What Do Chabad on Campus Emissaries Do Over Summer Vacation?

It’s back to school for Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries on college campuses across North America, but that doesn’t mean they all just experienced a three-month break. Many spent their summers traveling with student groups, working at summer camps, or touring the country meeting with alumni and their families.

And those who did stay put worked hard preparing for a new crop of incoming students and welcoming back returning students for whom Chabad has become a home away from home.

“I don’t have a summer vacation … I haven’t taken a vacation in 29 years,” says Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein, executive director of the Tannenbaum Chabad House at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. “We work as emissaries of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory; we are always doing the Rebbe’s work.”

In June, the Monday after graduation, he left to take 41 students to Israel as part of a 10-day Taglit-Birthright Israel trip. This was his 31st such trip; he started back in 2000, and runs it two to three times a year in the winter and summer.

“It’s a life-changing experience for the students,” he explains. “They’re able to connect with Israel, which is the Jewish people’s homeland, and they’re able to learn about their culture and their religion, their history and the beauty of Israel.”

In August, he participated in an Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) international convention in Toronto, where he represents Chabad on Campus. “I’ve gone to the last 13 conventions,” he notes.

Drawing some 500 participants, it offers the chance to connect with AEPi leadership and to promote Chabad to the undergraduates in attendance—“that they should be empowered to work with their Chabad centers,” he says.

In August, Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein (center right, rear) participated in an Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) international convention in Toronto, where he represents Chabad on Campus. He has attended the last 13 conventions.

In addition to being a representative for Chabad on Campus to AEPi, he advises the local chapter of AEPi, acts as assistant regional governor, and is one of the fraternity’s three international rabbis. “I try to connect with a many people as I can,” says Klein. “I hope they come away with the importance of being a leader in the Jewish community.”

Since then, he has been busy planning for the fall. Students return on Sept. 16, and he has already reached out to them and to alumni for fundraising, as well as connected with undergraduates in the area to see how they’re doing. “I love having the students around,” he says of their impending return.

According to Klein, there are about 1,300 Jewish students on campus. “I’m excited for freshmen week, when we meet new students,” he says. On tap are a midnight ice-cream social, a bagel brunch, a barbecue and a Chinese dinner, with an a cappella group and a drum corps coming in.

A Chance to Get Recharged

Yehudis Bluming, co-director of the Rohr Chabad of UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University in North Carolina with her husband, Rabbi Zalman Bluming, spent her 10th year at a camp for Chabad teenage girls from all over the world this summer. Directed by Sarah Hecht, a Chabad emissary who lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., the camp represents an opportunity to empower and inspire young women.

Yehudis Bluming (in red), co-director the Rohr Chabad of UNC Chapel Hill and Duke University in North Carolina, led 45 students on the IsraelLinks program this summer.

Bluming enjoyed the mountains in Ellenville, N.Y., for a month during June and July (the camp is run in two month-long sessions) as the camp’s ruchnius (spiritual) director. “Close to 200 teenagers come together,” she says. “And they spend a month of just using their teenage power, which the Rebbe believed in, to gain inspiration and knowledge that can hopefully last their lifetimes.”

During the year, she works with college students from a variety of backgrounds, but largely from secular homes. This is a different experience, she says. “This is a month when I try not only to inspire others, but to get recharged myself as well,” she explains. She says she enjoyed being around all those girls working on themselves, and their connection to the Rebbe and Torah learning.

“It just empowers you and reminds you who you’re working for, so when you continue into the year, you can put that inspiration into action for the other 11 months,” she says.

Earlier in the summer, she and her husband helped run a trip for a group of 45 students to Israel via IsraelLinks with the directors of the program, Rabbi Yossi and Chaya Wilkes. The Blumings led programs for the participants, giving lectures in the mornings.

Yehudis Bluming

“It’s an opportunity for the students to extend their knowledge in Israel and get to tour simultaneously,” explains Bluming. “When they come back, they’re empowered to continue to make a difference in helping those around them, in addition to themselves.”

They started school in mid-August. Roughly 1,200 Jewish students study on each campus, according to Bluming, with another 6,000 Jews in the community.

Like other Chabad couples, they go from one experience to another, doing what they can.

“Chabad on Campus shluchim [emissaries] exhibit the utmost dedication to the students and alumni they serve,” says Rabbi Yossy Gordon, executive vice president of Chabad on Campus International. “What motivates them to make that lifelong commitment also fosters their intensity for constantly reaching out and drawing Jews in, wherever they are. Another year equals a greater level of effort.

“As for their summer work, the extent of their travels and other activities are just another example of their endless energy. They do as much then as they do all year round—work to make the light of Judaism brighter in the many lives they touch.”

Visiting With Alumni

Rabbi Yochanan Rivkin—co-director at the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center at Tulane University in New Orleans with his wife, Sarah—held Shabbat dinners over the summer for students in New Orleans. Instead of the usual crowd of nearly 100 people, the guests dwindled to about a dozen or so participants. Still, the rabbi says it’s a chance to connect in a more intimate atmosphere.

He, his wife and their eight children also spent time on the road catching up with alumni. They had a Shabbat dinner in New York and an alumni reunion in Washington, D.C. He met with alumni in Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Atlanta and Charlotte, N.C. “I think people like seeing the kids and seeing how they’ve grown,” he says.

