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