Inside the UCLA Hillel building, behind the door of the first
office on the left, is a slim man with wiry gray hair and bright
eyes behind thin-rimmed glasses. He sits at an oval conference
table in a room with wall-to-wall, ceiling-high bookcases full of
Jewish literature. With a sly New York accent, he notes that the
books make up a mere third of his collection; at home he has many
more, some more than 2,000 years old passed down to him by his
great-great-grandfather. This is Rabbi Chaim Seidler-Feller. The
head of UCLA Hillel is a man described as “energetic,”
“dedicated” and “brilliant” by his friends
and overtly left-wing and politically driven by dissenters. He is a
visible figure both on campus and in the surrounding Westwood
community. He has become more visible after an incident two weeks
ago, during which he allegedly assaulted freelance journalist
Rachel Neuwirth following a presentation by Harvard law professor
Alan Dershowitz. Seidler-Feller along with the entire Hillel staff
has declined to comment on the incident, but the rabbi offered an
in-depth look at how he became who he is today. That person is a
prominent Jewish leader preaching a unique message of integration,
tolerance and learning, a multi-faceted philosophy many years in
the making. Â The road to Hillel Born in 1947, Seidler-Feller
grew up in Brooklyn, N.Y., in a predominantly immigrant
neighborhood. His father had left Poland in the mid-1920s and his
mother left Germany about a decade later. Seidler-Feller attended
boys’ Jewish day schools throughout his primary education,
learning about American culture along the way. “Living in
America as a Jew became, in this sort of seamless outlook, a
question of how to operationalize principles of justice that were
shared by Judaism and American democratic teachings,”
Seidler-Feller said. Nonetheless, his Jewish identity was a huge
part of his life. He recalls going to a Jewish summer camp in
Pennsylvania at which Hebrew was the only language spoken, joking
they would call it “Israel in the Pocono Mountains.”
For Seidler-Feller, life growing up in the United States as an
immigrant is best explained by a picture of four 1951 Dodgers on
his wall, including Sandy Koufax and Jackie Robinson. The players
all wore blue and white uniforms, but are a spectrum of unique
histories underneath. “The Dodgers were the immigrant team;
they were the inclusive team. The Yankees wore pinstripes, they
were corporate,” Seidler-Feller said. The baseball team was
an important model for the lives of Seidler-Feller and his friends.
The players represented all different religious and racial
backgrounds ““ most notably Robinson as the first black player
in the league and Koufax as a prominent Jew ““ but all were
connected by their U.S. citizenship. “At the same time that I
was in a home that was very Jewish religiously, being an American
was an elemental part of our identity, and one didn’t sense a
contradiction,” he said. This integration of cultures was
central to Seidler-Feller’s life. A marriage between modern
American culture and Judaism is not without conflict,
Seidler-Feller said, but he simply saw being an American Jew as
“natural.” “That’s the gift of
America,” he said. “I don’t have to choose one or
the other.” Seidler-Feller left for Israel in 1968 to
study and begin his ordination as a rabbi. After spending six
months overseas, he returned to the United States and attended
Yeshiva University, completing his ordination in 1971 and receiving
a master’s degree in Rabbinic Literature. He became rabbi of
an orthodox synagogue and director of Ohio State University’s
Hillel before moving to the West Coast in 1975 to become director
of UCLA Hillel.
“I have the questions” Seidler-Feller tells the
story of two rabbis standing on opposite street corners, one
proclaiming, “Come to me, I have the answers.” He said
he likes to think of himself as the other rabbi, the one who says,
“Come to me, I have the questions.” He sees his life as
a continuing education, one that was shaped largely by his parents
and a few influential teachers. For the past 20 years,
Seidler-Feller has also returned to the Shalom Harman Institute in
Jerusalem for a few weeks every summer to study. “What I
learned was to hear many voices and to encourage the expression of
many voices,” he said. Kenneth Reinhard, director of the UCLA
Center for Jewish Studies, sees those teachings reflected in the
rabbi’s life to this day. “In every situation
I’ve seen him, he’s been very courteous and restrained.
He’s passionate but never obstinate,” Reinhard said.
Even though he leads a religious organization, politics are
inherently a part of his job description. “Hillel means by
definition that I’m cast into a position where I’m
forced to interact with those who oppose what I think,”
Seidler-Feller said. “I’m aware of those differences
and I accept those differences.” Many students see his
political views as liberal in regards to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict in the Middle East. “When it comes to spirituality,
he’s a strong leader with a faithful following. When it comes
to politics, he tends to be a controversial figure,” said
Bruins for Israel President Ross Neihaus, who said he believes
Seidler-Feller tends to be left wing politically. Tami Reiss, a
fourth-year physiological science student, sees him as more in the
middle of the political spectrum. “He’s always willing
to discuss. He isn’t the kind of person who makes a political
statement,” Reiss said. “He’s responding to what
he knows, and he knows a lot,” she added. David Hakimfar,
another BFI member, has a more critical view of the Seidler-Feller,
even suggesting his position as head of Hillel is inappropriate
because of his views. “He belongs in a synagogue, not in
university,” Hakimfar said. Seidler-Feller, however, has a
different view of politics. “Part of the reason I came to
Hillel is I didn’t want to be labeled,” said
Seidler-Feller, calling his designation by some as
“left” a “superficial political
characterization.” To him, the conflict isn’t about
politics, it’s about one “central religious
question.” “How do we juggle the tension between
morality and power?” Seidler-Feller asked. A leader of 3,700
Jewish students on campus and others in the surrounding Jewish
community, Seidler-Feller specifically wants to promote learning
and pluralism, the acceptance of a wide variety of views on campus.
“I am the image that people look up to,” he said.
“The expectations are that I stand firm in my support for
Jewish ideals and for the Jewish political agenda. “At the
same time, I feel that I must, in this position of responsibility,
reach out a human hand so that a cooperative and mutually
respective relationship exists between Jews and others on
campus.” He explained that his ultimate goal is not to take a
political stand but to develop an environment of respectful
criticism so members of the community can engage current political
issues, a goal shaped by years of learning experiences.
A boundary crosser “Obviously he takes this very much to
heart. His first concern is not for himself but for the students
and Hillel,” said Laurie Levenson, a professor at Loyola Law
School and the Seidler-Feller’s friend of 25 years. Both the
entire Hillel staff and Seidler-Feller have declined to discuss the
alleged incident concerning Neuwirth, citing the ongoing
investigation and a possible civil lawsuit from Neuwirth. The
district attorney dropped criminal assault charges against
Seidler-Feller last week. Neuwirth, a resident of Los Angeles, was
born and raised in Israel and says her experiences make her
passionate about issues in the Middle East. “I’ve come
to the defensive truth,” said Neuwirth. “I am very
saddened by the Arab world’s willingness to scapegoat
Israel.” Seidler-Feller had been talking with a group of
anti-Israeli demonstrators outside the event when Neuwirth
approached him. “He happens to hold political views I might
add similar to my own that are out of fashion in the local Jewish
community, making him a lightning rod for attention,” said
history professor David Myers. Still, the reaction to the incident
among the UCLA Jewish community has largely been one of shock.
“He’s an extremely gentle person. … (Violence) is not
in character (for him) at all,” Reinhard said. In the face of
recent events, years of learning and experience guide
Seidler-Feller as he lives by the same philosophies he held when he
was a Jewish boy in Brooklyn. “By nature, I’m a
boundary crosser,” Seidler-Feller said. “I would like
to demonstrate how the other and I are one.” With reports
from Jennifer Murphy, Bruin Contributor.