BY CYNTHIA LEE
UCLA Today Staff
Etched in glass near the entrance of the new
Yitzhak Rabin Hillel Center for Jewish Life at UCLA are excerpts
from a prayer that will guide all who enter the three-story
student center that was officially opened Nov. 17: “You
shall learn ... you shall love.”
“That’s our hope,” said Rabbi
Chaim Seidler-Feller, center director, smiling. “Students
will enter the building in order to learn, and leave this building
taking with them that learning to bring love into the world.”
For approximately 4,000 Jewish students enrolled
at UCLA, a new home and hangout that blends ancient Middle-Eastern
with contemporary architectural styles, is now open, offering
comfortable lounges, meeting and recreation rooms, a library,
café, large auditorium and a kosher cafeteria that is
slated to be operational by January.
Located on Hilgard Avenue across from the Faculty
Center, the building, clad in polished white Jerusalem Stone
imported from the hills of Judea, “will be a place where
students can relax and learn, become more familiar with their
own tradition and gain confidence to reach out beyond themselves,”
Seidler-Feller said. Programs at Hillel also have a strong inter-group,
inter-religious component.
About 500 students, community members and supporters
turned out for the dedication ceremony at which Executive Vice
Chancellor Daniel Neuman, Congressman Henry Waxman, (D-Los Angeles),
Los Angeles Councilman Jack Weiss and Yuval Rotem, counsel general
of Israel, spoke.
Neuman said: “This magnificent building
is a symbol of the vital and enduring partnership between the
Hillel organization and UCLA. The $6-million building will serve
as a resource for thousands of Jewish students, faculty and
staff on campus as well as for the broader community.
“It is also a fitting memorial to the
extraordinary achievements of Yitzhak Rabin — a compassionate
leader, a great statesman and an eloquent champion of peace,”
he added.
Among the major donors who spearheaded the fund-raising campaign
to build the center were Steven Spielberg, Edgar Bronfman and
the late Lew Wasserman.
