History
The Jewish Student Foundation on the campus of the University of Wisconsin was founded in 1924 as the second Hillel Foundation in the country. [Not exactly; see below.] Today, it is part of a network of more than three hundred and fifty Foundations in the United States and throughout the world serving Jewish college students.
Prior to the establishment of the Hillel Foundation, a chapter of the Intercollegiate Menorah Society, organized at Wisconsin in 1911, served the religious, cultural, and social needs of the small number of Jewish students on the campus. Organized by philosophy instructor Horace Kallen, Menorah served as an training for Jewish intellectuals of the mid-twentieth century.
From 1919 to 1922, Semitics professor Louis B. Wolfenson brought a Jewish Students’ Association to the UW campus, part of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations’ effort to help college students maintain their Jewish identity.
In 1924, there were 300 Jewish students at the University of Wisconsin; today their number has increased to 5,000.
Rabbis who served the Hillel Foundation at the University of Wisconsin were: Solomon Landman (1924-1931); Max Kadushin (1931-1942); Theodore H. Gordon (1942-1948); Max D. Ticktin (1948-1964); Richard W. Winograd (1964-1972) and Alan Lettofsky (1972-1982). Following Rabbi Lettofsky, the UW Hillel hired Irving Saposnik (1983-1999) as Executive Director who was followed by the current director, Greg Steinberger (since 1999).
For its first thirty-one years (1924-1955) the UW Hillel conducted its activities in rented quarters on the second floor of 508 State Street (now Nadia's restaraunt). On April 3, 1955, ground was broken for the current Hillel Building. Completed in 1956, the cornerstone for the new was laid on October 23. The building, located at 611 Langdon Street on the old Kiekhofer estate with its once famous “Kiekhofer Wall,” was built at a cost of $250,000 (including furnishings). The architect was Eugene Wasserman, Sheboygan, with Kaeser and Mc-Leod, Madison, as consulting architects and engineers. George Nelson & Sons was the contracting firm.
The building is named the Behr Memorial in honor of Louis Behr who was a student at the University from 1924 to 1928. He was captain of Wisconsin's basketball team, president of his chapter of Phi Sigma Delta, and president of Hillel. In his senior year, Louis Behr received the Kenneth Sterling Day Award for “exemplifying the finest principles of Christian character among senior class students.” Louis Behr, who passed away in 1946 at the age of forty, was a prominent insurance executive and philanthropic leader.
The Hillel building also honors the memory of a Madison civic leader, Sidney L. Goldstine. Mr. Goldstine, who had come to Madison from Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1928, was identified with many communal causes, notably the Governor's Commission on Human Rights of which he was chairman for two years. At the time of his passing in 1954 he was the general chairman of the Hillel building fund campaign, the auditorium of the building was named in his honor the Sidney L. Goldstine Auditorium.
Other Madisonians to whom memorials were dedicated include Max and Frieda Weinstein, Samuel B. Schein, and Jacob Temkin. UW alumnus Gordon Sinykin was the president of the Wisconsin B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation at the time of the erection of the building.
In 2001 the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation formally changed its name to the Hillel Foundation at the University of Wisconsin, Inc. The name change coincided with changes to the governance of the UW Hillel that allowed for greater representation of Jewish alumni, parents, and friends across the nation. Today the board of trustees includes members from Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, California, etc.
Today, the UW Hillel Foundation serves 5,000 Jewish students from across the nation and the world. The UW Hillel is at the center of Wisconsin’s Jewish student population. Home to more than 30 Jewish student organizations, Hillel nurtures every expression of Jewish life. Religious, cultural, political, and social activities provide something of interest to the majority of the students.
* “Adapted” from Manfred Swarsensky's book 'From Generation to Generation,' published in 1955.