November 30, 2005

Orthodox Union Partners with Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life to Support NYU Orthodox Campus Community

This academic year, five of the top 20 feeder high schools to New York University are Orthodox Jewish private schools. Responding to this recent surge in Orthodox enrollment at NYU, the Orthodox Union has announced the arrival on campus of JLIC – the Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus. Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, Manager of Religious Life at the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU, and his wife, Michelle, a doctoral student in School Psychology at the Fordham School of Education, are serving as the “Torah educators" at NYU.

JLIC is a cooperative effort of the Orthodox Union; Hillel: The Foundation for Campus Jewish Life; and the Torah Mitzion organization, and in its sixth year in existence has come to NYU, which has one of the largest Orthodox populations at any secular campus in the country. Expanding every year from its first two schools, Yale and Brandeis, the program has also found a home at Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, Cornell, Brooklyn College, the University of Maryland, the University of Illinois and UCLA. This year, it added NYU, as well as Rutgers and the University of Florida.

The program has been given major financial support from an endowment provided by Orthodox Union leaders Herbert (Heshe) Seif and his wife, Harriet, of Englewood, NJ, whose names adorn the program.

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 welcome niche at NYU in which their yeshiva experiences are transferred to the campus, while at the same time they are participating fully in the academic life of their college.

“The Seif JLIC program provides a network of outposts for Orthodox students to find safe haven – almost an oasis -- in an environment that has the potential to wear down even the most Orthodox young men and women,” declared OU Executive Vice President Rabbi Dr. Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, a clinical psychologist as well as a rabbi. Referring to secular campuses as “at times a grueling desert” in terms of potential threats to observance of Jewish law, Rabbi Weinreb says that JLIC enables Orthodox students “to have full engagement with the secular world, but with the standards they were raised in and in which they were educated before going to college.”

The program was the brainchild of Founding Director Rabbi Menachem Schrader, now based in Israel but very familiar with the campus scene in the United States, who recognized that an alternative was necessary for Orthodox students who choose to attend secular colleges – a steadily growing and substantial number. He won support from the three organizations and started the program in the 2001-2 school year.

Now it has come to Greenwich Village, with the Sarnas hired as the JLIC Torah educators. “The need for an Orthodox rabbi on a campus with several hundred Orthodox students and several thousand Jewish students was as clear as day,” Rabbi Schrader declared.

The Sarnas are by no means strangers to NYU. For the past three years, Yehuda, who did his undergraduate work and received ordination at Yeshiva University, served as manager of religious life for the Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU (a position he still holds), overseeing the Reform, Conservative and Orthodox communities on campus, while mentoring rabbinic interns from the seminaries of the various denominations. He kept in touch with JLIC administration, however, and as he said, “always enjoyed their support. When I saw the JLIC couples getting together at the Hillel professional conferences, I said to myself – this is a group I want to be a part of.”

As the JLIC rabbi, Yehuda works with his wife, also a Yeshiva University graduate -- from its women division, Stern College; she is writing her dissertation for a Ph.D. in School Psychology at Fordham University. Michelle has been described by JLIC National Director Rabbi Ilan Haber as “a talented and dynamic female educator. As an excellent role model for her students, her involvement will only serve to build dramatically upon the wonderful work that Rabbi Sarna has been doing thus far.”

“The real challenge is to help students not only maintain their Judaism, but to grow in it,” Michelle says. “It also means to be there for them if, for whatever reason, their observance wanes.”

Rabbi Sarna adds, “The most important thing for me is to be the type of rabbi who students feel comfortable talking to, someone who respects them and the unique challenges they’re facing on campus.”

The connection with the Bronfman Center and Hillel is an important part of JLIC’s success at NYU – as at all of the program’s campuses. “The partnership between the OU, Hillel and New York University has been critical in ensuring that we meet the needs of the growing Jewish community at NYU,” declared Cindy Greenberg, Executive Director of The Bronfman Center. “Over the past four years, Rabbi Yehuda and now Michelle Sarna have touched the lives of thousands of students, inspiring them to more deeply explore their Jewish identities and commitments.”

Rabbi Schrader, the JLIC founder, agrees. “Rabbi Sarna is loved by students, his colleagues at Hillel and the University staff up to the highest levels of administration,” he said. “Michelle’s warmth, erudition and welcoming manner are truly appreciated by NYU students. They are truly the right pair to serve as the JLIC couple at New York University.”

Rabbi Yehuda Sarna

Michelle Sarna

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