The sun sets over Jerusalem’s majestic hills, and a drone appears overhead. As it begins to descend, it is greeted by dozens of staff, faculty, and friends of the Jerusalem College of Technology who are celebrating the groundbreaking of its new Tal Campus for Women.
The drone, operated by FlyTech, a start-up launched by two JCT alums, contains a dedication scroll celebrating the new building, a facility that has been over two decades in the making.
The emcee for the evening was one of the primary figures responsible for making this dream of a state-of-the-art hi-tech campus for women a reality.
“The Tal Campus is something we’ve been talking about for 20 years.”
Stuart Hershkowitz
“The Tal Campus is something we’ve been talking about for 20 years,” Stuart Hershkowitz, vice president of JCT, tells The Jerusalem Report.
When he sat on the school’s Board of Trustees, Hershkowitz had become increasingly concerned that although the Tal Campus project was brought up at nearly every meeting, little progress was being achieved.
“As a board member, I felt I was limited in what I could do, and I realized that only by getting involved on a day-to-day basis full time would things change,” he says.
As such, in 2012 Hershkowitz accepted the role of vice president at JCT, where he wears many hats. A regular day can see him conduct policy work and liaise with government officials in addition to fundraising, research, international programs, public relations and development efforts.
Incoming retirement plans
This is precisely why when he retires from JCT later this year, Hershkowitz plans to remain involved with an institution that has played a major role in his life, especially with regard to the Tal Campus, which is slated to open its doors by 2025.
Currently, Machon Tal sits in a crowded rented building in Givat Shaul. Hershkowitz believes JCT’s female students deserve better.
“From day one, they were in a very inappropriate, rented facility in the industrial area of Jerusalem,” he says. “It was not suitable or appealing in any way to students. It was also very cramped. We needed to do something. This was clear to us and the government 20 years ago.”
“From day one, they were in a very inappropriate, rented facility in the industrial area of Jerusalem. It was not suitable or appealing in any way to students. It was also very cramped. We needed to do something. This was clear to us and the government 20 years ago.”
Stuart Hershkowitz
On paper, the ambitious $100 million project seems nigh impossible. That’s why when Hershkowitz had a meeting scheduled with then-newly elected Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion, he was warned to not mention the sky-high figure.
Hershkowitz refused to heed the advice, and fortunately, Lion was undeterred by sheer sticker shock. JCT has been working closely with the mayor’s office and Ze’ev Elkin, now Jerusalem Affairs and Construction and Housing minister, to speed up the building process.
The new facility, set to accommodate 3,000 students, will span 9.5 dunam. Sleek floor-to-ceiling windows will house the Helmsley Center for Life and Health Sciences, which will include a cutting-edge simulation center so nursing students can recreate the environment present in an actual hospital. It will also feature the Beren Center for Engineering and the Center for Business and Management Studies.
Most importantly, the new Tal Campus is poised to help many women and particularly haredi women support their families by providing them with the education they need to enter the sought-after world of hi-tech.
“Tal may only be a building, but it will have a significant impact on Jerusalem, our students and the haredi population since almost half of our female students are haredi,” says Hershkowitz. “It’s such an important project on a national, municipal and social level.”
To date, around 15% of all women studying computer science in Israel are enrolled at JCT, and more than half of the school’s students in computer science are women, which is extremely rare for any higher education institution.
“It’s definitely bringing a change to the haredi community, because so many of them are living under the poverty line,” he says.
Haredi changes
Part of JCT’s success in expanding access to higher education in the haredi community lies in a seismic change within that population itself. According to an Israel Democracy Institute report, 37% of haredi men and 51% of haredi women were part of the Israeli workforce in 2003. Today, those numbers have shot up to 52% and 78%, respectively.
Hershkowitz believes that JCT can take credit for some of that progress, given its unique ability to give students the opportunity to learn Torah and secular studies at the same institution, which values both spheres with dignity.
“We’re on the cusp of this evolution of haredim [in the workforce] – particularly haredi women – in tech,” he explains.
Many of the women at Tal, he finds, are quick to understand the material at hand, even though some may not have had previous access to a high-level formal education in math and science. Tech is also a field in which getting up to speed later in life is possible, whereas other more academically demanding sectors such as medicine prove much more difficult later on.
As such, JCT takes a proactively positive approach, making it clear that the college respects the haredi lifestyle, and believes that their decision to maintain their religion is not only their prerogative, but that balancing Torah studies and secular ones is part of the school’s DNA. In fact, the institution positions itself as a resource for those who wish to retain their religious values while simultaneously empowering themselves through education, hard work, and earning a respectable (or even lucrative) living.
“We firmly believe that the way to really move ahead in the hi-tech world is with a college degree,” Hershkowitz says. “A six-month or one-year course will not get you further than a simple job in a big company. The scary statistic is, only 0.7% of people in hi-tech who are making more than 17,000 NIS (about $4,900) a month are haredim. That means that haredim are not in the Start-Up Nation. We’re changing that.”
The new Tal Campus, then, is set to speed up that evolutionary process, but it’s only one of the achievements Hershkowitz is fond of from his time at JCT.
A cursory stroll along the campus reveals the impressive construction of other projects that are now complete, like its sprawling promenade, fitness center and renovated dormitories that can accommodate married couples and single students.
Academically, its Torah V’Mada program analyzes the cross-section of where scientific and halachic dilemmas meet: is man-made cultured meat kosher? Can one ride an automated vehicle on Shabbat? These are some of the questions examined at the center.
At its heart, though, JCT is a community. That feeling was evident during the Tal Campus groundbreaking ceremony last month, where decades-long supporters gathered to witness a crowning achievement in the school’s history.
That sense of camaraderie is being passed on to the next generation through JCT’s newly revamped Shagririm Ba’Lev application, which is geared to the Modern Orthodox community. The app, which was built upon a networking organization already in place on campus, helps set up students with a suitable match for dating. Today, 86 couples have gotten married thanks to the app.
While he hopes to spend more time at home with his grandchildren, Hershkowitz understands his retirement probably won’t be all R&R. The educator, banker and lawyer hopes to devote more time to causes that are dear to him like the Orthodox Union, Jerusalem Foundation and Nishmat. And, in true JCT fashion, he’d like to spend more time studying the Talmud alongside his more secular endeavors.
“The groundbreaking has been almost 11 years of day-to-day work after so many people told me it would never happen,” he says. “But we’re almost there now, we have over $80 million raised. You have to dream. Set high goals for yourself and don’t be scared to reach them. You’re going to fail and have a lot of frustrations, but if you have a goal in mind, you work hard enough and have help from up above you’re going to do it.” ■