Rabbi Joe Topek
Stony Brook Hillel’s History
Rabbi Joe Topek
Rabbi Joe Topek served as a Hillel Director for 40 years, first at Virginia Commonwealth University from 1979 to 1982 and then at Stony Brook University from 1982 to 2019. During his tenure at Stony Brook, he oversaw the growth of Hillel and reached hundreds of more students each year and the construction of the Gloria and Mark Snyder Hillel Center. He served as Chairperson of the Interfaith Center from 1989 to 2019. He is the recipient of the Sister Margaret Ann Landry Lifetime Achievement Award in Advising and the Shirley Strum Kenny Steel Magnolia Award. Rabbi Joe continues to serve part-time at Stony Brook Medicine as the Jewish Chaplain at the Long Island State Veterans Home, a post he’s held since 1994.
He has a bachelor’s degree in Humanities/Judaic Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, a master’s degree in Contemporary Jewish Studies and Jewish Communal Service from Brandeis University, and Rabbinic Ordination from the Academy for Jewish Religion. Rabbi Joe's area of academic interest is American Jewish military history, a subject on which he has lectured and published extensively. He’s lectured for the U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service, the Jewish Museum, the New York Jewish Historical Society, and more.
His wife Susan Remick Topek is a retired early childhood education specialist at the Jewish Education Project and the author of seven Jewish children's books. They have three married daughters and six grandchildren.
Stony Brook Hillel’s History
Since being founded in 1923, Hillel provides college students with the means to connect with Jewish culture, traditions and values. Today, we are delighted to be the largest Jewish campus organization in the world. Hillel gives students the opportunity to explore and celebrate their Jewish identity at over 500 campuses worldwide, and we're constantly striving to further extend our reach.
Stony Brook University’s first Jewish student organization was established in 1964, two years after the campus opened, and programs were held in the H Quad faculty dining room and other locations. Local synagogues, the North Shore Jewish Center, then located in East Setauket, and Temple Beth Sholom in Smithtown, offered some services to students, and local B'nai B’rith leaders began to organize a support network. It was clear that a major university was developing, with thousands of students and faculty soon arriving and many of them being Jewish. Since B'nai Brith, an international Jewish service organization, sponsored the Hillel movement at the time, Long Island’s lodges and chapters swung into action.
In 1966, Friends of Hillel at Stony Brook was founded by Dr. Meyer Mehlman, a Smithtown dentist; Leonard Sonnenberg, the owner of a chemical company; and Julian Silverman, a Lake Grove businessman. They soon formed a board of B'nai B’rith representatives from across Long Island to provide financial support for a Hillel program at Stony Brook and to purchase a Hillel House.
At that time, the university did not permit religious services to be held on campus, although social and cultural gatherings were allowed. Hillel, as well as other campus religious groups, held services off campus and students were welcomed by local synagogues, including the newly organized Temple Isaiah in Stony Brook.
In 1967, the B'nai B'rith Hillel Foundation established the Hillel Counselorship at Stony Brook and appointed Rabbi Elliot Spar of Temple Beth Sholom as the first Hillel Counselor. The Friends of Hillel organization, along with a young physics professor named Peter Kahn, became leading advocates for the needs of Jewish students at Stony Brook. By 1972, the community had advocated for Jewish studies courses, so Judaic scholar Rabbi Dr. David Sperling was engaged to both teach university courses and serve as the Hillel Counselor.
By 1974, Stony Brook’s Jewish population grew to the point that a full-time director was needed. The Hillel Counselorship was upgraded to a full-fledged Hillel Foundation and Richard Siegel was hired as its director. Siegel was already well known in the Jewish community, held an advanced degree in Jewish Studies from Brandeis University and was a co-author of the popular Jewish Catalogue, a groundbreaking new-generation Jewish version of the popular Whole Earth Catalogue. Siegel brought his penchant for the arts to Stony Brook and founded the Jewish Arts Festival, which was sponsored by Hillel for the first several years of its existence and held on campus. During the four years that Siegel served as director, Jewish student leadership structures were strengthened and the Interfaith Center was founded. A decision by the New York State Attorney General enabled religious services to be held on campus, and a coalition of organizations serving Stony Brook students became the center’s founding members.
