Chicago Russian Jews Party with Jewlicious

While most of our Hillels and programs on a summer break, Russian Hillel is active as usual. On Sunday July 31 more than 130 students and young adults from Russian Hillel gathered at Gillson Park to celebrate summer at “Are you Jewlicious? Beach Party!”

For the first time Russian Hillel has partnered with Jewish Internet blog Jewlicious.com and mainly it’s Russian version Jewlicious.ru, run by Tanya Gutsol, our colleague from Baltimore and Russian Shabbaton staff in the past.

Our friends from Russian Moishe House also cooperated with us and helped to organize what turned out to be a great event.

While grilling kosher hot dogs, listening to Israeli music and playing volleyball, students had a great opportunity to connect with each other and meet new friends. Compare to other Hillels, our students are all local and usually spend summer in Chicago, going to summer school or just working.

“Russian Hillel definitely creates a community, it’s so great there are events like this where everyone can feel welcomed and can meet so many new people” – said one of our Russian Hillel student from DePaul. “I did not even know that Jewlicious is not just a fun word but an actual organization. I am looking forward to read their blogs”

Even our alumni visited us at the event. “It is fascinating to see what Russian Hillel has achieved. When we started it 8 years ago, we had a group of people who wanted to get together with other Russian-speaking Jews and learn about our haritage and now it’s such a large and strong community and I don’t know anyone here, these are all new faces for me” – commented our Russian Hillel alum at the Party.

Fortunately enough, summer is not over yet and soon Russian Hillel will invite everyone to its Annual Bonfire. What can be better than spending an evening by the fire with friends while eating delicious (or should I say jewlicious :)) smores!

Guest post by Genia Kovelman, Program Director of Hillels Around Chicago: Russian Hillel. This post also appeared on their Web site.