The groundbreaking for the Marcus Hillel Center, scheduled to be completed and open in the summer of 2009, began on Sunday as Jewish students and members of the Atlanta Jewish community crowded around.

The accompanying ceremony consisted of speeches by Emory Hillel leaders, University President James W. Wagner, Jewish students and philanthropist Bernie Marcus, the namesake of the building.

The Center will serve as a center for Jewish life at Emory and headquarters for Hillels of Georgia and will include facilities such as a lounge and café, conference facilities and student meeting and work spaces.

Marcus, co-founder of The Home Depot and this year’s Commencement speaker, donated a $3 million challenge grant to fund the Center. The conditions of the grant include a requirement that Emory Hillel raise $3 million in addition to Marcus’ contribution.

With the new Hillel Center, Marcus hopes to give students a “place to go for Friday night services.”

“Programs that aren’t done now, we’ll be able to do,” he added.

Hillel Director Michael Rabkin agreed and said the Center will be a “gathering place for all students to hang out, spend time with friends, meet new people and experience Jewish celebrations, Jewish culture.”

Marcus expressed concern for the current generation of students who, he said, are “losing the ability to talk to each other” due to new technology such as text messaging.

“I hope that Hillel will take the place of those text messages,” he said.
Rabbi Albert Slomovitz, a member of Marcus’s extended family and assistant professor of history at Kennesaw State University, began the ceremony.

Slomovitz said that the center will strengthen Jewish students’ connection to their faith, but he hopes non-Jews will visit the Center as well.

“For non-Jews, I hope the center will be an oasis of learning, dialogue and interfaith awareness,” he said.

College senior Stacy Barron, creater of Emory’s graduate Hillel, also spoke and said she witnessed an impressive growth in Hillel while at Emory.

For Jewish students, Barron said, the center will be a “Jewish home on campus.”

President James Wagner said that this religious mixture was “perfectly appropriate” for a liberal arts, religiously diverse school.

He said Emory is a unique university in its “rubbing of religious and cultural elbows” where members of numerous religions pray alongside each other.

The Center is an example of Emory’s commitment to fostering religious life, Wagner added.

A few Georgia Tech students who attended the ceremony said they plan to attend services at the center once it opens.

“I am happy that Emory is getting a nice center for Jewish life,” Jon Jaury, a member of the Jewish Student Union of Georgia Tech Hillel, said. He said he hopes that Georgia Tech will follow suit.

— Contact Christina White