This year, the addition of Chabad representatives, Rabbi Levi Schectman and his wife Chanie, will bring a new aspect of student Jewish life to campus. Chabad, formally called Chabad-Lubavitch, is a Hasidic movement with active representatives on various college campuses and throughout the world.
According to Schectman, the mission of Chabad is to reach out to Jewish students and provide them with the resources to grow in their Judaism and spirituality, regardless of their background or observance level. Wesleyan, with its large Jewish population, did not have permanent representatives before this year.
“The mission is to make them aware of all that Judaism can offer them and to empower them,” Schectman said. “It’s about making Judaism accessible through volunteers that go across the world wherever a Jew can be found and making it a possibility to be able to explore Judaism. Wesleyan seemed like it had a lot of potential for that.”
According to Freeman Professor of East Asian Studies Vera Schwarcz, who had previously organized a weekly Torah study group, Chabad representatives have been coming to the University’s campus for decades.
“This, to me, is an organic, complimentary growth and one that is an extension of the enrichment that I’ve tried to make available,” Schwarcz said.
Last year, Schectman organized several on-campus activities, including a matzah making workshop in conjunction with the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AePi) fraternity. This year, he and his wife plan to hold a shofar-making workshop for Rosh Hashanah, as well as hold classes and discussion groups to explore Jewish heritage. Schectman said they are also creating a student internship program which is still in the planning stage.
Both Schectman and Schwarcz said that having Chabad representatives on campus may serve a different niche than the existing student Jewish life organizations on campus like the Bayit.
“Students get together to eat, to cook, to sing and Chabad has the resources like bringing the shofar factory to students, which student-run organizations might not have the resources for,” Schwarcz said. “They have national and international resources that local groups themselves may not have.”
Gideon Levy ’13, the House Manager of the Bayit and the president of AePi, said that the Bayit residents have expressed mixed opinions about Chabad’s presence.
“[Bayit resident opinions are] kind of ambivalent because Chabad hasn’t approached us and they haven’t approached the existing community in big ways that would put people in a defensive stance, so without having them come to people it’s a non-issue right now,” he said. “I don’t foresee us doing a lot of things with them, I know there are only a few people in [the Bayit], a very small percentage, that would want Chabad on campus and would want to do things with them.”
Levy added that he does not believe that the Bayit will depend on Chabad’s financial resources.
Schectman said that he believes having Chabad on campus will, if anything, compliment the Bayit’s activities.
“The key word is complimentary,” Schectman said. “We are definitely not taking away all of the good work that they do. This is really about a different niche that we are going to fill with things like the matzah bakery and these classes and study groups. It’s definitely going to serve a different flavor.”
Director of Religious and Spiritual Life and University Jewish Chaplain Rabbi David Leipziger Teva is receptive to another Jewish presence on campus.
“As a Jewish pluralist in a diverse and accepting Jewish community, I welcome different interpretations and expressions of Jewish life,” he wrote in an email to the Argus. “Students should know that Chabad is in no way affiliated with Wesleyan University or with the Wesleyan Jewish Community/Havurah.”
Schwarcz said that having Chabad representatives may provide opportunities for students who practice Orthodox Judaism, a demographic that Wesleyan traditionally does not attract as much as urban schools with more formal Torah-study organizations.
“Some students who may feel a conflict between being a Wesleyan student and being more religious may find an affirmation of that possibility through the Schectmans,” she said. “They live near campus—not on campus—but their home is an open home. I think that students will actually get the experience of a family.”
Schectman is originally from Milwaukee, WI and lived in Brooklyn for several years before moving to Middletown this semester. He said that he was attracted to the University student body’s values.
“I would say that the students are very passionate, very smart and they’re really here to learn, and I think I’m like that too,” Schectman said.
Schwarcz also saw similarities between the Schectmans and University students.
“Wesleyan students volunteer, and what you see here is a family who have picked up and moved to volunteer,” Schwarcz said. “I think that there is a commonality of value, of passion, and it takes a kind of idealism to serve, and that will be an interesting chemistry with Wesleyan, because Wesleyan is full of extraordinarily idealistic people.”