Rabbi Jessica Kirschner
Building the Jewish Future at Stanford
April 19, 2026
Friends,
Two thousand years ago, our namesake — Rabbi Hillel the Elder — asked three questions our people have carried with us ever since: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am only for myself, what am I? And if not now, when?”
Today, those three questions frame everything I want to ask of you.
Seventy-five years ago, Hillel at Stanford began in a small office above a garage in downtown Palo Alto. No grand building. No endowment. Just a handful of Jewish students and faculty who understood — as Hillel understood — that if they did not stand up for themselves, no one would.
In three-quarters of a century, we have grown into the beating heart of Jewish life at Stanford. We have welcomed tens of thousands of students to our Shabbat tables, practicing the ancient mitzvah of hachnasat orchim — the welcoming of guests that began with Abraham at the opening of his tent. We fought for kosher dining. We won accommodations for the High Holidays. And in the darkest days following October 7th, 2023, we stood as shelter and sanctuary when our students needed both.
That is our legacy. But as Rabbi Tarfon teaches in Pirkei Avot: “It is not upon you to complete the work — but neither are you free to desist from it.”
Because the world our students are navigating today is unlike any we have known. Antisemitism is no longer whispered — it is shouted. Complexity is everywhere. Certainty is rare. And a generation of young Jews is asking, often alone, what it means to live a Jewish life with pride and with purpose.
We cannot answer that question for them. But we can hand them the tools of our tradition — Torah, community, and courage — so they may answer it for themselves.
For decades, Hillel advocated for our students. The time has come, as Hillel himself demanded, to teach them to stand for themselves and for one another — to build Jewish lives that will endure long after they leave this campus.
We are proudly pluralistic, proudly Zionist, and proudly a home for every Jewish student who crosses our threshold — wherever they are on their journey, whatever questions they carry.
And today, we ask you to help us build what comes next.
Today, we launch a campaign to raise $23 million. Not for a building. Not for a program. For a future.
First — A Secure & Reimagined Hillel Campus
No student should ever have to choose between their safety and their Jewish identity. The Ziff Center was not built for the threats of this moment. We will reengineer our home — a cohesive security perimeter, smarter access, a new entrance that is both safe and genuinely welcoming. We will modernize our gathering spaces, add indoor and outdoor kosher kitchens, make every corner accessible, and root the design in Jewish beauty. A bayit — a true house — built for the next fifty years.
Second — Transformative Student Experiences
Stanford students are builders. They do not just want to be guests at someone else’s table — they want to set the table themselves. Our campaign will fund Shabbat and holiday experiences, a new Center for Jewish Thought, Meaning, and Practice, global immersion journeys, and a leadership and innovation fund that says to every student: your Torah matters here.
Third — Leadership & Campus Stewardship
Every meaningful moment at Hillel begins with a trusted teacher — a rabbi, an educator, a mentor who knows a student’s name and their story. Aseh l’cha rav, our sages instruct — “make for yourself a teacher.” In a region with the highest housing costs in America, we must endow our core positions so that the finest teachers can build their careers with us, not simply pass through.
Space. Students. Staff. Three investments. One vision.
The Talmud tells of Honi the Circle-Drawer, who came upon an old man planting a carob tree. “How long before this tree bears fruit?” Honi asked. “Seventy years,” the man answered. “Do you truly believe you will live another seventy years to taste its fruit?” The old man smiled. “When I came into this world, I found carob trees already grown. My ancestors planted them for me. So now I plant them for my children.”
Friends, seventy-five years ago, a handful of students in a small office above a garage planted a tree. Today, we are eating its fruit.
Now it is our turn to plant.
Picture a freshman, nervous, walking into Hillel for her first Shabbat. Picture the senior who leads services for the first time and discovers a voice he did not know he had. Picture the graduate, years from now, sitting at her own Shabbat table in her own home, teaching her children the words her teachers taught her.
Every one of those students will, one day, stand and say with a full heart: “I need Judaism and the Jewish people, and they need me.”
That is the measure of our success. That is the Stanford tree we are planting today.
And so I return to Hillel’s three questions. If we are not for our own community, who will be for us? If we are only for ourselves, what are we? And if not now, in this moment of all moments, when?
Seventy-five years ago, our predecessors planted for us. Today, we plant for students not yet born, who will one day stand in a sanctuary we built and wonder who it was that loved them enough to make a home ready.
Let it be said of us that we were the ones who planted.