April 2, 2015

Dear Hillel community,

For those who may not have yet heard the news, the Central Student Government (CSG) at the University of Michigan defeated the divestment resolution by a vote of 25 against, 15 for, and 1 abstention.  It was a very long night for CSG representatives -wrapping up well after midnight – and it was equally long for the hundreds of students in the room watching and speaking, and many of you who watched from home.

We are appreciative of CSG’s decision and its leadership. While this is the outcome that we hoped for and worked so hard to achieve, we do not feel this is a time for celebration on campus. There are no winners, just a feeling of hurt and sadness on all sides of this issue. We have much work to do on campus to build relationships and create more meaningful spaces of dialogue for students to express their narratives. We look forward to working with student government, university administration, and other partners as our campus moves forward from this resolution towards more productive and unifying conversations and actions. 

We are grateful for the efforts of the student leadership of Wolverines For Peace, which addressed the divestment resolution with tremendous thoughtfulness, determination, passion and compassion. Their efforts mobilized 1200+ members of our community to sign on to their letter opposing divestment from Israel. They remained respectful and continuously aware of the diversity, both within our own Hillel community and our campus community. 

Thank you to our tremendous student leadership and staff, in particular our Jewish Agency Israel Fellow, Liraz Cohen. We continue to check in with students, listen to their concerns, and work with them on steps forward for our campus.

And, finally, we want to thank our parents and alumni for all of your support of our Hillel and encouragement of our students. We know it can be hard to watch this unfold from far away. We appreciate the emails, calls and Facebook posts. We want to assure you that we are here for your students if they have any concerns they want to share wish us.

As we go into Passover, we celebrate our liberation from mitzrayim – not simply our liberation from Egypt but our liberation from “narrow places”. This holiday gives us the opportunity to reflect on what does it mean for us as a campus community to break free from the narrowness of limited civil discourse, of narrow binary approaches to a complicated conflict, and the narrowness that is caused by the walls we create around our communities.

We look forward to ensuring that our Hillel is a part of positive change, breaking down walls, and broadening partnerships and collaboration on campus. We will work with our university partners on developing broad spaces of dialogue in which our students can both listen and bring their full relationship with Israel and Jewish identity to the conversation.

Wishing you and your families a wonderful and meaningful Passover,

Sincerely,

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