Students talking to one another outside

Jewish Learning Fellowship

Text study, Education

Hillel International

North America

Hillel International and other organizations (e.g., Mosaic United, CJP, etc.)

Target Population

Operating through Hillel on college campuses throughout North America, JLF targets a multidenominational population of Jewish college students. JLF currently operates in approximately 75% of Hillels.

Jewish Knowledge/Engagement Level of Participants

Very diverse, from students with 10 years of day school and 13 years of Jewish overnight camp to students who grew up with no Jewish practice or formal learning, and everything in between.

Primary Goals

Jewish Learning Fellowship aims for students to complete the program having made friends, found a place in a Jewish community connected to Hillel, having formed a relationship with a mentor or role model, and having formed a relationship to Torah study “that feels resonant to their contemporary lives”—friends, mentorship, community, and Torah.

Brief Description

JLF is an 8- to 10-week cohort-based fellowship comprised of weekly sessions of approximately 75 minutes each. While the external emphasis of the program is Torah study, text learning is not the only goal, and the importance of forming relationships and finding ways to make Torah study relevant to the daily life experiences of students is emphasized in the planning and delivery of the program. Learning is organized around broad experiential questions like what the role of honesty in friendship should be, so that students at all levels of Jewish knowledge can both find entrée into the conversation and share pieces of their own experience that build intimacy and connection among the participants. These questions are also tied to Jewish texts, making connections between ancient texts and contemporary experience. While the outward structure of the program is similar to many extracurricular learning sessions, care is taken at every step and level to curate a deeply relational and authentic experience for students, from individual interviews with the JLF educator before the program begins to allow them to begin from the first day with an understanding of the individual participants, to carefully planning special arrangements, always including a “relational meal” as part of a session, and including a Shabbat experience at the educator’s home where students become guests.

Build the field

Share your experiences of

Jewish Empowerment

Build the field

Share your experiences of

Jewish Empowerment

Build the field

Share your experiences of

Jewish Empowerment