive process achieved by attending workshops, taking courses, or receiving mentorship. While these approaches have value, they reinforce the idea that learning is something to be absorbed rather than created.

When we set out on our peer-shadowing experience, we weren’t looking to be taught — we were looking to learn with each other. From the start, we aimed to create a shared learning opportunity in which both of our perspectives carried equal weight, mirroring the havruta model.

Instead of passively receiving insights, we actively shaped the experience in real time, making the learning more relevant, immediate, and deeply personal. One of the most meaningful parts of that process was taking time each evening to debrief. A simple check-in — “What are you noticing?” — led to reflections that revealed far more than either of us could have seen alone. Observations about how meetings unfolded, how listening happened (or didn’t), and how ideas were either affirmed or questioned became powerful points of reflection. These conversations helped surface patterns we weren’t always aware of and offered a rare chance to see ourselves, including our habits, instincts, and blind spots, through someone else’s eyes.

This kind of dynamic two-way learning is not only more engaging but more effective.  that when people act as both teachers and learners, they gain deeper understanding and retain knowledge longer.

Outside perspectives fuel leadership growth

Leaders often work in environments in which they are expected to have answers — not questions — and where their habits, decision making, and leadership styles go largely unchallenged. Self-reflection is difficult in isolation, yet leadership requires self-awareness. Without external perspectives, blind spots remain hidden and opportunities for growth can be missed.

Peer shadowing on the job disrupts this cycle by providing a way to see one’s work through the eyes of another leader. When we committed to this experience, we knew we’d be stepping into unfamiliar territory, but we didn’t anticipate just how much it would challenge our own self-perceptions. Subtle but meaningful insights emerged, like how to better structure our time and tackle difficult conversations, such as explaining work-life balance to our children. These moments sparked deeper self-examination and led to more intentional leadership choices. This kind of outside perspective is rare for senior leaders, but it’s invaluable.

Authentic partnerships require trust and honest dialogue

Professional growth happens when leaders feel safe enough to be honest yet challenged enough to evolve, more than in carefully controlled environments. Peer learning works only when both parties commit to authenticity, setting aside egos and competition in favor of real, unfiltered exchange. This requires a foundation of trust and a willingness to be seen, not only as accomplished professionals but as leaders still refining their craft.

Our peer-shadowing experience wasn’t built on formal vetting or strategic alignment. It started with intuition, an instinct that there was something to learn from one another. Because of that, we were able to have vulnerable conversations about the challenges we face, from managing team dynamics to making high-stakes decisions. Over the course of the week, we explored several early-stage concepts each of us was developing. Discussing them revealed things we had overlooked, surfaced new connections, and, at least in one case, unlocked a shift in perspective that has shaped every discussion since. The ability to let go of perfection and invite real feedback made this experience far more valuable than any leadership seminar could be.

Generosity fosters deeper collaboration and shared success

Leadership can often feel isolating, especially in industries where competition — whether for funding, talent, or influence — is ever-present. Too often, leaders keep insights and strategies to themselves, fearing that openness could weaken their position. But true leadership involves sharing knowledge in ways that strengthen the entire field.

Our peer-shadowing experience challenged the instinct to guard our work. Rather than keeping internal strategies private, we openly shared our approaches to leadership, fundraising, decision making, and problem solving in our roles. This helped deepen our collective understanding of what it means to lead. And though it wasn’t our original intention, that openness led to something unexpected: We began co-creating some new initiatives together. It’s the kind of collaboration that simply wouldn’t have happened in a more guarded or competitive setting.

This mindset of generosity didn’t dilute our influence; it strengthened it. By offering transparency, we built trust, gained new outlooks, and walked away with fresh programs and strategies that benefited both of our organizations.

Leadership is a shared journey

Peer shadowing helped us remember that lasting growth happens when we step beyond our own expertise and invite the fresh perspectives of those who walk the leadership path alongside us. When senior leaders embrace learning as a dynamic, reciprocal experience rather than a fixed destination, they don’t just become better at what they do — they cultivate a professional culture of curiosity, generosity, and continuous evolution.

