Posted on January 9, 2025
Outstanding Jewish College Students from Twenty-Seven College Campuses Selected to Join a Dynamic Community of Bridge-Builders
January 2025 — The Bronfman Fellowship has selected its first cohort of outstanding Jewish college students for Campus Commons: Building Bridges with Jewish Wisdom, an exciting new program that will empower students to use Jewish values and wisdom to enhance social cohesion on their campuses and beyond. This cohort of 31 college students with diverse Jewish backgrounds come from 27 campuses across 13 states and Canada. Among them are the founder of an art-based dialogue program called “ArTikkun: Jews Celebrating Disagreement;” a student working on a machine learning project with the Sefaria API; a plant evolution researcher who’s done fieldwork in the Amazon and the Andes; and the creator of a civil discourse program called “Intellectual Vitality.” The cohort begins their semester-long program with a multi-day immersive, in-person seminar on January 12, 2025.
Designed by a team of top educators at The Bronfman Fellowship, Campus Commons is a powerful response to the rise in polarization, social instability, and isolation on college campuses, particularly for Jewish students. The program will help participants cultivate their own agency and gain real-world, actionable skills to foster environments where people can build relationships across differences. The selection and onboarding process has already provided interesting data about the hopes and needs of students who are interested in bridge-building. In a survey of incoming Campus Commons participants, 90% said they believe that greater understanding between people is possible on campus. When asked to select what skills and opportunities they were most interested in developing through the program, 90% prioritized growing their ability to navigate differences and manage difficult conversations, and nearly as many emphasized the importance of building a network of like-minded peers. Also highly rated were learning with expert faculty and engaging more deeply with Jewish texts and teachings. The vast majority were interested or strongly interested in the opportunity to think about how to bring back what they learn on Campus Commons to their campuses.
“I am thrilled to welcome the first cohort of inspiring students to Campus Commons,” said Becky Voorwinde, CEO of The Bronfman Fellowship. “These motivated young people give me much optimism for the future. In their applications to the program, many of the participants expressed a special passion for cultivating pluralistic Jewish spaces, and for having productive conversations around heated topics regarding Israel and antisemitism within the Jewish community.”
Campus Commons draws from The Bronfman Fellowship’s 38 years of experience in fostering pluralistic Jewish community and leadership through its flagship year-long Fellowship program for Jewish teenagers in North America and Israel, and through programming for its vibrant alumni community. At the core of the Fellowship’s approach is a passionate belief that building trust and mutual understanding works best when Jews can learn and engage together and with other communities, drawing on Jewish texts and tradition as tools for finding a common language. Campus Commons is made possible through a seed grant from UJA-Federation of New York and 42% of the pilot cohort are connected to a New York campus or grew up in New York.
“We are so excited to be partnering with The Bronfman Fellowship to launch Campus Commons,” said Joshua Satok, Senior Lead of Strategic Planning and Grants at the Jewish Life Department of UJA-Federation of New York. “Now, more than ever, it’s critical that Jewish college students have opportunities to come together and build the skills and ability to grow and talk across differences. The Bronfman Fellowship is uniquely positioned to build on their strengths and create an incredible new program.”
Campus Commons participants begin their immersive, all-expenses-paid, in-person seminar on January 12. They will delve deeply into Jewish texts, learn how to have difficult conversations and model a pluralistic community, engage in small-group discussions, and build relationships with other college students who are interested in bridge-building. The program also includes monthly Zoom sessions for learning and reflection on experiences on campus, and mentorship to assist participants in the design of their own on-campus initiatives. Upon completion of the program, participants will receive a Certificate in Relationship Building Across Difference.
The Campus Commons cohort will learn with an esteemed faculty, including Dan Libenson, President of Lippman Kanfer Foundation for Living Torah; Dr. Evan Parks, Director of Education for The Bronfman Fellowship and a scholar of German and Jewish intellectual traditions; Rabbi Dr. Erin Leib Smokler, the Director of Spiritual Development and Publications Editor at Yeshivat Maharat; and Arielle Rivera Korman, the co-founder of Ammud Jews of Color Torah Academy. They will also interact with a wide range of Bronfman staff members, alumni mentors, and guest speakers.
The Bronfman Fellowship plans to expand the Campus Commons program over the next three years. For more information and to apply, please visit www.campuscommons.bronfman.org/. For questions about the program, please contact campuscommons@bronfman.org. For a list of program participants, please contact Stefanie Weisman at stefanie@bronfman.org.