The UJS Leadership Fellowship 2023-24 began with an opening seminar with brilliant guest speakers. 

On Sunday 4th February, forty emerging Jewish student leaders from across the UK and Ireland came together for the Opening Seminar of the UJS Leadership Fellowship. The students made up the Fellowship’s first ever cohort, having been chosen from nearly one hundred applicants from up and down the country. The fellowship, split into a community track and a political track, will contribute to the future of the Jewish community, providing leadership development opportunities for promising leaders of student communities.

The Fellowship’s Opening Seminar gave the inaugural cohort of fellows the opportunity to meet each other, and provided a framework for the remainder of the Fellowship. Fellows arrived and ate breakfast together, before taking part in icebreaker activities relating to leadership. Participants were introduced to each others’ leadership journeys and traits, and then took part in a ‘speed-dating’ task to get to know their cohort.

In the afternoon, the fellows had the opportunity to learn from a variety of Jewish leaders. Over a bagel and sushi lunch, they learned about Israel engagement and digital campaigning from Hen Mazzig, one of the Jewish world’s most well-known left-wing Israel advocates and a social media star.

The cohort then split into political and community tracks. Fellows on the political track heard from Josh Nagli, who is a civil servant at the Department for Transport and was UJS Campaigns Director from 2015 until 2017. During Josh’s time at UJS, he led the organisation’s political response to antisemitism in the NUS and the beginning of Labour’s antisemitism crisis. Meanwhile, fellows on the community track heard from Adam Overlander-Kaye, who is Director of Development at the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. Adam told fellows about his journey through the Jewish community, and his experiences working in a variety of Jewish organisations.

The seminar concluded with a session with Gabriel Pogrund, Whitehall Editor of the Sunday Times. Gabriel spoke to the fellows about his experiences breaking national political stories, and gave the fellows tips about how to ask the right questions to speakers at future seminars.

Students left the Opening Seminar excited for the remainder of the Fellowship, including trips to Northern Ireland and to Israel, where they will have the opportunity to further develop their skills, equipping them with important experiences to be the future leaders of the Jewish community and beyond.