Ben Berger is Sr. Vice President for Education, Community, and Culture at ĚÇĐÄvlogl.

Shuki Taylor is Chief Executive Officer at M²: The Institute for Experiential Jewish Education.

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News

eJewish Philanthropy: Becoming, Belonging and Building: Thresholds for Jewish College Students

Author

Rabbi Ben Berger and Mollie Feldman

Date

March 26, 2025

Editor’s Note: ĚÇĐÄvlogl’s Senior Vice President of Jewish Education, Community, and Culture Rabbi Ben Berger and ĚÇĐÄvlogl’s Senior Director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience Mollie Feldman shared their thoughts with eJewish Philanthropy on what Jewish young adults need from Hillel today.

“Becoming, Belonging and Building: Thresholds for Jewish College Students” was originally published in eJewish Philanthropy on March 26, 2025. Below are excerpts from the article. To read the complete op-ed, please visit .

“For over 100 years, we in the Hillel movement have wrestled with a basic yet complex question: ‘How can we create Jewish flourishing on campus?’…

We at Hillel — and everyone who cares about today’s Jewish college students — must establish a path for what Jewish development and maturation toward adulthood during these years might be, especially under the type of stress and challenges that many students are experiencing…

While the path to Jewish adulthood will always be charted by each individual student for themselves, they are most often within a community and guided by a mentor-educator. Jewish Threshold Development Theory provides a vocabulary and a blueprint for three thresholds:

Becoming: Who am I?

This threshold speaks to the critical stage of identity formation, offering opportunities for students to encounter the breadth of Jewish experience in ways that feel authentic, explorative and personally resonant. As a space of self-exploration, students are supported to grapple with fundamental questions about themselves and their identity, as Jews and humans. This might look like experimentation with different Jewish practices, deliberate exploration of a personal Jewish story and history, and the ‘trying on’ of different ways to relate to and engage with Jewish life. Within the experiences of ‘becoming,’ students are empowered to develop personal meaning, spiritual growth and a strong sense of self. 

Belonging: What am I?

Experiences of ‘belonging’ invite students to discover and deepen their place in community and in relationship to others. Students might explore both the concepts and applications of Jewish peoplehood, connection and communal responsibility. This threshold goes beyond the formation of individual relationships, bringing students into a sense of belonging and proximity to something beyond themselves. This might look like enhancing one’s understanding across difference, deepening relational bonds and experimenting with the boundaries of responsibility to and for others. The exploration of ‘belonging’ allows students to define for themselves a sense of value and obligation as it pertains to their roles and responsibilities within the community, both in relationship to the Jewish people and more broadly. 

Building: How will I?

The ‘building’ threshold invites students to move beyond exploring Jewish identity and community to actively creating and shaping it. As students are supported to stretch and expand their ability to create Jewish experiences, students begin to see themselves as ‘producers’ — not only consumers — of Jewish life (referencing Jon Levisohn’s  of ‘producers, not possessors’). This might look like bringing communities together around Jewish time, space, ideas and rituals. It might look like engaging people in conversations that matter to them as a Jew. Importantly, this is not always about formal leadership; rather, it is about cultivating a sense of agency, confidence and empowerment, advancing the message that everyone has the capacity to meaningfully contribute to the fabric of Jewish life.

Regardless of how a student progresses through these thresholds, those who care for them (as individuals and as Jews) have an opportunity to meet them where they are and guide them to grow as independent individuals, community members and contributors to the world around them…”

Rabbi Benjamin Berger is the senior vice president of Jewish education, community and culture at ĚÇĐÄvlogl. 

Mollie Feldman is the senior director of the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Experience at ĚÇĐÄvlogl and is studying towards rabbinic ordination in the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Beit Midrash for a New North American Rabbinate.

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