UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. —Penn State Hillel has been in search of a permanent home at University Park.
Founded in 1936, the Penn State affiliate of the international Jewish life organization has been housed in multiple buildings around campus before moving into a shared space in the Pasquerilla Spiritual Center in 2003—but, soon, the group will have a dedicated space to call its own.

By the fall of 2021, Penn State Hillel will have moved into its new 18,000-square-foot home at the corner of Beaver Avenue and Garner Street in downtown State College. But for Aaron Kaufman, executive director of Penn State Hillel, the move to the new building isn’t really about the building. It’s about what the building represents, and what it means for the future of Jewish life at Penn State.

A complex identity

“Jewish identity in America is rapidly shifting, as is the sense of religiosity and religious connection in America, broadly speaking,” Kaufman said. “So when we have this opportunity to design our new facility, we want to make sure what we design not only supports the community today, but also where the community is heading, to continue to serve and connect students across campus.”

What does it mean that Jewish identity is shifting? For Emilie Naidoff, 2018 president of Hillel’s student executive committee, it means recognizing that there are many ways to be Jewish, and that different Jewish people connect to their Judaism in different ways.

“Hillel has always said ‘we want to give you whatever Jewish experience is necessary for you,’ and that they’re here to guide us in our journey. That’s what’s so great about it,” Naidoff said. “To me, being Jewish is about these connections, with our faith and with each other. Through Hillel I get to make amazing friends and share this experience with other students and be in a space where I can practice my Judaism however I want.”

Becca Lerman, a class of 2017 alumna, had a somewhat different perspective and relationship with her Judaism when she came to Penn State. While she describes herself as “not a religious person,” her Jewish heritage and community have always been very important to her sense of self and identity.

Having graduated from a school with a graduating class of less than 50 students, Lerman might have experienced a bit of whiplash coming to a school as large as Penn State—had it not been for Hillel. Through Hillel, she found “a little piece of home” that helped “make a big school like Penn State feel smaller.”

“I remember talking to the assistant director about figuring out how Judaism fits into your life as it is, the idea that you can be Jewish in your own way,” Lerman said. “For me, it’s about conducting myself with Jewish values, bringing that Jewish lens to my social work, and living the value of ‘tikkun olam’—repairing the world.”

Building for the future

True to that dedication to service, Lerman served on the Hillel executive committee, where her leadership helped garner support for Hillel’s new facility and she helped shape the vision of the new space. That experience was an important one for Lerman, not just as hands-on leadership experience and professional development, but because it helped solidify her love of service. Since graduation, she’s continued the kind of work she started at Hillel, spending a year as a fellow with Jewish nonprofit organization Repair the World before enrolling in law school to pursue a career in public interest law.

During her time on the executive committee, Lerman realized that the new facility she was helping plan would only come to fruition after her graduation. Despite this, she threw herself into her work, knowing that she was helping build something that would benefit future generations of Jewish Penn Staters.

“Being in Pasquerilla was great, because it gave us opportunities to work with other religions and cultures and do some really unique programming, all of which has been wonderful and which we plan to continue, but having our own facility was always the dream,” Lerman said. “A physical space is so important when talking about creating a community: having that place to congregate, to relax, to feel at home. That is what we’re building.”

Kaufman agreed, explaining that the entire design philosophy behind the new building—“imagine a Jewish HUB”—is to focus on flexibility, with plenty of student input at every stage of the process. The final space is envisioned, above all else, as flexible and adaptable, with spaces for large meetings, small groups and everything in between. The idea, Kaufman said, is to create a space that can continue to grow with Hillel into the future.

“Hillel has evolved over the last 30 years, even the last ten,” Kaufman said. “A decade ago we saw a couple of hundred Jewish students per year. Last year, we saw over 2,100 different students. So we’re very much thinking of the Hillel of the future with this building. Penn State is one of the most impressive universities in the world, with one of the top 10 Jewish communities in the country, and they deserve one of the best Hillels in the country.”