Welcome to Penn Hillel! Penn Hillel is one the best parts of being at Penn. Each year, Hillel reaches over 2,200 undergraduate students with a dizzying array of different Jewish opportunities ranging from social justice to Israel, and from Jewish culture offerings to Jewish religious expression. No matter what your interest or Jewish background, Penn Hillel is there to get know each and every Jewish student by name and by story so that we can help connect them to the next set of experiences, communities, and relationships that will provoke them to grow into Jewish adulthood. Hillel is proud to offer a two-pronged approach to engaging Jewish students on campus. Inside the Steinhardt Hall under the banner of Hillel, there are over 25 different student groups who create over 300 events per month. This includes a weekly soup kitchen, a wide variety of opportunities to engage with and learn about Israel, word famous speakers and public intellectuals, and alternative break trips to Rwanda, South America, Israel and beyond. All of this is in addition to the nearly 500 students who are part of Shabbat each week (we offer five different services on Friday night and two options on Saturday morning). Penn Hillel also runs a separate organization called the Jewish Renaissance Project (JRP) that brings Jewish life to students who are not already involved in Hillel activities. JRP’s cutting-edge methodology brings Shabbat dinner, Jewish dialogue, and deep educational events to students in the dorms, the fraternity and sorority houses, and off campus in West Philly. By bringing Jewish life to students where they live, work, and play, JRP insures that every Jewish student, regardless of background, can have a safe and meaningful space to explore and grow Jewishly. Steinhardt Hall, our home base, is a state of the art Hillel facility that includes kosher dining at Falk commons, a University dining hall, that provides the best food on campus with the warmest and most welcoming community. For more information about kosher dining, click here. Penn Hillel's missions is to create the relationships, experiences, and communities that provoke students to engage in a process of “Jewish Self-authorship.”
Self-Authorship is a term used to describe the process by which students come to understand themselves on their own terms and through which they enter into adulthood. There are 3 parts to Jewish Self-authorship:
1. Moral: “How do I relate to myself?”
2. Communal: “How do I relate to the others?"
3. Spiritual: “How do I relate to religion and spirituality?”
