FEBRUARY 16 • 2023 | 57

F

rom Jan. 23-27, more than 450 
students, faculty and communi-
ty members celebrated Central 
Michigan University’s first Jewish 
Heritage Week. The events were held 
the week leading up to International 
Holocaust Remembrance Day to honor 
the lives of those who perished and 
those who survived, and to educate 
CMU’s community on how they can be 
allies in uplifting Jewish voices today. 
This dynamic week of programming 
was organized by me, Lily Segall, along 
with Elizabeth Slater and Kristen Morey, 
and supported by the Hillel Campus 

Alliance of Michigan (HCAM). 
Early in the school year, my friends 
and I encountered antisemitism on 
campus and began to discuss the idea 
of bringing education and awareness of 
Jewish identities to CMU. After creat-
ing a plan for events, we presented the 
idea of a Jewish Heritage Week to the 
Multicultural Academic Student Services 
(MASS) office at Central, whose purpose 
is to uplift the voices of students with 
diverse identities through community 
building, activism and education. 
During our presentation, we provided 
them with the goal of each event and 

why they were important and educa-
tional. The office didn’t initially provide 
the support we were expecting, instead 
rejecting the week for being too reli-
gious. This showed us just how neces-
sary this education was and made us 
more motivated to create an impactful 
campus-wide program. 
Working directly with HCAM, we 
contacted the Division of Student 
Affairs, who then got involved, leading 
to full support of the week. After months 
of hard work, the first Jewish cultural 
and educational programming offered at 
CMU became a reality. 

Photos from 
Jewish Heritage 
Week at Central 
Michigan

Jewish Heritage Week 
at Central Michigan

LILY SEGALL JEWISH@EDU WRITER

for college students 
by college students

continued on page 58

