Max Weinberg leaves his house before dawn and returns home after dusk, or sometimes not until the next day, says his wife, Jessica Weinberg. That’s the life of an orthopedic resident.
“It’s a tough schedule with very little free time,” says Jessica Weinberg. It’s even harder for the couple, both 30 and parents of an 8-month-old daughter, in their new home in Worcester, Mass., where they moved two years ago to be near the University of Massachusetts Medical School. They met at the University of Maryland (she’s from outside Washington, D.C.; he’s from Scarsdale, N.Y.) and have always been involved Jewishly. This, she says, represents the first time they haven’t lived near a large Jewish community.
And it’s why they are so happy to have Rabbi Shmuel (“Shmulik”) and Sarah Fogelman nearby.
The new co-directors of the UMass medical-school campus Chabad arrived at the end of last year, shortly before Chanukah. They hit the ground running, reaching out to medical students, residents, doctors, faculty and staff—and got 40 people to their first event.
“There aren’t many Jews in his field here,” says Jessica, “so for us, it was exciting that the Fogelmans moved in. They are reaching out to a younger group, a professional group, trying to connect us. It’s a way for me and my husband to have Judaism in our lives with a challenging work schedule and the demands of a baby. What they are doing is so needed, so necessary.”
The rabbi and his wife are tapping into an underserved population of about 700 Jewish men and women affiliated with the medical school, graduate school, nursing school and area hospitals. (Make that “unserved,” according to some of the students.) And the rabbi would know, being that he is a native of the city of nearly 200,000 people.
His grandfather was Rabbi Hershel Fogelman, a trailblazer in Jewish education who was sent by the sixth Rebbe—Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory—to establish initial branches of the Yeshiva Achei Tmimim Academy, eventually staying in Worcester to run the Chabad yeshivah from 1946 until his passing in 2013. His son, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Fogelman (Shmulik’s father), and wife, Chanie, have directed Chabad Lubavitch of Central Massachusetts for the general Jewish community and the Worcester Chabad on Campus, serving students at Clark University, since 1991.
Even though their son, Shmulik, knew the area as well as anyone, “I really was unaware of how many Jews there were associated with the med school,” he says. “In this little corner with a gigantic educational institution—more than 10,000 people work there—the students were too busy to come out. You need to go to them. We have, and now they want more Judaism. Not only the med students, but the staff, the clerks, those in the finance and technology departments, faculty; they’re getting involved, too. It’s been a really good fit.”
Sarah (nee Cohen) Fogelman, originally from Toronto, adds that it isn’t so much about their social lives (med students have no social lives, she jokes), “it’s about religion and spirituality, something they don’t have. That’s what they’re looking for.”
He is 25; she is 21. They married a year ago in August. Since they arrived on campus (they can see the buildings from their apartment window), they have hosted Friday-night dinners, a weekly lunch-and-learn, Torah study, and holiday programs and services, including a doughnut-making workshop last Chanukah. As part of their first High Holidays there, they have been giving out apple-and-honey kits, held a minyan and meals for Rosh Hashanah, and will set up a pre-fab sukkah on the school grounds during Sukkot, as they did last year even before they were officially settled.
‘A Presence Where I Already Am’
Laura Schwartz, 24, a second-year medical student from Framingham, Mass., says she has been so focused on her studies that she doesn’t have time to make formal Jewish connections.
“So much has to be on hold when you’re in medical school; it’s all-consuming. You can’t make commitments. But someone meeting us where we are is really helpful. Now, there is a presence built into where I already am,” she says of the campus Chabad.
Schwartz appreciates the small gifts of Shabbat candles and cookie treats they drop off in the school’s main areas, and once grabbing a bagel on her way past the lunch-and-learn table, where Fogelman greeted her warmly. “That was a sweet moment. I felt that the rabbi was pulling for me. It’s nice to have those little reminders. It’s nice to have that commonality.”
Jesse Moskowitz, 27, has known the Fogelmans the longest, having met them even before they established themselves at UMass last fall. The first-year psychiatry resident (he graduated in the spring) says he has been participating in programs because the couple emits “warmth, an inviting quality.”
Chabad wasn’t new to him—Moskowitz was involved as an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst; in fact, he became an official bar mitzvah there when he was about 19 with the encouragement and help of Rabbi Chaim Adelman, co-director of Chabad House at Amherst. But it started appealing to him more. At UMass in Worcester, he says Rabbi Fogelman kept popping up to promote Jewish events.
Moskowitz’s growing comfort with his faith strengthened his connections to Judaism and even elements involved with his wedding, he says. He married in March in a traditional ceremony that had more Jewish content, including the presence of a mechitzah, because “of his relationship with Shmulik and Sarah.”
Moskowitz thought that particular addition was “very powerful and beautiful,” and one that he still thinks about today.
He and his wife, Daniella, now live in Sharon, Mass. He says they plan on building a sukkah this year—a direct result of the one he spent time in at Chabad.
“It’s my favorite holiday,” declares Moskowitz. “I really like the rituals involved. I like that you get together and build something, then sit and talk together. It’s the definition of community.”
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