October 19, 2004

The Highly Successful Program Comes to College Park:
OU and Hillel Partnership Brings Torah Studies Program to University of Maryland 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 Maryland at College Park.

With the addition as well of the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana, JLIC is now found on nine academically prestigious campuses.

There are 6,000 Jewish students, 300 of them Orthodox, out of a total student body of 35,000 at Maryland.

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 Maryland are Rabbi Elli and Pesha Fischer. Rabbi Fischer is a native of Baltimore.

It was inevitable that JLIC would come to the College Park campus, declared Rabbi Menachem Schrader, the Jerusalem-based founding director of JLIC.

“The University of Maryland, College Park, has one of the largest populations of both Orthodox Jewish students as well as overall Jewish students in the United States,” explained Rabbi Schrader. “It was a foregone conclusion that when the right time came, Maryland should be a priority campus. The Hillel Director, Rabbi Ari Israel, has been very interested and anxious to open a JLIC program. Our Torah Educators, Rabbi Elli and Pesha Fischer, are experienced, intellectual, outgoing, and dynamic. With God’s help we should have a very successful program.”

Rabbi Elli and Pesha Fischer have been married for six years and have two children, a girl, Ruchama, who is three-and-a-half; and a son, Rafi, who is four months old. They live on campus.

Elli Fischer, a native of Baltimore and a graduate of its Talmudic Academy, was educated in Israel and received a BA in computer science from Yeshiva University. He received his semicha, or rabbinical ordination, from the Israeli Chief Rabbinate. Pesha Fischer, a native of Boston, also studied in Israel and received her BA in Education from Stern College of Yeshiva University and an MA in Jewish Education from YU. (Rabbi Fischer is one paper away from also receiving that degree.)

After two years as teachers and administrators at Yavneh Academy, a co-ed yeshiva high school in Dallas, the couple came to Rabbi Fischer’s native Maryland to start the program there.

“The future of Judaism is on college campuses right now. It’s a testing ground for the future of Judaism in America,” Rabbi Fischer declared.

The Fischers see their position as “an opportunity for us to become a resource for Torah learning for these students.” They are seeing a mixed group, divided between Orthodox and non-Orthodox students, such as at Yom Kippur services, which had an attendance of 250.

With the help of Hillel, the Fischers are building the JLIC program. “It takes time to learn what’s possible, what motivates students and what’s going to inspire them,” Rabbi Fischer said. “College students don’t want to be led. They want to make choices for themselves, to strike out on their own. Pesha and I will put ourselves in a position where the students will deem us a resource and feel comfortable in approaching us. We will be there for them.”

The Fischers are considered regular staff members of Hillel, have access to Hillel’s facilities, and work closely with the Hillel director at Maryland, Rabbi Ari Israel. “With a growing presence of traditional students, Maryland Hillel needed a full-time rabbinic presence that would be able to raise the level of Torah education and observance as well as to help students face the challenges of being Orthodox at a large public university,” declared Rabbi Israel. “The JLIC program adds a great deal of value to the resources of our Hillel and our diverse Jewish population while serving our traditional students.”

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The Orthodox Union, now in its second century of service to the Jewish community of North America and beyond, is a world leader in community and synagogue services, adult education, youth work through NCSY, political action through the IPA, and advocacy for persons with disabilities through Yachad and Our Way. Its kosher supervision label, the , is the world’s most recognized kosher symbol and can be found on over 275,000 products manufactured in 68 countries around the globe.

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