Jewish students from colleges and universities throughout North Carolina will be heading to Elon University on September 5 for their biennial leadership retreat. The retreat is sponsored by North Carolina’s Statewide Hillel and Elon Hillel. Or Mars, Director of the Wexner Graduate Fellowship/Davidson Scholars Program and former Executive Director of North Carolina Hillel from 2000 to 2006, will be the keynote speaker. The retreat will focus on leadership themes. Rachel Stanley, Elon sophomore and an Elon Hillel Board member, is Elon's representative on the statewide planning committee. Nancy Luberoff, Elon Hillel Campus Director, will lead one of the workshops. Funding for the retreat has been provided by Hillel International Soref "Small and Mighty" division.

Events leading up to Commencement 2010 take place this week as Elon prepares to graduate its 120th undergraduate class, its MBA and Elon Law class, and its inaugural class in the iMedia graduate program. Activities for seniors start May 18, with a class picnic, an evening gala, receptions and dinners on the agenda.

Thirteen Elon students have been selected to participate in a free 10-day trip to Israel this summer through Taglit-Birthright Israel.

One by one, the names were read aloud, a remembrance – and a prayer – to victims of the Holocaust who in many cases left no record they ever lived. The “Reading of the Names” event organized by Elon Hillel and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life on Monday gave the community a moment to reflect on a genocide seven decades ago that took the lives of 6 million people.

Four Elon students were selected to participate in a free 10-day trip to Israel during the December break through Taglit-Birthright Israel.

Eden Avraham-Katz, a sophomore from Greensboro, N.C., has received a 2009-2010 Grinspoon Israel Advocacy Internship, making Elon University one of 35 campuses nationwide to host a paid intern who will help coordinate pro-Israel programs in the coming year.

Elon University Hillel and its director, Nancy Luberoff, have been selected to take part in the Small and Mighty Campuses of Excellence II, an initiative sponsored by Hillel international to enhance experiences for Jewish students on smaller campuses.