Reuben Persey, UJS Leadership Fellow 2024/25 writes about this year's opening seminar.

On Sunday, I was honoured to join UJS for the first seminar of the 2024/2025 UJS Leadership Fellowship, along with 33 inspiring Jewish student leaders. It was an amazing start to the fellowship, setting the tone for the next 8 months.

We started off the day in small processing groups, run by UJS sabs, discussing what leadership is and how we understand it in different contexts. One of the ideas that my group discussed is the distinction between leadership as representing and leadership as guiding.

We then had a session on mapping the Jewish community, with Andrew Gilbert, the Vice President of the Board of Deputies. One of the many particularly interesting points was the challenge that Jewish communal organisations face of deciding whether to focus funding and efforts on Jewish communities that are shrinking or that are growing.

This was followed by lunch of pizza and chips (and salads for us vegans!) along with some time to chat with the rest of the fellows.

Next was a Q&A session with Sami Berkoff (current President of UJS) and Nina Freedman (former President of UJS). It was such a great opportunity to hear a former President speak about the challenges of representing 9000 Jewish students just after the Covid pandemic. Nina gave us lots of really valuable advice, especially on planning a reasonable approach to dealing with people you disagree with.

Finally, UJS ran a session on their Model of Outstanding Jewish Student Leadership. It’s an important framework that will guide our development as leaders over the next few months!

Overall, the seminar was a fantastic introduction to the Fellowship, and demonstrated already the value that the seminar will have!