Students from the University of Tulane in Israel on a previous summer trip. Rabbi Yochanan and Sarah Rivkin, co-directors of the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center at Tulane University in New Orleans, spent time on the road this summer with their eight children visiting alumni.

They’ve also done a combination road trip and alumni reunion tour every summer since 2005. “Last year, we went through Memphis, Chicago and Cleveland,” he says. “Whenever we’re going, we figure out which places we can stop and where we might be able to catch up with alumni because that’s important to us.”

Such a tour reconnects them with former students, giving some of them a chance to reconnect with Judaism in ways they may not have since college. Tulane has about 2,000 Jewish students, according to Rivkin.

And then, of course, are the chance encounters along the way. For example, in Atlanta this summer, he ran into an alum he hadn’t seen since 2007. “I was in a grocery store, and I hear this guy say, ‘Yochanan,’ ” he relates. “He got married, has three kids, is [Sabbath observant]; it was pretty amazing.” Tulane’s Chabad was the first place the alum ever had Shabbat dinner, notes Rivkin.

Now, the Chabad couple is revving up for the start of the semester, working to get their events onto fraternity and sorority calendars, and reaching out to students to get them signed up for classes. Also, for juniors planning to study abroad, the Rivkins help them find Jewish contacts in the places they’re headed.

Chabad at Tulane's younger helpers get ready for incoming students with cool drinks and a banner that reads: "A home away from home."

“I’ve been emailing them, finding out where they’re going, and then emailing the relevant Chabad centers to get them information,” says the rabbi. “I want to make sure that when the High Holidays come, they’ll have somewhere to go.”

‘Go Up and Learn Torah’

Rabbi Shmuel Lieberman, co-director of Chabad Jewish Student Center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., headed to the Catskill Mountains this summer to help out with the Ivy League Torah Study Program.

He and his wife, Chavie, along with their six children, ages 1 to 9, spent five weeks living on the campus and participating in its experiential learning program. “College students have the ability to disconnect from all the electronics and everything that generally distracts them, and go up and learn Torah,” says the rabbi about the summer program, which included 12 women and six men.

Rabbi Shmuel Lieberman, co-director of Chabad Jewish Student Center at Hofstra University in Hempstead, N.Y., participates in a Torah class in the Catskills as part of the Ivy League Torah Study Program.

Participants visited a mikvah (Jewish ritual bath) and ritually slaughtered a chicken, and men and women separately attended lectures by different rabbis. Other activities included hiking, trips, prayer and learning about Jewish law. This was Lieberman’s fourth year affiliated with the program.

“I find it to be a tremendous program for growth; there’s also no pressure,” he says. “Yiddishkeit is not something we read about in the book; it’s something that we live. And that we experience.”

In recent weeks, the rabbi finished saying Kaddish for his mother and held a special Shabbat at their house. Nineteen guests stayed with them: a mix of current students, graduate students, soon-to-be students and alumni.

“Everybody came into the Chabad House, and we had a full Shabbaton experience,” he says. “It was a fitting way to honor my mother—to have such a Shabbat, such vitality in our Chabad House.”

Lieberman, his wife Chavie and their six children spent five weeks in the mountains with students of the experiential learning program, where they enjoyed a bonfire on the campgrounds.

The rabbi notes that about 800 Jewish undergraduates and an equal number of Jewish graduate students—about 1,600 to 1,800 in total—attend the school. He’s in the midst of planning a freshman Shabbat lunch and working on putting out an events calendar, which includes a weekly social program. The school will also continue it Sinai Scholars program, which it started last fall.

Rabbi Eliyahu Benhiyoun—co-director of Chabad of Lincoln Park & DePaul University in Chicago with his wife, Luna—got busy grilling this summer as his Chabad took part in the city’s first-ever kosher barbecue contest. Chabad shifts its focus during the summer months from students to young professionals, he notes.

Rabbi Eliyahu Benhiyoun (left) competed in Chicago's first-ever kosher barbecue contest; his team won second place in the chicken category.

Chabad’s young professionals came to him with the idea to participate, and so, in early June, they did. Entries came in for brisket, chicken, ribs and beans. “We won second place in chicken,” he says. “It was a lot of fun. It was a team effort.”

Benhiyoun says the school enrolls some 1,000 Jewish students, and the community, which Chabad also serves, incorporates another 5,000 or so Jews.

The rabbi also led a Birthright trip in early July, landing back in the United States on July 18, as Israel was in the midst of a ground war with Hamas in Gaza, and rocket barrages were daily occurrences.

This was his third time leading a Birthright trip, which he also promotes on campus. Taking students abroad to Israel—even though few are from DePaul—impacts Chabad in a number of ways. Benhiyoun wound up inviting a woman to High Holiday services, for example, at the suggestion of her brother, who took part in one of the rabbi’s trips.

Rabbi Benhiyoun wrapped tefillin with one of the Taglit-Birthright Israel trip participants he accompanied this summer.

The young woman and her parents have since gotten more involved.

“In indirect ways,” he explains, “every contact with a Jewish person ends up benefiting the Chabad House—and hopefully, the person involved—in addition to being an amazing experience on its own.”