# Rabbi Jason Rubenstein Executive Director of Harvard Hillel ![photograph of a man with glasses in a shirt and tie, teaching](/sites/g/files/omnuum816/files/styles/hwp_4_5__480x600/public/2025-10/jason_headshot.png?itok=RKTBit7K) smartphone [617-495-4662](tel:617-495-4662) email Rabbi Jason Rubenstein joined Harvard Hillel as Executive Director on June 1, 2024 after six years as the Howard M. Holtzman Jewish Chaplain at Yale. Jason’s background is as diverse as Harvard’s Jewish community: a childhood at Temple Micah in Washington DC, formative years studying at Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in northern Israel, and rabbinic ordination from the Jewish Theological Seminary. From 2010-2018, Jason taught on the faculty of the Hadar Institute, where he created classrooms, conversations, and communities that bring Torah into an open-ended dialogue with the fullness of students’ lives. From his own formative undergraduate years at Harvard Hillel, where he met his wife, Arielle Rubenstein ‘07, Jason knows how Hillel can and should transform students’ lives – and through them, American Jewish life. For a fuller view of Jason’s plan for Harvard Hillel’s future, you can listen to his [interview](https://www.hartman.org.il/the-role-of-hillel-on-campus/) with Yehuda Kurtzer (PhD ‘08); and to glimpse how he lead Yale’s Jewish community through impossibly difficult months following October 7, you can read his October 26, 2023 [letter to the Yale Jewish community](https://www.hillel.harvard.edu/https:/slifkacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/Reckoning-with-Antisemitism-at-Yale.pdf). In addition to rabbinic ordination, Jason holds an AB in Social Studies from Harvard College *magna cum laude* and a Masters in Talmud from JTS. He is also the recipient of numerous awards including the Wexner Graduate Fellowship and the Covenant Foundation’s 2015 Pomegranate Prize for Emerging Educators. Jason and Arielle, are grateful to be raising their daughter and two sons in Brookline, and cannot wait to help to write the next chapter of this community which has given them so much. - ## Chaplaincies [Harvard Hillel (Jewish)](/filter_by/hillel-foundation-jewish1)