Opening This Semester: Chabad

By Joshua Runyan, Chabad.edu

Further expanding on the services available to Jewish students worldwide and those studying abroad, the Chabad on Campus International Foundation announced Wednesday that Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries would soon be opening new European campus operations.

While the new centers in France, the Netherlands, Germany, and other countries will offer programming such as Torah classes, Sabbath meals and holiday services in the local language, officials identified other demographics, such as the large numbers of American and Israeli Jewish participants in study abroad programs, as benefitting from the expansion.

The announcement comes one year after Chabad on Campus Europe unveiled its new Northern European push with the opening of Chabad Houses in Paris and Hungary and the expected opening of four other centers throughout the course of the 2011-2012 school year.

“Our vision is a streamlined globally-integrated network, seamlessly delivering excellence on every campus in every young adult community,” Rabbi Yossy Gordon, executive vice president of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation, said after the announcement at the annual campus emissaries conference in Stamford, Conn.

More than 800 Chabad House directors and their children attended the four-day 11th annual conference, representing 175 campuses where there are full-time operations and the hundreds more where partial services are provided.

Workshops, lunch table discussions, dinner programs and general sessions explored such topics as improving Friday-night planning and maximizing alumni development to fundraising.

The European announcement came during a Wednesday evening session that was open to Chabad on Campus supporters.

“These new Chabad Houses are designed to both serve local student communities, as well as the significant numbers of U.S. and Israeli Jewish students who are studying abroad in those cities,” said Rabbi Eli Brackman, chairman of Chabad on Campus Europe.

“Each campus Chabad House, wherever it may be found in the world, is truly global in scope. When students spend a semester or two abroad, emissaries help integrate them into the local Jewish community, further providing them a home away from home.”

At the celebration, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, chairman of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation, stressed that the work of campus Chabad Houses was vital to strengthening Jewish students’ connections to their heritage and developing the next generation of Jewish community leaders.

“We must not rest until every Jewish student is provided with whatever he or she needs in terms of engaging with the beauty of Judaism and making it a part of his or her life,” Kotlarsky told the emissaries.

Turning to the lay leaders in the audience, he called their support “pivotal in giving us the ability to reach Jewish students on campus.”