October 19, 2004
The Highly Successful Program Comes to
Champaign-Urbana
OU and Hillel
Partnership Brings Torah Studies Program
to University of
Illinois to Serve Orthodox
and General Jewish Student Bodies
The Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC), one
of the Orthodox Union’s most successful new programs, has expanded this
academic year with the encouragement and support of Hillel, to bring
Torah education to the University of llinois in Champaign-Urbana.
With the addition as well of the University of Maryland in College Park,
JLIC is now found on nine academically prestigious campuses.
At Illinois, there are 3,000 Jewish students, only a small number of
them Orthodox, out of a student body of 39,000.
The JLIC program, now in its fourth year, is also found at Brandeis,
Brooklyn College of the City University of New York, Cornell, University
of Pennsylvania, Princeton, UCLA and Yale.
JLIC is a program of the Orthodox Union, operated in coordination with
Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, and Torah Mitzion, which
serves to encourage, help and enhance the observance, commitment and
education of Orthodox students on campus, while at the same time opening
up Torah knowledge to the general Jewish student community.
JLIC contributes to a setting in which Orthodox students can be
comfortable in an atmosphere on secular campuses that is far different
from what they experienced in their pre-college yeshiva educations.
Through the easy availability of Torah study; daily, Shabbat and holiday
synagogue services; and kosher food; together with counseling and
interaction with their peers, Orthodox students find a haven at the
university in which their yeshiva experiences are transferred to the
campus – while at the same time they are participating in the academic
life of their college. In addition, JLIC welcomes non-Orthodox students
interested in deepening their Jewish knowledge and observance.
The program is built around the presence and skills of a young rabbi and
his wife – Torah Educators as they called – who each serve as teachers
and role models to the students. The Torah Educators are chosen not only
because of their Jewish educations, but in many cases because of their
secular educations, which enable them to understand the situation facing
yeshiva educated young men and women who suddenly find themselves in a
very different world.
Serving as the Torah Educators at Illinois are Rabbi Yitzchak and Rachel
Falk, both natives of Chicago. Rabbi Falk makes it clear that he is a
Cub fan, which is helpful in the job.
The University of Illinois presented a special set of conditions for the
program, declared Rabbi Menachem Schrader, JLIC’s Jerusalem-based
founding director. Besides being the first campus in the Midwest to get
the program, it is also the first campus with a modest Orthodox
population making the primary role of the couple to reach out to the
larger Jewish student community. The intercession of Hillel played a key
role in acquiring the program.
“The University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana is probably the most
popular campus for students from the Chicago area that is outside of
Chicago itself, far from that city’s many Jewish day schools,
synagogues, and Jewish institutions,” Rabbi Schrader said. “JLIC sees
Champaign as a crucial frontier for the enhancement, development, and
education of traditional Torah values. The campus Hillel as well as the
Hillel of Greater Illinois have been very encouraging in the opening of
the first JLIC in the area.”
The Hillel directors agree.
“The presence of JLIC at our Hillel and on our campus has made a clear
difference in the Jewish educational experience of all our students,”
declared Joel Schwitzer, Executive Director of the University of
Illinois Hillel Foundation. “Shabbat at Hillel has been infused with a
level of Yiddishkeit (Jewish atmosphere) that we have not had in recent
years. The impact of JLIC cuts across denominational lines, reaching not
only Orthodox students, but Reform, Conservative and everyone in
between.”
The arrival of JLIC in Champaign/Urbana resulted in great part from the
efforts of Rabbi Paul Saiger, the Chicago-based Director of The Hillels
of Illinois, a department of the Jewish Federation of Metropolitan
Chicago and a regional office of Hillel. Rabbi Saiger wrote last March
to officials at national Hillel, “Frankly, it is a disservice to the
community if Orthodox young people must either commute to one of the
schools in the Chicago area or leave for the East Coast if they want to
receive a first-rate college education in an environment that is
supportive of an observant Jewish life.” Rabbi Saiger added, “The word
in the traditional community of Chicago has been that the University of
Illinois was not highly supportive of Orthodox life for students.”
A change in this thinking began, he noted in his letter, in 2001 when
the Hillel kitchen and meal plan, always strictly kosher, were brought
under the formal supervision of the Chicago Rabbinical Council. “Putting
the Hillel kitchen under the supervision of the cRc was a first step in
changing this perception,” he wrote. Acquiring JLIC was the next step.
But Rabbi Saiger was also concerned with the general Jewish population
at the university.
“If we were to have the kind of rabbinic couple that is being
contemplated, it would make the University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana one of the strongest Hillels in the country,” he wrote.
“It would transform our capacity to reach out to all Jewish students,
not only those from traditional backgrounds. It would also provide the
rest of our staff with opportunities to grow both Jewishly and
professionally. Words alone cannot convey how important I think this
would be. Please do anything and everything in your power to encourage a
decision that would bring a couple to Champaign.”
Illinois got its couple, Rabbi Yitzchak and Rachel Falk.
“The Falks are both from the Chicago area, and together have the
combined personal background to relate well to students of both Orthodox
and other backgrounds,” declared Rabbi Schrader, the JLIC founding
rabbi.
Rabbi Yitzhak Falk has a BA in sociology from the University of
Wisconsin. He spent years living and learning in Israel and has rabbinic
ordination from Yeshivat Hamivtar. As a native of Chicago, he roots for
the Cubs, Bears and Bulls.
Rachel Falk has a BA in social work from Loyola University in Chicago
and an MSW in Social Work from Yeshiva University. A citizen of Israel,
Rachel has also spent years living and learning there.
The couple has two children, daughter Oriya, 3, and one-year-old son
Aharon.
“We’re doing great, the program is off and running,” said Rabbi Falk
following its first month. He says that there are just a handful of
Sabbath-observant students on campus, which means that for JLIC to
succeed it must draw heavily on non-Orthodox Jews – both Conservative
and Reform – and that is exactly what is happening. A beginner’s Talmud
class he teaches, for example, is divided half and half between Orthodox
and non-Orthodox students. “We are providing the educational component
of Hillel for a whole range of students and we are probably seeing more
who are non-Orthodox than Orthodox,” he said.
According to Rabbi Falk, being natives of Chicago “is helpful in
bridging the gap between us and the students, particularly the
non-Orthodox ones.” He can commiserate with them about this year’s
annual collapse of the Cubs before sitting down for Torah learning.
Rachel Falk, who graduated from Loyola, a Catholic university in
Chicago, declared that the couple’s secular education is critical to
JLIC’s success. “It helps us to relate to where the students are in
their thinking,” she said. “College is a time for exploring, for
self-identity, and during the college years students are more
open-minded, for better or worse. Our background helps us relate to
students one-on-one in this very important time in their lives.”
Rabbi Yitzchak and Rachel Falk
* * *
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