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January 3, 2003/Tevet 29 5763, Vol. 55, No. 19
Chabad expands on campus
RACHEL POMERANCE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
NEW YORK - At nearly 11 o'clock one Hanukkah night, Rabbi Eitan Webb was still making his way through his list of holiday phone calls.
The new Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi at Princeton University even called those who had visited his home only once for Shabbat dinner, offering holiday wishes and gently asking about their lives.
Webb's devotion offers a glimpse of Chabad's signature method of outreach - personal attention and devotion to each Jew - that has attracted droves of followers around the country.
As Jewish organizations of all stripes wonder how to get young people more involved in Jewish life, Chabad's approach appears to be working.
Chabad is the "fastest-growing Jewish presence on campus," said an official with one Jewish organization.
There currently are full-time Chabad houses on 61 college campuses across the United States. Chabad offers part-time programming at another 80 schools.
The fervently Orthodox movement is in the midst of a new push to open full-time houses on another 20 campuses. Of those, 12 already have opened.
"Chabad emissaries are unparalleled in engaging this huge student body, creating welcoming entry points for them and empowering them with Jewish warmth and knowledge," said George Rohr, the philanthropist who funded the initiative.
In some cases, however, Chabad's presence has sparked tension with other Jewish organizations on campus, particularly Hillel, said journalist Sue Fishkoff, author of a new book on Chabad outreach called "The Rebbe's Army."
"In general, where Chabad is small and there's a very strong Hillel, there tends to be less of a conflict because Hillel does not see Chabad as that much of a threat," she said.
But at Princeton University, the Center for Jewish Life - a joint program between the university and Hillel - decided not to include Chabad when it arrived on campus in November.
The center's director, Rabbi James Diamond, said the decision had to do with Chabad's "methodology," which he called "confrontational."
"There are many students who come in here who are very much searching for their Jewish identity, and they really are not comfortable being confronted, and they made that very clear to us," Diamond said.
Expanding on a Hillel slogan, he said Hillel's approach is to "meet the students where they are, not where we want them to be."
Chabad's mission, however, sounds similar: "To try to engage every single Jew on that campus and empower them with the knowledge and the experience of Judaism on their own terms," said Rabbi Hirsch Zarchi, who heads the Chabad house at Harvard.
Observers say the warmth of Chabad's approach is central to its success on campus.
But not everyone finds Chabad's approach alluring.
"I couldn't stand them," said Jordan Davidson, 24, who graduated in 2000 from Brown University.
"(Chabad rabbis) would come right up to you and ask you if you were Jewish, and I had seen people say that they were Jewish and then get harassed by these people and then followed down the street, and that was really obnoxious to me," Davidson said.
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