{"id":649192,"date":"2026-10-17T11:36:21","date_gmt":"2026-10-17T11:36:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/649192\/"},"modified":"2026-10-17T11:36:21","modified_gmt":"2026-10-17T11:36:21","slug":"emory-hillel-fired-its-rabbi-over-her-fiances-criticism-of-israel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/649192\/","title":{"rendered":"Emory Hillel Fired its Rabbi Over Her Fianc\u00e9\u2019s Criticism of Israel"},"content":{"rendered":"

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\u2019s annual budget, and the Emory Hillel building\u00a0bears<\/a> the Marcus family name. Weeks before Golomb\u2019s firing, the Marcus Foundation had\u00a0announced<\/a> a $27 million grant to Hillel International, the Washington, DC-based umbrella group for local Hillel chapters.<\/p>\n

The foundation could not be reached for comment about whether it would have cut off Hillels of Georgia had it learned about Golomb\u2019s engagement to Stein.<\/p>\n

Hillel has long applied strict speech codes to the student groups and programs it allows into its buildings,\u00a0banning<\/a> groups and speakers that support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement, or that \u201cdeny the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish and democratic state.\u201d Stein, however, had no role or involvement with the Emory Hillel. \u201cI don\u2019t think that Sam\u2019s politics are relevant to my job, and they\u2019re certainly not relevant to my ability to do the job that they hired me to do,\u201d Golomb said.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s spouse. He called the firing \u201can act of political cancellation and intolerance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Golomb is not an anti-occupation activist. She said that she has spent significant time in Israel, feels a \u201cdeep sense of connection to the land of Israel,\u201d and has relationships with people across the political spectrum. She\u2019s only appeared on Stein\u2019s Instagram a handful of times, in personal posts\u2014one 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\u2019s ethos, and that part of her job would be supporting Zionist students. \u201cThat\u2019s something I was prepared to do,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

In response to a list of questions from\u00a0Jewish Currents, Sernovitz said that Hillels of Georgia would not comment on what he termed a personnel matter. \u201cWe can state clearly that this employment decision was made in accordance with federal and state law and violated no governmental or organizational policy,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was made for legitimate, work-related reasons and in accordance with our policies.\u201d When asked if those reasons extended beyond Golomb\u2019s relationship with Stein, Sernovitz did not respond.<\/p>\n

As southern colleges have\u00a0pushed<\/a> 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\u2019s 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\u00a0sued<\/a> the Park Slope Food Coop over its\u00a0boycott<\/a> of Israeli goods, and\u00a0The New York Times over its\u00a0coverage<\/a> of the war in Gaza. In 2020, Jewish Currents\u00a0reported<\/a> that Hillels of Georgia had\u00a0hired<\/a> the evangelical, anti-abortion, and\u00a0anti-gay<\/a> 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\u00a0encouraged members of its community to learn about<\/a> the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism with criticism of Israel. In 2024, Hillels of Georgia\u00a0publicly<\/a>\u00a0backed<\/a> the successful effort to enshrine the IHRA definition in state law in Georgia.<\/p>\n

Hillels of Georgia has now left Golomb in a precarious situation. \u201cI was appalled, to say the least, that Hillel would treat her like this,\u201d said Abby Kelman, an attorney who specializes in working with rabbis and other Jewish professionals, and who Golomb retained after being fired. \u201cI was shocked that in 2026 any person, let alone a woman, would be fired for what a partner said.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\u00a0at-will employee<\/a>, and that Hillels of Georgia was within its legal rights to terminate her. \u201cI understood where we were on the law,\u201d Kelman said. \u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m not arguing the law here, I\u2019m arguing, really, this is what you do to a young rabbi?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelman said that the organization eventually offered six weeks\u2019 salary, which she and Golomb thought was insufficient, and which they did not accept.<\/p>\n

Golomb said that her experiences at her campus Hillel as an undergraduate were part of what made her want to become a rabbi. \u201cI have always been really passionate about providing that experience for other young Jews, and just making Jewish learning accessible to people,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Now, instead of working as a campus rabbi this fall, Golomb is unemployed. \u201cI moved here for a job, not knowing anyone,\u201d she said. \u201cI worked for only a month. I was not fired because of anything that I did. We\u2019re now in a city where we don\u2019t really have community yet, and neither of us are employed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sernovitz told Golomb that there was a concern over the Marcus Foundation, a major donor to Hillels of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649193,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[85,46,43],"class_list":["post-649192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-israel","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649192","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649192"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649192\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}