In 1978, Rabbi Alan Flam was appointed as the Hillel Director when Richard Siegel left for the National Foundation for Jewish Culture. Flam was the first full-time rabbi to serve Stony Brook and established permanent High Holiday services that continue to this day. He also brought a formerly student-run cooperative for kosher dining under the auspices of University Dining Services with more consistent rabbinical supervision, and was instrumental in aiding Iranian Jewish students trapped in the U.S. after the fall of the Shah in 1979. Flam also built a stronger relationship with the Jewish Federation in New York (UJA-Federation of NY) through the Jewish Association for College Youth (JACY).
In 1982, Rabbi Flam was appointed Hillel Director at Brown University and Rabbi Joseph Topek was appointed Director at Stony Brook. Topek previously served as Hillel Director at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia since 1979. The old Hillel House had not been used for programming since the establishment of the Interfaith Center, and the Friends of Hillel board decided it would best be used as a parsonage.
The early 1980s also saw the first re-organization of Hillels lay leadership with the merger of its Faculty Advisory Board, which had been led by Professors Peter Kahn and Mort Shakun, with the Friends of Hillel board Dr. Meyer Mehlman continued as President and Julian Silverman served diligently as treasurer for over 20 years. During this period, the JACY agency merged with Hillel and became a New York regional center for all of the campuses within the UJA-Federation area. This unified staff services and created a permanent position for a program professional. Dr. Robert Goldenberg, the director of Judaic Studies, assumed the presidency of the board.
This period also saw an increase in Soviet Jewry activity as the Soviet Union first opened and then closed its doors to the exodus of its Jewish population. Stony Brook students were actively involved in this movement, sending busloads of students to protest at the Soviet mission to the United Nations in Manhattan, as well as to a massive national protest rally on the lawn of the Capitol in Washington. Students also countered the few anti-Israel programs that occasionally came to campus with a plethora of strongly pro-Israel activities that reflected the breadth of opinion within the Jewish community and in Israel as well. Each year, visiting faculty from Ben Gurion University came to Stony Brook through an exchange program under the leadership of Dr. Peter Kahn, then chair of the physics department.
The 1970s and 80s also saw a deep cultivation of relations between Jewish faculty and Jewish students. Stony Brook has always been blessed with a talented faculty, many of whom care deeply about their students.
In 1983, a popular informal Shabbat afternoon program was instituted called the Shabbat Schmooze that featured a Jewish faculty member schmoozing on a topic of his or her choosing. These talks ranged from personal stories to academic papers in the schmoozers field, but each one enabled students to become better acquainted with a Jewish faculty member whose personal story was interesting and moving. Several early faculty members at Stony Brook were European born Jews who had fled the Nazis and found refuge in America and its academic institutions. Their stories of sometimes harrowing escapes, lost family members, and then successful academic careers were inspiring.
In recent years, the Jewish Student Association (JSA) established the Hakarat Hatov Award, presented annually to a faculty member who makes extraordinary contributions to Jewish student life. Some of its recipients have been Dr. David Ebin, Dr. Jerrold Stein, and Dr. Manuel London. Faculty members also assumed a much larger role in the governance of Hillel by serving on its Board of Directors. Outstanding faculty leaders who succeeded Dr. Robert Goldenberg as president were Dr. Ira Rezak (Medicine), Dr. Paul Jay Edelson (Dean, School of Professional Development), and Dr. Manuel London (Associate Provost). The current president is Andy Polan.
Part of the transformation of Hillel nationally was the establishment of standards and evaluations for Hillel foundations and accreditation of those meeting the requirements. Stony Brook Hillel was first accredited in 1994, and one result of the evaluation was the recognition that while programs for involved students were excellent, more needed to be done to reach the uninvolved. Simultaneously, Jewish federations made a much stronger commitment to fund programs for college students, often infusing local Hillels with additional support. Stony Brook received its first major grant in 1995 from UJA-Federation of New York to enable the establishment of an outreach and engagement program. This enabled Hillel to hire a full-time staff member to focus on engagement work, which resulted in many more freshmen becoming involved in Jewish life, a significant increase in Jewish programming in the residence halls, a Hillel presence in the Health Sciences Center, and our first campus trip to Israel.
