Gathering together for the first-ever Northeastern Intercollegiate Shabbaton – a weekend program stressing Jewish pride and unity sponsored by area Chabad-Lubavitch centers and the Chabad on Campus International Foundation – some 500 college students bonded and shared stories of maintaining Jewish life in bastions of academia.
Hosted by the Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University, the Oct. 16-18 event attracted more than 200 students from more than 20 institutions stretching from Vermont to Maryland; upon their arrival in upstate New York, they joined roughly 300 of their peers, who helped plan everything from the food to the music.
“The whole Shabbaton was very meaningful for me,” remarked Lauren Rosenblatt, a sophomore at the University at Albany-SUNY, which was represented by a 15-strong delegation. “Seeing people from all over just being together was great. I made new friends from and am excited to have new places to visit now.”
Rosenblatt, who spoke at a Sunday brunch about how the gathering affected her personally, said she discovered many new ideas for reaching out to students and interesting programs to bring back to her own campus, where she serves on the student board of her Chabad House.
Genna Friedman, a senior and political science major at Albany, echoed Rosenblatt’s sentiments.
“I found the classes to be really interesting, especially the one I went to on the Kabbalah of relationships” taught by Rivkah Slonim, education director of the Binghamton Chabad House. “In general, everyone bonded. I would even encourage my school to host it next year.”
The Binghamton weekend came two weeks before the Nov. 6 Chabad on Campus International Student Shabbaton in Brooklyn, N.Y., where collegians from more than 100 schools in the United States, Canada and Europe are expected to attend.
Chana Katz, a freshman art student at the University of Vermont made the five-hour trip with five other UVM students.
“It was really wonderful to be around so many Jews together. There’s a much smaller community on my campus,” said Katz, a Connecticut native. “It was a rejuvenating experience and I really got to see what other communities do, which will help my own campus community.”
Strengthening Awareness
In addition to the weekend’s classes and Shabbat services, live performances rounded out the entertainment portion of the agenda. A Saturday-night concert billed as the Shabbaton’s “mega event” featured local Binghamton band Murray Hill, while just-retired professionally basketball player Tamir Goodman spoke Sunday about maintaining his Jewish identity throughout his career.
But while students lauded various aspects of the weekend, a common thread in their comments stressed the importance of just having so many campuses represented in one venue.
“We had so many diverse campuses, so many different colleges, that it was amazing for all of this diversity to come together and celebrate in unison,” said Jon Cogan, a junior at Binghamton who helped Chabad student president Tobey Lass arrange for 60 of their classmates to put up all of the guests in their dorm rooms. “It was beyond our expectations, and far more successful than we imagined it would be.”
Rabbi Levi Slonim, director of programming at the Chabad Center, attributed the success to the dedication of Binghamton students, who worked tirelessly in “unprecedented way” to pull off the gathering.
“We all wanted a weekend to bring Jewish students together,” said Slonim, who organized the event with his wife, Hadasa. “Just Jews coming together is already a very powerful thing in itself, how much more so hundreds of Jewish students from across an entire region! In addition, we utimately want this to strengthen Jewish awareness on our campuses.”
For Robyn Leiber, a senior at Queens College in New York, the Shabbaton did just that.
“The Friday night meal was really powerful and very unifying,” said Leiber, who is the student president of Chabad of Queens College. “It was great to see how another Chabad House [runs a Shabbat program]. It was motivating for me to see their huge turnout and definitely made me want to work harder on my own campus.”
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