Um, thanks for asking that question, John. It was a lot of 16-hour days in the beginning. Um, you know, none of us really knew where it was going to go or what was going to happen, but with such an incredible atrocity, against the I mean, what Hamas did was really we I'd never seen anything like that in my lifetime trying to figure out how we could possibly respond to something like that. The first and foremost thing that was important to us was students' safety. Their physical safety, their emotional safety, their psychological safety. Um, so we immediately added hours to our security budget. Um, you know, usually we'd have a non-uniformed security officer who was always here for Passover, was always here for high holidays. Anytime we had the whole community coming or a larger event, we would have a security officer. But now it was going to be every, every Friday night. Um, the number of parents and students who called and asked if there was going to be security outside our building. That first Shabbat was record numbers. Um, you know, with the demonstrations from the Students for Justice in Palestine national organization, our chapter here at the University of Washington is called SUPER. It's Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return. Um, and they were very well organized at a national level to come onto campuses and demonstrate and cry out for all of the things that are very important on their agenda. And it was important for us to have the Jewish students for whom that was really challenging to listen to, to know that they, you know, as soon as we knew that something was happening on campus, there were a few things that we would do. We would check in with the UW Police Department and make sure that they knew that was happening. Um, I have a warm relationship with President Karzai. And so I would text her and say, This is happening. She would say, Thank you for letting me know. I've alerted all the people. She would bring it right up to the attorney general. Um, because Has, you know, coming onto campus and saying whatever you want to say. It often falls. Hate speech falls under protected speech. And so her hands were a little bit tied as the president of a public university. She couldn't stop them from coming onto campus, excuse me, onto campus, or stop them from saying certain things. But if there were ever a direct threat, she wanted to make sure that the UW Police Department was right there. Um, so we would send emails out to our student population and let them know that it was happening, so that they were not caught unaware. Um, and then we opened our building. Right. So we, um, instead of having a Hillel, you know, Hillel is always open during the day, but we very intentionally, uh, staffed it up. We asked Leah Jaffe, who's our chef, to make a huge pot of matzo ball soup. That first week, we invited board members to bake and bring in cookies or whatever, and if they had a dog that they could bring it in for a little pet therapy. Um, so those first couple of weeks, we really had a lot of students in the building just here to study. They didn't want to be on campus at the libraries. They just wanted a safer place. We had 80 students in the building that first day who just normally don't come by Hillel during the day, because many of our activities are at night. Um, we have a lot of people who regularly come here to study now. Um, so the building is busier than it normally is. Um, so more security, more food, truly more food. Um, we budgeted for about 60 to 65 students to join us every Friday night for Shabbat dinner. And now we're seeing 85 to 100 every week. Um, and then the other thing we're very lucky to have is a counselor on our staff. Um, and so we increased her hours as well, so that any student who needed access to a clinical therapist would have that, um, very lucky to have Rabbi Lauren Kurland on my team as well, who does pastoral care. Um, so anything we can do to help support and lift up, and just provide resources for the students. And then at the same time as we were doing this locally, Hillel International was really stepping into some incredible partnerships, which they don't normally do. So they partnered with the Brandeis Center and with the National ADL, Anti-Defamation League, and they created a really incredible training opportunity for close to 200 attorneys now who were giving of their time free to be a resource to students on campus. If a professor were to say something or try to figure out, even though we all know that hate speech is technically covered under free speech. If enough hate speech incidents are happening so that you really can't do your job, and as a student, your job is to be able to attend class to study and to take your midterm and write your paper. If enough incidents happened that you can't take care of your responsibilities, you can file a Title VII lawsuit against the university. And so these attorneys have all been trained to talk through with students what that might look like, should they need that? Um, and so that's been an international has been incredible. They also did some national fundraising so that they could provide immediate grant opportunities to Hillels across the country who needed additional security, who needed additional whatever. It was that additional staff, I mean, the number of programs running right now is significant. Um, just because students need different things and we want to be able to provide them.
