On a snowy February day, Grace Kosten stood on McGill University campus, preparing for a quiet vigil she had organized to honour the Bibas children—Israeli hostages whose fate had captured international concern. Kosten, vice-president of advocacy for Hillel Montreal and the Hillel representative to the McGill Jewish Student Alliance, had coordinated the event with care, hoping to foster reflection and unity.
A staff member from Federation CJA, the organization that oversees Hillel Montreal, offered to bring signs to the vigil. Initially, Kosten welcomed the support. But when the staffer arrived, Kosten took a closer look at the signs he had printed, which featured photos of the Bibas children. “On the bottom it said, in red text, ‘Murdered by Palestinians.'”
Kosten immediately recognized the risk. “If we go past one of the (pro-Palestine) rallies and we have a sign that says ‘Murdered by Palestinians'”—instead of “by Hamas”—”it’s us that’s going to end up online with our faces and our families’ pictures and our moms’ phone numbers. It’s not the staff.”
Kosten made a decision. “I said, ‘We’re going to bury the (bottom of the) signs in the snow so that you can’t see that text. Because—I don’t care if it’s true or not—it’s not the kind of language that we support here.”
The staffer, Kosten said, put up an argument, refusing to recognize the danger he had introduced on a campus that is overheating with anti-Israel and antisemitic hostility, one full of violent protesters who will jump on any opportunity to dox Jewish students.
That moment, she says, was emblematic of a larger problem: students feeling alienated by a Federation-run Hillel that increasingly sidelines their voices and values.
According to numerous students, the problem goes back almost a decade.
No executive director for the year
Hillel Montreal’s student house, located on Stanley Street just off Sherbrooke in downtown Montreal, is a modest brick townhouse with a blue front door, tucked between apartment buildings and office towers—a quiet hub for Jewish student life in the heart of the city.
Within those walls, however, is an organization that students say is beginning to crumble.
“Right now, Hillel is like an empty shell,” says Maya Zimmerman, a second-year McGill University student and former president of Hillel McGill. “There’s (minimal) staff support for Shabbats, no outreach, no programming unless we do it ourselves.”
The vast majority of programming is student-directed and led, she said.
In 2016, Hillel Montreal was absorbed by Federation CJA under its GenMTL initiative, an outreach program for Jews under 40. The move was presented as a way to consolidate Jewish programming across Montreal campuses. But over time, students say the shift has resulted in a rigid, top-down structure focused primarily on Israel advocacy, to the detriment of pluralistic Jewish life.
Hillel Montreal serves approximately 6,000 Jewish students at schools such as McGill and Concordia, Zimmerman said. “There’s different boards for each campus, different campus politics, different student bodies,” she explained, noting that each of these sub-groups fall under Hillel Montreal.
Other affiliated schools include John Abbott College, Dawson College, Marianopolis College and Vanier College. But Zimmerman says Hillel McGill does the majority of Jewish programming—such as organizing Shabbats and lunch and learns—for most Montreal campuses.
Currently, Hillel Montreal has no executive director and the post has been vacant for the entire school year. The organization is currently searching to fill the vacancy.
According to students, there has also been no staff educator with a focus on Jewish programming. This differs from other Hillel branches, which often have a Jewish educator on staff.
The process for hiring a new executive director has been, as Zimmerman put it, “dead in the water.” One Federation staffer, who officially works with the organization’s general advocacy, has been the liaison between Federation CJA staff and elected Hillel students, but Zimmerman says this staffer was placed into the position without proper support or alignment with the needs of the role.
Above: Students came on a 2022 episode of The CJN podcast ‘Bonjour Chai’ to voice similar concerns about Hillel Montreal.
A larger problem, Zimmerman says, is that there has been unreliable communication about fundraising initiatives and limited transparency about Hillel’s budget.
On Dec. 2, 2024, for instance, a fundraising email campaign, called Hillel Montreal Giving Tuesday, was sent out to the Jewish community in Montreal.
But, as Zimmerman said, Hillel students played no role in it.
The campaign, which requested donations, was branded as a Hillel Montreal fundraiser, with the organization’s logo at the top. “Hillel is more than just a place. It’s a home away from home for Jewish students. A hub for Jewish life,” said the email. “Our Hillel House is where students find belonging, support, and the tools they need to thrive and lead with pride in their Jewish identity.”