A second result of the accreditation process was the increasingly clear challenge of Hillel’s space requirements. The Interfaith Center was still in its original space dating to 1975 when it was temporarily located in a back wing of the Humanities building. Plans were already being developed for a new Student Activities Center which would supplement the existing Stony Brook Union as a locale for campus life. Then-Vice President for Student Affairs Dr. Frederick Preston envisioned the Union becoming a center for student life that would incorporate important campus departments like the Interfaith Center. Plans were developed and space identified and in 1998 each of the campus religious groups launched its own capital campaign for our new home. Hillel’s new center would include staff offices, a living room for students, a reception area, and a resource room that would contain Hillels book and film library as well as computers for student use. The new Interfaith Center would also have a Chapel and Multipurpose room as well as public lounge spaces. Hillel also began plans with the Faculty Student Association to relocate the kosher dining program to the center so all of Jewish life would be together under one roof.
Religious life on campus has changed over the years as well. Hillel maintains its commitment to Jewish pluralism by being home to Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox services and also houses the Stony Brook Hebrew Congregation, a faculty/community Orthodox minyan. Generations of empowered Jewish students have devoted their own time and energy to building a campus Jewish community they can be proud of.
Chabad has also provided Jewish programming for students since the 1970s, and became a member of the Interfaith Center in 2003. The efforts of Hillel’s student leaders have been recognized with a number of prestigious program awards, including Program of the Year and Campus Life awards from the University, four Program of the Year Awards from the Hillels of New York, and International Hillel’s William Haber Award in 1993. Student program initiatives have also received several important grants, including four awards from Hillel’s Jacob Burns Endowment in Jewish Ethics.
With the generosity of many donors, including Gloria ‘72 and Mark ‘69 Snyder, whose gift named the new Hillel Center, the doors of Phase I were opened in the fall of 2000. Delancey Street, the new kosher dining facility (Phase II), opened in the fall of 2005 on the first floor of the building. Now, there is a true home away from home for Jewish students and facilities adequate for the needs of the community for worship, kosher dining, meeting, and planning.
The newly expanded Interfaith Center also enabled greater cooperation between campus religious groups as well as partnering with the university on important programs, such as the annual Festival of Lights, the Interfaith Center Thanksgiving Dinner, and the annual September 11 Commemoration to honor the memory of 22 Stony Brook alumni who perished that day. The Gloria and Mark Snyder Hillel Center is a busy facility that is the focal point for Jewish life at Stony Brook.
Hillel’s commitment to outreach and engagement has continued with its participation in the international Hillel Jewish Campus Service Corps program, which places a Steinhardt Fellow on campus each year. With an ongoing commitment from the CAMBR Charitable Foundation, hundreds of Jewish students have been reached in residence halls, at information tables, fairs, welcome wagons, and other non-standard venues. In 2005, the program was augmented with a peer engagement initiative called Jewish Life Liaisons (JiLLs), where undergraduate students serve as outreach interns and bring Jewish programming to the farthest corners of the campus. When Taglit-Birthright Israel was established, Stony Brook was one of the first Hillels to sponsor its own campus-based trip, based on its success in earlier Israel trips for students. The Birthright program has enabled hundreds of Stony Brook students to experience Israel for the first time, and the impact has been palpable. Hundreds of students have been inspired to become more immersed in Jewish life when they return, and many have planned follow-up trips to Israel to deepen their experience. Some have either served in the Israel Defense Forces or made aliyah upon commencement.
Stony Brook Hillel has a rich legacy of serving the Jewish community at a unique and outstanding institution of higher learning. The challenges have been many, but with the energy and commitment of wonderful lay leaders, dedicated professionals, generous donors, the Schusterman Hillel International Center, UJA-Federation, Stony Brook University, and thousands of brilliant and creative students, Jewish life here has truly been something to be proud of.