Hartford U Chabad Dedicated

Tamar Runyan – Chabad.edu

Offering context to its years’ long, but ultimately victorious, legal battle with the City of Hartford, Conn., the Chabad Chevra group welcomed more than 250 people to the new Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center for an inauguration ceremony that focused on the future: Featuring speeches by University of Hartford president Walter Harrison and Jewish university students, the celebration marked the graduation of the first 20 participants from the Chabad-Lubavitch organization’s Sinai Scholars Society.

“If you had told me a year ago that I would be speaking to hundreds of people about my experience in a Jewish learning program, I’d have walked away and considered you crazy,” Ben Aronowitz, a 20-year-old advertising major, told those gathered at a flowing green lawn beside the Bloomfield Avenue property. “Until recently, being Jewish didn’t mean much to me.”

Aronowitz, who met Chabad Chevra co-directors Rabbi Yosef and Dalia Kulek earlier this year, explained how he resented waking up early on Sundays to attend Hebrew school in the years before his Bar Mitzvah.

“After that, I barely even acknowledged the fact that I was Jewish,” he continued, “until I came to the University of Hartford. I am now proud to call myself Jewish, and on top of that, a Sinai Scholar.”

Offered at more than 64 campuses across the country through a joint initiative of the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute and the Chabad on Campus International Foundation, the Sinai Scholars program includes an eight-week course incorporating lectures, textual-based study, a field trip and Sabbath experience, all culminating in a research paper. It’s just one of many Jewish programs offered to University of Hartford students through Chabad Chevra, which the Kuleks founded in 2003 under the direction of Rabbi Yosef Gopin of Chabad-Lubavitch of Greater Hartford.

For Kulek, who pointed out that four of the graduating Sinai Scholars participants have already committed to continue their Jewish studies at the Ivy League Torah Experience in New York and the Mayanot Institute of Jewish Studies in Jerusalem, such stories as Aronowitz’ highlight the value and necessity of providing unique Jewish outlets for university students. It’s a mission that suffered a setback in 2009 when Chabad Chevra’s purchase of a former church for use as its new building – a move made possible by local community members David Chase and Alan Lazowski and the support of the Rohr Family Foundation – spurred the local zoning board to limit Jewish use of the facility.

“I’m proud of the students,” said Kulek. “We learned, experienced and grew together.”

Student Elliott Levine spoke about how he feels most free at the Chabad House.

“When I’m at Chabad, I’m doing something for myself; I’m doing something that makes me proud of myself with people who can relate to that pride and share it with me,” he said. “I am free to express my unique relationship with G-d and watch in awe my friends’ expressions of their relationships to G-d.”

For his part, Harrison, the university president who helped Chabad Chevra identify their new location, thanked the Chabad House and referred to the Kuleks as “part and parcel of the university and woven into the fabric of the community.”

Gopin used the opportunity to thank attorneys Jeffrey Mirman and Coleman Levy for their help in security Chabad Chevra’s legal victory earlier this year, as well as George Rohr for help in purchasing the building and for providing seed money to start Chabad Houses throughout the region.

“This event has invigorated and inspired supporters and students to get more involved and to participate in Chabad programs throughout the area,” he said afterwards.

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, chairman of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation and vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch, told the crowd about how the experiences of Jewish students at the Hartford Chabad House are examples of those shared by hundreds of thousands at campus Chabad Houses around the world.

“Look at this Chabad House and multiply what you see here by hundreds,” he said, “and imagine how many thousands of students are being affected by Chabad on Campus.”