October 18, 2004

The Highly Successful Program Adds its Eighth and Ninth Campuses:
OU and Hillel Partnershp Brings Torah Studies Program to Universities of Maryland and 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 two additional campuses, the University Maryland at College Park, and the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. The expansion brings the total number of colleges served to nine.

There are 6,000 Jewish students, 300 of them Orthodox out of a total student body of 35,000 at Maryland. At Illinois, there are 3,000 Jewish students, only a small number of them Orthodox, out of a student body of 39,000.

What JLIC Is All About

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 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 provides 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 JLIC 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. Their counterparts at Illinois are Rabbi Yitzchak and Rachel Falk.

This Year’s New Campuses: Maryland

In expanding the program to the two universities, JLIC took special note of the presence of the particular conditions at each school, according to 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,” declared 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 the Campus

“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 the 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 Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, 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.”

This Year’s New Campuses: Illinois

The JLIC program at the University of Illinois is the first at a campus with a modest Orthodox population, making the primary role of the couple to reach out to the larger Jewish student community. It presented a different set of conditions from those in College Park declared Rabbi Schrader, the JLIC founding director..

“The University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, is JLIC’s first campus in the Midwest,” Rabbi Schrader explained. “It is probably the most popular campus for students from the Chicago area that is outside of Chicago itself, far from that city’s many yeshivot, synagogues, and Jewish institutions. JLIC sees Champaign as a crucial frontier for the enhancement, development, and education of traditional Torah values. Here too, 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, was 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.

The Rabbi Is a Cub Fan

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.”

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