Hillel of San Diego keeps momentum as leaders change

From left, David Michan, outgoing Hillel of San Diego president; Emily Jennewein, incoming president; Rabbi David Singer, and Michael Rabkin.


By Donald H. Harrison

Donald H. Harrison

SAN DIEGO – Even changes in the organization’s top leadership doesn’t dampen the feeling among Hillel of San Diego’s board of directors that this coming fiscal year will be one of tremendous momentum,  in which some very notable recent accomplishments will be carried forward.

At the organization’s annual meeting, held Wednesday night at the Melvin Garb Hillel Center at San Diego State University, the board presidency passed from David Michan to Emily Jennewein, while Rabbi David Singer succeeded Michael Rabkin as executive director of the four-campus region consisting of SDSU, UC San Diego, Cal State San Marcos, and the University of San Diego.

Rabkin is going on to become a Western regional director for Hillel International, charged with helping to develop programs to train and better retain Hillel staff members. As he will continue living in the San Diego area, the officers of Hillel of San Diego expressed optimism that they will be able to tap into his knowledge more often perhaps than other campus Hillels in his new jurisdiction.

Rabbi Singer, while serving as acting executive director for the region, will continue in his role as executive director for the UC San Diego campus, where anticipated approval by the San Diego City Council at a July 11 meeting at 2 p.m., will enable Hillel to finally build a close-to-campus center similar to the Garb Center on the SDSU campus.  The San Diego City Planning Commission has already unanimously recommended the project, despite some neighborhood opposition, so hopes are high that the City Council will also look upon it favorably.  If it does, Singer’s work on the center will continue in earnest.  While Joseph “Chickie” Glickman, father and grandfather respectively of community activists Elaine and Laura Galinson, has pledged $5 million toward the construction costs, more capital and program fundraising will be necessary.

As the incoming president of Hillel of San Diego, Jennewein has a distinctive advantage.  She served a two-year term previously as Hillel’s president, and was drafted to return to that position precisely because she knows the ropes.  She has extensive experience in Jewish community organizations, among them Congregation Beth Israel, where she served as president; Jewish Family Service, and the Jewish Community Foundation.

Jackie Tolley

With all the changes, there is one constant – well almost.  Jackie Tolley, who has been a staff member of Hillel for 40 years, and in fact has the longest tenure of any Hillel staff member anywhere, has a new title.  She is now executive director of the SDSU Hillel, not simply the director.  It took Moses and the Israelites 40 years to reach the promised land, and what do you know, for Jackie it took almost the same length of time.  Her new title takes effect July 1.

Anthony Berteaux

Quite a tribute was paid to Tolley by Anthony Berteaux, a recent graduate of SDSU who was the featured speaker of the evening.  Born in the United States, but raised in Tokyo, Berteaux and his family returned to the U.S., where he studied journalism at SDSU.  He admitted that as a non-Jew he didn’t know much about Jews – except that there was a popular comic book series in Japan which he translated as “Lessons of a Jewish Billionaire.” After his arrival on campus, he was drawn as a progressive to the Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus group which pushes the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement (BDS) against Israel.

But, he told the assemblage at the annual meeting, his attitude about Israel began to change after he shared a house with a Jewish roommate, who was an active advocate for Israel.  The roommates talked about everything — boys, movies, and especially Israel, and “she opened my mind to Israel and Judaism” giving Berteaux “a perspective I hadn’t heard before.  She made me her project.”

Writing for SDSU’s student paper, The Daily Aztec, as well as occasional columns for the Huffington Post, Berteaux “learned many Jewish students felt very marginalized” by the campus campaigns against Israel.  Eventually, with the help of Tina Malka, then of the Anti-Defamation League but now with Hillel’s Israel Advocacy program, Berteaux traveled to Israel and the territories, and he “learned of the humanity of Israel and the Jewish people.”

Thereafter, Hillel became his home and this is where Tolley comes into the story.   “Jackie has been a mother to me and all the kids at Hillel,” Berteaux said.  Hillel became a “home in a way,” where he regularly enjoyed Shabbat dinner and hanging out and feeling comfortable.

“A lot that the staff of Hillel does can’t be quantified,” Berteaux said.  “So much of it is personal relations.”

Berteaux was among the students who successfully pressed in this just concluding semester for a student government resolution condemning anti-Semitism, which was defined as including efforts to vilify Israel.

Soon, he will be making another trip to Israel – his fifth—where under the auspices of a social service non-governmental organization, he will do volunteer work.  He hopes it will be with Israel’s Ethiopian Jewish community.

Rabbi Singer earlier had paraphrased a Talmudic rabbi as saying the way to assure the survival of the Jewish people is to plant seeds—that is to teach Torah and Jewish values to younger people, so that they might teach others.  Berteaux is one of the “seeds” that sprouted into a full-grown friend of the Jewish people.

When he finished speaking, Berteaux received an enthusiastic ovation. How can one not appreciate such a friend?

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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World.  He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com