Dawn Savage never saw herself going into Jewish communal work, as she “didn’t realize it was a thing.”
The Hillel chapter at James Madison University, where Savage attended as an undergraduate student, is entirely student-run. “While I attended Hillel events, I never had a professional staff member to know that this was something that you could do,” the North Potomac resident said.
Savage has since served the University of Maryland Hillel as its director of student life for the past 4 1/2 years. She was recently named executive director of George Mason University Hillel, succeeding Rabbi Daniel Novick.
In this role, Savage is responsible for overseeing Mason Hillel’s strategic planning, building community partnerships across northern Virginia, and collaborating with fellow on-campus staff members and Jordyn Barry, Mason Hillel’s regional manager, to boost Jewish engagement at GMU and within the wider northern Virginia community.
She aims to connect with local synagogues, the Pozez Jewish Community Center of Northern Virginia, the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington and other communal organizations to let them know what’s happening on GMU’s campus.
“A lot of the students that come to Mason are local, so they’re either commuter students or they’re from the area, and so the synagogues and the community partners are invested in those young adults that are here within the community and their connection to Jewish life,” Savage said.
“It’s always been really important to me as a part of who I am to be connected somehow to some sort of Jewish community,” she added.
Her background is in higher education and student affairs. Before beginning with Hillel, Savage worked at various universities, serving students through student life offices, student leadership and development, and alternative breaks.
Her role working with student organizations at the Pennsylvania State University introduced Savage to Penn State Hillel. “I was looking for something new,” she said. “I was looking for something different. And I just kind of had this epiphany.”
Working as a Hillel professional would blend her Jewish background with her career working with students. Savage then applied to Maryland Hillel “having no idea what [she] was getting into” and landed the job.
“[I] learned so much about what it means to serve a Jewish campus population,” Savage said. “I felt like I grew up with a very strong Jewish upbringing, and when I came to Maryland, I really diversified my perspective of what it meant to be Jewish.”
Savage was raised outside of Richmond, Virginia, attending a Reform congregation. She attended — and later helped teach — Sunday school, became bat mitzvah, served as president of her local NFTY youth group and went through confirmation. “[I] was very involved K through 12,” she said.
As a student at JMU in Harrisonburg, Virginia, Savage taught at the Beth El Congregation Sunday school, tutored b’nai mitzvah students there and served as president of Sigma Alpha Epsilon Pi for two years.
“[I] really found that my closest friends now are the ones that I met through that Jewish community and through the Jewish sorority while I was at JMU,” Savage said.
After graduation, she remained involved with her sorority by serving on its volunteer board for a decade and worked at a Reform Jewish summer camp: “It was still really important for me to feel that connection.”
Her stint at Maryland Hillel opened her eyes to the vastness of Judaism and the diverse ways Jewish students observe traditions even within the same denominations.
“That has really allowed me to be adaptable and open-minded as I’m talking with students and community members and recognizing that what’s important to them Jewishly is maybe different than the person I spoke to before, or is different than what’s important to me, and there’s still such a value in connecting Jewish students and people to one another and really supporting the larger Jewish community both here at Mason and within the northern Virginia community,” Savage said.
Her background in student affairs also lends itself to this new role.
“I think that my ability to connect with a variety of people from various backgrounds will be something that makes me successful,” Savage said. “Until I came into Hillel work, I didn’t realize the importance of Jewish identity and working in Jewish community. So for me, I really care about being part of a mission-driven organization.”
That’s one of the reasons she’s continued to work for Hillel. “I care about the work that is being done and the development of students that are here, both on campus — what they’re doing in their four-plus years — and also what they’re doing afterwards, and what they are doing to still enrich their Jewish life,” Savage said.
Engaging Jewishly doesn’t necessarily mean attending Shabbat services, “but it means finding that community — that’s what was important to me when I left college,” she said.
“It wasn’t necessarily about being a part of a Jewish institution. It was about being connected to others that were Jewish, that have similar backgrounds to me, some similar understandings, similar values, and all of that I found in my Jewish upbringing and my connection to Jewish people.”
That is precisely the kind of connection she hopes to forge among the Mason Hillel community.
