Occidental College’s Student Organization Advisor of the Year Award recognizes a community member who advises and supports an organization outside of their normal duties. Occidental’s Associate Director of Jewish Student Life Ben Greenberg won the award in May 2024. According to the Rev. Dr. Susan Young, he was nominated by students as a part of Occidental’s Hillel group.
“It was a deeply unexpected thing but it was a lovely, wonderful surprise,” Greenberg said.
According to Greenberg, this academic year marks his first school year in a full-time role. Greenberg said that before January 2023, he had filled the position in a part-time capacity. Greenberg said he not only acts as the advisor for the campus’s Hillel group, but organizes logistics for major Jewish holidays, spearheads the Jewish Learning Fellowship and provides a Jewish lens in conversations within the campus’s student life team.
Greenberg said that during his undergraduate experience at Binghamton University, he did not always feel welcomed by their Hillel group. Greenberg said the unwelcoming experience he had with his campus’ chapter defined the nature with which he takes on his work within the Judaic world.
“My [motivation] to do this work is [the desire] to embody radical hospitality to the best of my abilities,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said that to him, radical hospitality means setting aside prejudices people tend to create about others. He said mentors such as Rabbi Kalmanofsky, his hometown rabbi, taught him the value of radical hospitality.
Greenberg said he is a New York native from the Upper East Side and has long been surrounded by Judaic influences through his family involvement in Jewish community centers and synagogues.
According to Greenberg, he had a remote position at nonprofit Limmud North America prior to working at Occidental. However, he said he yearned for in-person connections and felt unfulfilled by remote work. When the part-time position as Associate Director of Jewish Student Life became available, he said it aligned well with his personal and professional needs.
Here at Occidental, Greenberg said that his primary role is to act as an advisor toward Jewish students, who account for 7–10% of the student body.
“The goal of this work, if you’re doing it well, is you give the students that you work with the tools to be able to build their own Jewish life when they graduate,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said that since Judaism touches upon both his professional and personal life, he often grapples with his relationship to his spiritual identity and how it can help in his mentorship and life beyond.
According to Vice President of Occidental’s Hillel chapter, Danielle Levin (junior), the religious transition from high school to college can be difficult at times. Levin said that she too came from an environment in which the Judaic lifestyle was incorporated into her everyday experiences.
“I think that it can be kind of hard to navigate that piece of your identity when it’s not happening with everyone else around you,” Levin said.
Levin said that for Jewish students, Greenberg has played a large role in piecing together logistics on practicing Judaism on campus.
Since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, Greenberg said he has met with Jewish students from all perspectives who revealed general feelings of distress and felt pressured to be spokespeople for the Jewish community. Greenberg said that for many Jewish students, the line between anti-Zionism and antisemitism can feel very blurred, hence the feelings of fear and unease he’s been met with from his students.
“[I’m] trying to figure out how I can be supportive to folks across different spectrums and who also aren’t seeing the moment with unanimity. [It] requires a lot of work and a lot of careful consideration about how to be receptive to everybody, wherever they’re coming from,” Greenberg said.
Greenberg said he hopes the addition of a Muslim Student Life Coordinator will begin a partnership and encourage productive dialogue for Occidental students to move forward from the divisive quality of student life semesters prior.
Young said there are plans for a new initiative aimed at engaging in dialogue across different identities with President Stritikus, Greenberg, the new coordinator of Muslim Student Life and students.
“Occidental College is very diverse but we’re not very pluralistic. Meaning, we’re diverse but we don’t create the space for diverse people to participate in authentic communication, to learn from one another and celebrate differences,” Young said.
According to Greenberg, he will continually utilize lessons learned from Judaism to help him navigate mentorship on campus after last spring.
“There’s a really beautiful Jewish teaching that I love that is very inspiring,” Greenberg said. “It’s something along the lines of ‘You are not required to finish the work, nor are you free to desist from it.'”
Greenberg said this encompasses the idea that in our limited human lifespans, we are called on to make the world a better place for future generations.
“I’m not naive enough to think that I will ever be [able] to do all that work so that by the time I die, [it] will be in a perfect world,” Greenberg said. “But that is not a case for nihilism — quite the opposite. […] It’s both a radical study of humility and also a radical call to action.”
Contact Shea Salcedo at ssalcedo@oxy.edu
The article frequently uses the phrase “Jewish students,” yet Ben Greenberg is unwilling and unable to support ALL Jewish students, as his paycheck comes from outside Oxy and doesn’t allow him to interact with anti-zionist groups of Jewish students.
Radical hospitality? Advisor toward Jewish students? Dialogue across difference? Confusion between anti-semitism and anti-Zionism? He is unable to meet with JVP at Oxy and has never done so. So much for that.
Radical hospitality, and yet Ben isn’t allowed to interact with one of the main Jewish orgs on campus, Jewish Voice for Peace?? If Oxy was willing to pay Ben’s full salary, instead of funding his position through the Jewish Federation, maybe he really could support all Jewish students. Once again, Oxy admin talks big without taking actionable steps to support all of our students.