Intern Spotlight: Emily Anschultz
Emily Anschultz found a part of her she didn’t even know she was missing when she started coming to Hillel 818. She said, “ I come from Santa Clarita where there’s not really a lot of Jewish people so being in an area where there are a lot of Jews who have similar family stories and similar backgrounds, it’s just nice and refreshing. Until you’re involved in a Jewish community you don’t really understand what you’re missing.”
She first found out about Hillel when she was in high school about to go to college, saying, “When I was in high school going into college my high school counselor and I were very close and she knew that I was ethnically Jewish. She said, ‘Hey, have you ever heard about Hillel?’ to which I said, ‘Never heard of it.’ It was still when I was deciding where I was going to go. She then said ‘Well it’s a really cool thing that’s on a lot of college campuses and you could go and learn more about your culture, your background, and your heritage.’ So I followed the Hillel 818 instagram and then it was Max who reached out to me and invited me to the first event of the school year last year. I went to that, met a bunch of people, and it was really fun. I enjoyed it and then going forward when I saw posts on instagram or Max would reach out to me I started to go to more events and then I got super involved.”
This year, Emily decided to dive in even deeper to the Hillel 818 world and become a Development Intern, wanting to be a part of the growth and changes coming to Hillel. When discussing why she’s excited to be an intern, she said, “I’m really excited about all of the changes that are happening. The new building, all of the new staff members, getting to meet everyone and see what Matt has been trying to do is really cool. Everyone he’s hired has been amazing, I feel like I’ve really bonded with all of the new staff members so having the opportunity to work with them, make a difference in the community, and be involved; it means a lot to me that Hille 818 offers that opportunity and the responsibility and feeling like I’m actually involved in Hillel behind the scenes that’s been really cool and exciting for me because it helps me going forward in my career and gives me more experience working with people.”
Interning for Hillel 818 is also her way of giving back to the community that helped build her Jewish identity and supported her during the pandemic, saying, “Especially with the pandemic last year, if it weren’t for Hillel I probably wouldn’t have made any friends at all in college because I was completely online. Hillel was really a place for me to go and meet people and make friends. Even if it weren’t for the pandemic I still feel it would have been a great place for me to go because it can be hard to make friends in classes but Hillel makes it so that it’s easy to find people with common interests and people of all different backgrounds. You’re able to really find people you actually want to hang out with. I wasn’t raised around other Jewish people so now that I am involved in Jewish life and the Jewish community I think ‘Whoa, where was this my whole life?!’”
