The college campus was a confusing place to be for many students in the Vietnam era, and Gary Bregman was no exception.
A student at U.C. Davis, Bregman felt some solidarity with fellow students who opposed the war, but when it came down to it, “instead of seriously being involved, many of those people were going back to the dorm to smoke dope.”
Bregman felt lost. The draft was looming in the back of his mind and he was searching for some meaning in the world.
One day, he found himself walking by the Hillel house. Curiosity got the better of him and he entered cautiously; he had the notion that the only people who went to Hillel events were geeks.
“I felt at home a little bit,” he found. When he saw that Hillel was organizing a ski trip, he went. Next it was a lox and bagel brunch. He soon became a regular.
Now an observant Jew, Bregman attributed the beginning of his Jewish journey to Hillel, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary at Davis.
Bregman has since moved on — he is a lawyer living in North Hollywood — but a key person involved with him at Hillel is still living in the Davis area. He is Larry Rappaport, who was an advisor to Hillel for many years.
Bregman told of when he ran for vice president of Hillel, won, and then ended up as president when the president-elect chose to go to another school over the summer.
He called Rappaport and said, “I can’t do this, I’m totally unprepared.”
Rappaport replied: “Why don’t we meet when you get back.”
They did, and Rappaport said, “You’ll be fine.”
He was right. With Rappaport as a mentor, “I got very involved and I really enjoyed it. There wasn’t anything I didn’t do, and it was something that made sense,” Bregman said.
Rappaport is the one who can take the credit for Hillel’s presence at Davis. The Brooklyn native arrived on campus as an associate professor in 1956, when the student population was about 3,000. (Now the student population is about 30,000 and the Jewish population alone is probably around 3,000.)
Rappaport realized very quickly there was no Jewish presence on campus, so he organized an informal group of Jewish students who would eat dinner at his home and go on the occasional outing together.
“I was in this for the students,” he said. “It’s a basic requirement for anyone who does this kind of work.”
In 1963, he took a nine-month sabbatical in Israel and fell in love with the country. He returned feeling inspired to do more for Jewish students.
He began soliciting funds and got some local philanthropists involved. “The minimum I wanted was a house,” he said, “and it had to be near campus.”
With help of the local federation and some donors, they were able to afford a small, rundown house near campus, the same place where Davis Hillel resides today.
“The house had to be rebuilt, and it was an all-volunteer effort,” said Rappaport, who is retired. “We had to fix the roof and redo the toilets.”
The house opened in 1965 and it was “a wreck of a place. But it attracted many students — enough to make it go,” he said.
When Rappaport began, he had no intention of serving as director, as he was not a Jewish professional. “I thought if I put it in place, someone competent will be director, but there was no one around,” he said.
So he ended up doing the job — first for no pay, then making $600 a year, and then $2,000 a year. He stayed on as director for its first 10 years.
Rappaport said without support from the community Hillel could not have come so far.
Now Davis Hillel is looking ahead. It has embarked on a capital campaign to raise money to rebuild in the same spot again, this time the first entirely “environmentally green” Hillel house in the country.
And the institution is there for the large number of Jewish students on the U.C. Davis campus today, as well as those in the entire Sacramento region. An alumni association of Jewish students at Davis has also been formed.
As for Bregman, “Hillel transformed me,” he said.