Recipe for A Mensch’s Guide to Campus Activism

1   Orthodox Jewish Student
1   Conservative Jewish Student
1   Reform Jewish Student
3   Cubicles (without windows)
27  Lewis Summer Interns

Dress your college students in business casual clothing and drop them into the windowless cubicles at the Jewish Federation building at 30 South Wells Street. Sprinkle them liberally with other Lewis Summer Interns.

Dearest Readers:

The Mensch’s Guide isn’t a cookbook. But you could say we followed a recipe to publish it.

The magazine is divided into sections that address Activism, Intergroup Relations, Israel, Philanthropy, and Jewish Life. We designed the publication to help college students become active on campus and connect their Judaism to worldly issues.

Take the Mensch’s Guide to college and use it as a resource to help you discover what you can accomplish outside of the classroom. Maybe you would like to start an interfaith dorm, plan a Black-Jewish seder, or make your campus more environmentally friendly.

Good luck!

Lauren Levy l-levy@northwestern.edu 
Lauren Mangurten Lmangur2@uiuc.edu 
Adam Palmer ampalmer@uchicago.edu 

P.S. If you’re not going to college, please give the Mensch’s Guide to someone who is.

Recipe addendum

1 Executive Editor

Leave him in his office, humor him with occasional visits, show him the copy, but make sure he lets the interns do their thing.

The idea for the Mensch’s Guide struck me while serving on an advisory board for Schmooze, a terrifically interesting magazine produced by students at Northwestern University through the auspices of the Louis & Saerree Fiedler Hillel. Might such talent and energy be channeled to produce a small publication about activism on campus?

Although JUF News typically hires one intern during the summer and occasionally hires two interns, the idea to hire three students must have struck during a fit of mania. “Oh my God,” I gasped in a fit of panic. “What am I going to do with those three? And two of them are named Lauren! What was I thinking!”

As it happened, Adam, Lauren, and Lauren clicked. And clacked. And clicked some more. They turned the fifth floor of 30 South Wells on its head as they schmoozed, brainstormed, researched, and wrote. A funnier and more compatible group of people I’d never met.

Works for me, this Mensch’s Guide. I hope it works for you.

Aaron B. Cohen aaroncohen@juf.org 
Executive Editor
JUF News

	Lauren Mangurten is a News-Editorial major and an English minor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. She was a staff writer at the Daily Illini during her sophomore year, and she is working as a copy editor her junior year. Lauren is an active member of Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority, where she wrote the newsletter for fall 2006. In her free time, she enjoys reading and playing tennis. She is a little obsessed with “Gilmore Girls.”
	Adam Palmer is a sophomore at the University of Chicago. His major and minor are officially undecided, but unofficially awesome. If you ever see him around, you should ask him to teach you how to juggle and unicycle at the same time (it’s all in the hips). Adam enjoys jogging at night and brushing his teeth by holding the toothbrush still and moving his head really fast.
	Lauren Levy is a junior at Northwestern University. She is majoring in journalism and minoring in Spanish. When she is not writing articles for the Daily Northwestern and JUF News, she can be spotted playing Frisbee, guitar, watching movies, eating or hanging out with her friends. She enjoys listening to music and has a rather random obsession with superheroes. In fact, she wishes she was one, and most of her friends and family are well aware of it.