Argentine College Students Come to America to Learn Torah

Some 200 college students from Argentina celebrated the completion of a year-long study of the basics of Judaism by traveling to America to tour sites in New York and Washington, D.C.

Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yoel Migdal, director of Isej, the Superior Institute for Jewish Learning in Buenos Aires, spent the past year teaching the group about the weekly Torah portions and key concepts in Chasidic thought. Migdal accompanied the students – split into five groups for tours lasting eight days – to important Jewish sites in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, N.Y., the headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, as well as in Manhattan and the nation's capital.

Funded by donors in Argentina led by Eduardo Elsztain, the Isej program allows Jewish students to reclaim their heritage through in-depth study and exploration, much like the Sinai Scholars program – a project of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation produced by the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute – program does in America, said Migdal.

"The students are very happy and very open to Yiddishkeit," said Migdal, during a tour of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Thursday. "It is something they have been waiting years for."