As the president of Israel on Campus at McMaster University, Rebecca Cherniak wanted a louder voice. So she went national.
Samantha Banks (left) and Rebecca Cherniak
Cherniak, who’s in McMaster’s arts and science program, is the new incoming vice-president for the Canadian Federation of Jewish Students, a group that encourages Jewish identity and Israel advocacy programming on campuses across Canada. Cherniak joined CFJS last year and served as its chair of Israel affairs and advocacy.
“I saw the great potential of a national body,” she said. “CFJS can connect student leaders from Dalhousie University [in Halifax] to Victoria. Without that framework, students from across the country wouldn’t be able to communicate as effectively as they do.”
Cherniak is one of five newly elected members of the CFJS’s executive board, which was chosen by students across Canada. The board recently finished appointing board members for positions such as its new political engagement chair Ilan Mann of York University and communications chair Ashley Faintuch of the University of Winnipeg.
This year, the CFJS ran initiatives such as the Size Doesn’t Matter campaign, which worked to raise awareness about Israel through a speaker series, multimedia content and a website, as well as a symposium that connected Canadian students to students at Spertus College in Chicago.
This upcoming year, Cherniak would like the CFJS become more of a grassroots organization and better represent local Jewish groups
“We can’t replace… the local member organizations… but [the CFJS] provides that crucial and unique national aspect that local organizations can’t get on their own,” she said. “We need to make sure that the national voice is representative of the [local] member organizations.”
CFJS plans to do this through its advisory board, comprising leaders of Jewish campus groups across Canada. The board will meet three times a year, with its first meeting slated for the end of this month.
Aaron Vomberg, the incoming CFJS president, would like to see more Israel advocacy programming as well as stronger partnerships with organizations such as the Canadian Council for Israel and Jewish Advocacy (CIJA) and non-Jewish organizations such as First Nations communities.
Vomberg, who is going into his fourth year in Dalhousie’s urban planning program, joined the CFJS three years ago.
“I became involved on the national level with the goal of increasing both the amount of [Israel] advocacy that was occurring and also to increase the amount of identity-based social justice programming,” said Vomberg, who was president of Dalhousie’s Jewish student association.
“When students come together, they have the ability to make that difference on a much larger scale.”
Samantha Banks, the past president of the CFJS and a future Humber College student, sees the group as a support system for Jewish students throughout Canada.
“Our goal is to help students, to be there as a friend or a mentor and to provide information and resources and websites that can further their local campus and Jewish involvement,” she said.
“CFJS is an umbrella organization, but we’re also the… abba and ima to the local campuses. All we want to see is the local campus prosper.”
The group plans to do that through more trips, which include two possible initiatives in New York and Los Angeles, and more social networks that would allow students to connect with professionals in their prospective fields, Vomberg said.
For Banks, CFJS’ success can be measured in the number of students that applied for positions on the board this year.
“To be quite honest, I think we really gave CFJS a good reputation this year,” she said.
