• Summer Institute: July 29 - August 4, 2024. "Ir Miklat - City of Refuge."

Hollander Social Justice Fellowship

Apply to be a Hollander Social Justice Fellow!

Do you have a social justice cause you’re passionate about and want to share with the NHC Summer Institute community? Do you have an idea for a project that will that will inspire NHC participants to take action to impact that issue?

Apply for the Hollander Social Justice Fellowship! You’ll have the opportunity to engage the community in social justice programming throughout the week.

Fellows will receive a scholarship for Institute tuition, room, and board, and up to $100 for materials or preparation. (Fellows can also apply for Travel Scholarships to cover the costs of getting to the University of Hartford in Connecticut.)

The National Havurah Committee is a network of diverse individuals and communities dedicated to Jewish living and learning, community building, and tikkun olam (repairing the world). Since the 1970s, the NHC Summer Institute has been bringing together Jews from across North America to envision a joyful grassroots Judaism and provide the tools to help them create empowered Jewish lives and communities. The NHC is a nondenominational, multigenerational, egalitarian, and volunteer-run organization.

The Purpose of the Hollander Social Justice Fellowship
The purpose of the Hollander Social Justice Fellowship is to create opportunities for the NHC community to learn about social justice issues in a non-partisan way, with an eye towards taking real-world action to enact change within the NHC, our communities, or the “tikkun” or “repair” of our society and planet. The Fellow(s) will design and facilitate programming with each of these three, inter-related aims:

  • Engage the NHC’s community in learning about a contemporary social issue and avenues to pursue change to address that issue.
  • Create an opportunity for participants to plan or take real-world action in response to that issue during the week of the summer Institute.
  • Seek to catalyze lasting impact after the summer Institute by informing NHC policies or practices, activating a network of havurot or local community groups, and/or engaging interested individuals in follow-on activities.

Who Should Apply
We seek applications from anyone who is passionate about social justice work and is eager to engage the NHC community in pursuing a specific, actionable project.

We are especially interested in applications from those with less access to privilege – including but not limited to Jews of color, Sephardi, Mizrahi, queer, trans, disabled, and Jews who are poor – but we encourage all submissions.

Applications from groups or pairs will also be considered and, if selected, the award will be divided among the Fellows.

The Format of the Project
Fellows will be expected to contribute 3-4 hours of programming during the week, which should be accessible to the entire NHC community and encourage a broad range of participation from different age groups, backgrounds, and experiences. If you are selected, you will be expected to consult with the planning committee to ensure that your programming dovetails with the rest of the programming for the week.

Regardless of the format, Fellows will have an opportunity to have a permanent display space throughout the week to share the project and additional information with the wider NHC community.

Past Hollander Justice Fellows:

2019: Tali David; Modern Antisemitism and the Dejudiazation of Diaspora Jewry 
2018: Margaret Frisch Klein; Building Bridges, Storytelling, and Intersectionality
2017: Mira Rivera; Embracing the Stranger
2016: Rachel Grant Meyer; Our People Were Refugees Too: A Jewish Response to the Contemporary Refugee Crisis
2015: Toby Reiter; Food Scarcity & Plenty Through a Lens of Shmita
2014: Jessica Belasco and Lauren Tuchman; Disability Justice: Making Jewish Communities Accessible to All
2013: Elizabeth Richman; Praying with our Feet? Activism on Shabbat and Chagim
2012: Regina Sandler-Phillips: Strength in Numbers: Jewish Personal Empowerment for Redistributive Justice
2011: Ilana Schatz; Exploring Fair Trade as an expression of Jewish values
2009: Joelle Novey; A Jewish response to our modern alienation from where our stuff, our electricity, and our food is coming from, who made it, produced it, or harvested it, and at what cost to the Earth
2008: Gabriela Russek; Stronger Roots to Lasting Fruit: Deepening Our Understanding of Social Justice

Apply
Download the application HERE. Please send proposals to hollanderfellow@havurah.org by January, 15 and a selection will be made by mid-February. Applicants are encouraged to consider how they will draw on this year’s theme in their application: קֽוּמִי צְאִי מִתּוֹךְ הַהֲפֵכָה (Kumi tze’i mi’toch ha’hafecha) – Get up, go out from amidst the upheaval.

The Fellowship

Hollander Social Justice Fellows plan and implement three to four hours of programming (formal or informal) on a relevant and nonpartisan social justice issue. Fellows also have the opportunity to have a permanent display space throughout the week to share additional information. 

The NHC Summer Institute provides captioning during community programming. We ask all presenters to work with our transcription and accessibility teams to help achieve inclusion for all.

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