Ella Cooperman said that her purpose — and her profession — is to create, advance and celebrate Jewish joy.
As director of student life at the University of Pennsylvania Hillel, Cooperman said that joy matters more than ever right now. She has seen firsthand the uneasy dynamic between Jewish college students and their non-Jewish counterparts that exists on many campuses nowadays.
Cooperman said that, while things have gotten better in the last 12 months, this time last year was the most difficult stretch of her professional career.
“I didn’t have a single conversation that omitted [the war],” she said. “It was the entire semester. Penn is usually a very safe place to be Jewish, but students were dealing with comments from their professors or other students. Coaching students on how to deal with antisemitism had never been on my radar before this.”
The Hillel has had to pivot in its programming in response to the current political and social climate, and Cooperman said that much of the organization’s mission is now centered around helping Penn Jews be proud to be Jewish. This is a tall task, but Cooperman thinks she is up for it.
As a child at Jewish summer camp, Cooperman decided early on that she wanted her career to be similar to the mission and feeling of the leadership roles she had at camp. She worked in administration after heading different groups of campers, but she missed the interactions with young people.
“I really missed the direct Jewish education, community building, relationships and mentorship that you get working at the camp. I spoke to the Hillel director where I was an undergrad, and she told me to work at Hillel,” Cooperman said.
The Marlboro, New Jersey, native, who graduated from a joint program under Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary, was hired by Penn Hillel in January 2022. She started as manager of student engagement before being promoted to her current post in July 2023.
Much of what she does is check in with and help students.
“I start a lot of days with a coffee chat with a student,” she said. “Maybe it’s a freshman who I am getting to know, or an upperclassman who I am close with and checking in with.”
Cooperman also runs a fellowship class in the evenings and leads the occasional trip for Hillel students. She supervises one employee and meets with them and Hillel leadership throughout the week.
Cooperman said she loves the role. Being a young person has helped her work to gain the trust of students who attend Hillel, although sometimes initial interactions come with caution from undergrads.
“When I meet students for the first time, even freshmen, sometimes they are confused if I am a student or a grown-up, or what my role is here,” she said, adding with a laugh that, “Sometimes the freshman are like, ‘Do we not talk about parties in front of the Hillel staff?’”
Cooperman said that, in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023, it has been hard to see communities that she loves become so vehemently anti-Israel and antisemitic. As a graduate of Columbia and someone who works at Penn, some of the most abhorrent protests have come at places Cooperman considers to be like a second home. She still, however, considers the students at both universities to be generally safe thanks to the community behind them.
“At Penn and Columbia, there are really strong Hillels and Jewish communities. I know from when I was at Columbia — and from what I have heard from Penn students — that they just feel so lucky to have a building to come to and feel safe at,” she said. “I almost worry more about a school that might have smaller encampments, but also a smaller Jewish community.”
Cooperman said that, while things have gotten better since last year, her programming is still largely centered around Oct. 7 and the aftermath. Last year, she decided that it was silly to try to pretend that anyone wanted to talk about anything else.
“I teach our leadership board seminar, and halfway through the year, I basically scrapped all the lessons and rewrote them. Nobody wanted to talk about anything else, and we can’t have a fun conversation about Jewish leadership when everyone is upset and scared. So we pivoted to having conversations about Israel,” Cooperman said.
Things remain tenuous in Israel and on college campuses, but Cooperman said that overall she is optimistic.
“It’s the dominating thing still, but students are talking about their everyday lives, too. This year has been a lot better than last year,” she said.