During her tenure as Hillel McGill president, Zimmerman said she had difficulty receiving funding to host Shabbat dinners from the Federation CJA, which holds all Hillel finances. She was hopeful that this fundraiser would financially enable more Jewish programming.
“I kept asking (a staffer), do we have some extra money from the Giving Tuesday campaign? And she was like, ‘No, none of that’s going to us… it’s all part of the broader Federation campaign.’”
Federation CJA declined to do an interview with The Canadian Jewish News and provided this statement: “Since October 7, Federation CJA has broadened its support for all Jewish student groups on campuses… particularly in the field of advocacy. Our investments include microgrants, leadership development, and Jewish programming…. We have increased resources to campus advocacy support without affecting the budgets for Jewish engagement.”
Federation CJA declined to comment on where the Giving Tuesday funds were allocated.
A former director of Hillel Montreal, who now works for another Jewish agency, also declined to comment for the story, referring The CJN back to Federation CJA.
Student life, or Israel advocacy?
The problem, Zimmerman says, comes down to priorities. The Federation would have no problem providing financial support for an Israel advocacy campaign, she says, such as bringing in a high-profile speaker—but all other support falls short.
Kosten offers a similar account. She joined the board shortly after Oct. 7, 2023, when antisemitic incidents on campus surged and she personally became the target of a smear campaign. Her home had been robbed, and despite that being the reason for her discomfort, rumors circulated that said she was unsafe living with her Palestinian Arab roommate—a distortion that quickly turned into campus-wide gossip. “It became a hotbed of antisemitic libel,” she says.
Since joining, Kosten, an international student from the United States, has encountered indifference from staff and ideological rigidity from the Federation. “They don’t care about the well-being of international students,” she says.
A deeper tension, both students argue, lies in the organization’s exclusion of non-local voices. Kosten says the Federation expressed a desire for the Hillel board to be made up of 80 percent Montrealers. “The local population goes home on Friday nights,” she says. “International students are the ones who need Shabbat dinners.”
She added, “I was told to my face by a staff member that Shabbat ‘isn’t really in the values we consider important’.”
She points to the handling of basic logistics: delays in approving events, barriers to accessing Hillel’s social media, and even difficulties ordering food. “We can’t post our own Shabbat dinner without going through them,” she says. “Meanwhile, an Israel advocacy event gets six posts and a full ad campaign overnight.”
The experience stands in sharp contrast to Hillel’s own stated mission: to be a home for all kinds of Jewish students.
This narrowing of Hillel’s mandate isn’t new. “If you didn’t buy into their brand of Israel activism, there wasn’t a place for you anymore,” said Avishai Infeld, a former Hillel participant, in a July 2022 episode of The CJN podcast Bonjour Chai.
“Hillel is kind of like Israel on campus with extra steps… There has to be some element of Israel or Zionism in every single event.”
Students say this has become increasingly true after Oct. 7.
What Zimmerman and Kosten want, they say, isn’t radical. Hire an executive director. Provide reliable staff. Offer budget transparency and allow students to run their own programming. Bring back pluralism.
“If (the Federation was more) invested,” Zimmerman says, “Hillel (Montreal) wouldn’t look like it does now.” She mentions that most of the staff have left the organization throughout the last year.
Whether that shift will happen remains to be seen. But for now, many students feel that Hillel Montreal has lost touch with its mission—and with the students it was meant to serve.
Stringent social media
One of the specific problems, Hillel Montreal students say, is an inability to access their organization’s social media accounts. “Any time we want to promote an event, there’s a whole chain of command we need to get approval from,” Zimmerman said.
But how does that differ from other Hillel branches?
According to Jay Solomon, the chief advancement officer of Hillel Ontario, “Hillel Ontario’s social media accounts are managed by our professional team and we work in partnership with the more than 230 student leaders elected to our various boards across the province.”
Solomon says elected students and the professional team work together to decide what content to share on social platforms.
Zimmerman says Hillel is an essential access point for Jewish identity, and that programming needs to be about more than combating hate and Israel education.
“We need to help Jewish students feel like they belong here,” she said. “Not just politically, but spiritually and culturally as well. Hillel (Montreal) could be so much more than what it is.”
