Reaching Students Before They Hit Campus

For Hillel and other campus groups, outreach to Jewish students begins even before Orientation Week.

by Sue Fishkoff

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- When Julie Lustbader was applying to colleges last fall, she wasn’t thinking about Jewish life on campus.

Her parents were, though. They pored over a Web site set up by Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, particularly its online guide to Jewish life on campus that provides Jewish data on more than 500 North American colleges and universities.

“They had a 10 percent rule -- any school I applied to had to be at least 10 percent Jewish,” says Lustbader, 18, who will graduate this month from Atholton High School in Columbia, Md. “And if it didn’t have a Hillel, I couldn’t even apply.”

Lustbader decided on the University of Pennsylvania, and after visiting the Hillel there, she's glad to be attending a school with such an active Jewish student life.

“I heard the food is good, and they had a sign-up board for all these cool Jewish events -- it looked really interesting,” she says.

Lustbader regrets she wasn’t involved in Jewish youth groups in high school.

“In college I want to get more involved,” she says. “I identify Jewish, and it’s nice to know I won’t be the only one keeping kosher at Passover.”

Lustbader is one of an estimated 75,000 Jewish graduating seniors who in recent weeks have made their final decisions about where to attend college. This fall, they will be part of the largest incoming freshman class in U.S. history.

Many of them may not be thinking much about their Jewish needs on campus until their first Jewish holiday rolls around, or a friend drags them to a Shabbat dinner at Chabad or a Purim party at Hillel.

That’s too late, says Jeff Rubin, Hillel’s associate vice president for communications.

“Jewish students often make decisions about what they’ll be involved in during the first week or two on campus,” he says.

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Chabad does its own outreach to incoming freshmen, says Rabbi Hershey Novack, the co-director of Chabad at Washington University in St. Louis. Community Chabad emissaries tell campus emissaries about incoming freshmen via an internal Chabad online system, and the 125 Chabad college representatives do personal outreach to the new students when they reach campus.

Novack says the tight-knit nature of the Chabad family helps. He usually knows the Chabad rabbi that refers his incoming students, “so we already have a personal connection.”

Collecting and passing on names is only part of the overall effort to involve Jewish students in Jewish life on campus, however.

“Honestly, even if a Hillel director follows up, that doesn’t mean the kids will be meaningfully engaged,” Silverman of JESNA admits. “But it’s a start.”