Sernovitz told Golomb that there was a concern over the Marcus Foundation, a major donor to Hillels of Georgia, cutting its funding if it learned of her engagement to Stein, Golomb said. The family foundation of Bernie Marcus, the late Republican megadonor and Trump supporter, gave $1.1 million to Hillels of Georgia in 2024, around a third of the nonprofit’s annual budget, and the Emory Hillel building bears the Marcus family name. Weeks before Golomb’s firing, the Marcus Foundation had announced a $27 million grant to Hillel International, the Washington, DC-based umbrella group for local Hillel chapters.

The foundation could not be reached for comment about whether it would have cut off Hillels of Georgia had it learned about Golomb’s engagement to Stein.

Hillel has long applied strict speech codes to the student groups and programs it allows into its buildings, banning groups and speakers that support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, or that “deny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.” Stein, however, had no role or involvement with the Emory Hillel. “I don’t think that Sam’s politics are relevant to my job, and they’re certainly not relevant to my ability to do the job that they hired me to do,” Golomb said.

Chaim Seidler-Feller, a rabbi who was director of the Hillel at UCLA for four decades and is now its director emeritus, told Jewish Currents on Thursday that he was not aware of any history of Hillel limiting the political speech of a rabbi’s spouse. He called the firing “an act of political cancellation and intolerance.”

Golomb is not an anti-occupation activist. She said that she has spent significant time in Israel, feels a “deep sense of connection to the land of Israel,” and has relationships with people across the political spectrum. She’s only appeared on Stein’s Instagram a handful of times, in personal posts—one announcing their engagement, another with photos from a wedding they attended together. Emory Hillel had told her before she was hired that Israel and Zionism are a significant part of the organization’s ethos, and that part of her job would be supporting Zionist students. “That’s something I was prepared to do,” she said.

At the meeting on August 3rd, Sernovitz told Golomb that she would not be receiving severance pay. Her health insurance expired at the end of that month.

In response to a list of questions from Jewish Currents, Sernovitz said that Hillels of Georgia would not comment on what he termed a personnel matter. “We can state clearly that this employment decision was made in accordance with federal and state law and violated no governmental or organizational policy,” he said. “It was made for legitimate, work-related reasons and in accordance with our policies.” When asked if those reasons extended beyond Golomb’s relationship with Stein, Sernovitz did not respond.

As southern colleges have pushed in recent years to attract Jewish families concerned that elite northeastern campuses are unwelcoming to Zionist students, Hillels of Georgia has emerged as a particularly enthusiastic combatant in the campus wars over Israel and antisemitism. The group’s legal counsel, Mark Goldfeder, is a prominent pro-Israel legal activist; through the National Jewish Advocacy Center (NJAC), of which he is CEO, he has sued the Park Slope Food Coop over its boycott of Israeli goods, and The New York Times over its coverage of the war in Gaza. In 2020, Jewish Currents reported that Hillels of Georgia had hired the evangelical, anti-abortion, and anti-gay legal nonprofit the American Center for Law and Justice to file a federal complaint accusing Georgia Tech of ignoring antisemitic activity on its campus. As part of a settlement in 2021, Georgia Tech encouraged members of its community to learn about the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel. In 2024, Hillels of Georgia publicly backed the successful effort to enshrine the IHRA definition in state law in Georgia.

Hillels of Georgia has now left Golomb in a precarious situation. “I was appalled, to say the least, that Hillel would treat her like this,” said Abby Kelman, an attorney who specializes in working with rabbis and other Jewish professionals, and who Golomb retained after being fired. “I was shocked that in 2026 any person, let alone a woman, would be fired for what a partner said.”

Through Kelman, Golomb asked Hillels of Georgia for severance pay, an extension on her health insurance, and additional coverage of her moving expenses. Kelman said that Golomb had been an at-will employee, and that Hillels of Georgia was within its legal rights to terminate her. “I understood where we were on the law,” Kelman said. “I said, ‘I’m not arguing the law here, I’m arguing, really, this is what you do to a young rabbi?’”

Kelman said that the organization eventually offered six weeks’ salary, which she and Golomb thought was insufficient, and which they did not accept.

Golomb said that her experiences at her campus Hillel as an undergraduate were part of what made her want to become a rabbi. “I have always been really passionate about providing that experience for other young Jews, and just making Jewish learning accessible to people,” she said.

Now, instead of working as a campus rabbi this fall, Golomb is unemployed. “I moved here for a job, not knowing anyone,” she said. “I worked for only a month. I was not fired because of anything that I did. We’re now in a city where we don’t really have community yet, and neither of us are employed.”