No man is an island, but Alon Shalev might just be a microcosm.
In the past, Hillel directors were invariably very young, invariably rabbis and — invariably — had a tendency to whip out an acoustic guitar and play “The West 59th Street Bridge Song” at a moment’s notice.
Shalev is 41, not a rabbi, and, minus the ability to play the guitar or, indeed, any musical instrument, is no risk to belt out any Simon & Garfunkel numbers. And yet he’s the new director of San Francisco Hillel. What’s more, Hillel officials say Shalev is prototypical of the sort of leaders Hillels across the country will be turning to in the years to come.
“For a very long time, [nationally] Hillel was the synagogue on campus. That’s not our focus any longer; our focus is being the center for Jewish life on campus and building up a staff with the capacity to provide an array of services to reach a very diverse population,” said Paul Cohen, the San Francisco-based senior campus strategic services consultant to Hillel International.
“As such, it behooves us to not necessarily try to attract rabbis to the role [of director], but people managers and fund-raisers who can present Hillel to the general community and who can attract students who have not seen Hillel as a place that they can feel comfortable in.”
And that’s where Shalev comes in. He’s hip and charming enough to relate to students, but his background as a manager, marketer and executive director of Kibbutz Lotan in the Negev — and the fact that he’s a middle-aged man with a wife and two young boys — will allow him to relate to potential donors in the wider Jewish community.
“What Hillel is realizing is you can hire people to do programming — really good, young programming people,” explained Mimi Gauss, who chaired the search committee that hired Shalev.
“What Hillel has not done in the past is do a very good job with the community, developing fund-raising and creating good, strong boards.”
That’s not to say Shalev is going to be an absentee director, hidden from students behind mounds of paperwork on his desk.
“In my interview, they asked me when the last time was that I had a conversation with someone who is of student age,” said the London-born Shalev, who graduated from his hometown university prior to making aliyah and living on a Reform kibbutz in the Negev for 20 years.
“And that was an easy question to answer, because our kibbutz was a very young kibbutz. A few months before I left, I was working in the dairy, and most people there are of student age. When you’re milking cows at three in the morning, you do get to know each other.”
Shalev left Israel so his American-born wife, Ariela, could complete a Ph.D in psychology across the Bay in Berkeley. He began work this week.
And Shalev is no stranger to dealing with anti-Zionist sentiments on campus. When he arrived at London University at the outbreak of the Lebanon War, he was one of perhaps three Jews on a campus of 5,000.
“I was going to the dining room and the first thing I saw was an anti-Zionist motion up on the student board,” he recalled.
Shalev spearheaded a Reform Jewish youth movement and toppled the anti-Zionist plank.
“I got my first taste of standing up on campus for what I believed in. I don’t think the people who put forward the anti-Zionist motion were really expecting any opposition. And we were in favor of mutual recognition and respect and they’d already taken a very hard line, so it was very easy to gain respect.”
Should student relations at San Francisco State University, or any of the other San Francisco campuses Shalev oversees turn ugly, he knows he’s been there, done that and can provide comfort and support to pro-Israel students.
He’s also inherited a good relationship with SFSU administrators from his predecessor, Seth Brysk, who departed in June to manage Boston’s Israel Center.
Shalev, incidentally, made up his mind to immigrate to Israel by the time he was 13 — “I guess I was looking to rebel against my parents somehow.”
And he found more than a new life in the Holy Land. He found a new name.
Born Alan Shalev, he happily adopted the Hebrew “Alon,” which was easier for locals to pronounce anyway.
“It means ‘oak tree.’ And it’s better than Alan, which is a Celtic name meaning ‘harmony.’ And I can’t sing to save my life.”