Arizona State University Chabad and Downtown Tempe hold Menorah lighting ceremony on Dec. 7, 2023. Photo: Alexandra Buxbaum vis Reuters Connect

Two years ago, the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel set off an unprecedented explosion of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on college campuses across the United States, marooning Jewish students in classrooms, dormitories, and extra-curricular groups in which their identity as Jews and Zionists came under sustained attack.

At the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), anti-Zionist protesters chanted “Itbah El Yahud,” which means “slaughter the Jews” in Arabic, while at Columbia University, a student proclaimed that Zionist Jews deserved to be murdered.

“They are singularly focused on denigrating Israel and Jews,” Zoë Silverberg, a Tulane University alumnus bluntly told The Algemeiner in April 2024. “If they’re walking around supporting terrorism and easily getting students to agree with them, then I’m frightened about the future.”

And yet, there is another story to be told about Jewish life on college campuses over the past two years — one of hope, resilience, and a surge of pride. At a time of profound challenge for Jewish students, Chabad on Campus, an initiative of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, has found its footing as one of the most vocal, vibrant, and energetic sources of Jewish life at universities. Rabbis, students, and experts say that Chabad has created a sprawling and ever-growing network of Jewish community unrivaled in American academia which continues to steel Jewish students against vocal anti-Israel animus, social alienation, and institutional ambivalence, while also offering an identity rooted in Jewish tradition and joy.

“It’s stunning and, I’d say, inspiring to see young Jews come home,” said Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi of Chabad at Harvard University. “Certainly, there is a core spiritual component to all of this. At Chabad nothing is superficial nor artificial, and that is essentially so much of what guides and dictates the social construct and identities of people today and the values they hold.”

Last Hanukkah, at the University of Michigan, more than 600 students joined a public menorah lighting — the largest Jewish gathering on campus in recent memory. In September, 500 people gathered on Yale’s Old Campus for a mass Shabbat — similarly the largest in the university’s history, according to Yale Chabad Rabbi Meir Posner, who added that the waiting list ran over 500 people. And at Harvard University, hundreds of students and community members came to hear the Israeli megastar Ishay Ribo perform at a sold-out concert hall even as anti-Israel protesters rallied across the street.

But the movement’s energy doesn’t stop at the gates of the Ivy League or flagship state universities. On smaller campuses like Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, Chabad has become just as vital a refuge — proving that Jewish life can flourish wherever there are students seeking connection.

Swarthmore Chabad Rabbi Mordi Wolf, who founded the chapter just eight months before Oct. 7, 2023, told The Algemeiner that Jewish students sought out Chabad to find security and in so doing discovered their strength even in the face of relentless intimidation against Jewish students.

“The amount of despicable hatred we saw — the outright glorifying of the death of people, the slogans and the chants and the intimidation was quite startling,” Wolf said. “Those were wild times, but we really found, overnight, a place here in which we could connect, feel safe, and be seen and be valued and share comfortably and safely who they are and what they believe in.”

Unprecedented Growth

According to Chabad on Campus International, more than 100,000 students attended a Chabad event in 2024 alone, a record-breaking number that represents steady year-over-year growth. The movement’s rabbis and rebbetzins — often young couples who live adjacent to campus called shluchim — have set up shop at over 340 campuses across the United States and Canada, with new chapters opening and expanding on an almost monthly basis.

These are unheard-of figures within campus Jewish engagement spaces, and Chabad’s growth on campus is increasingly being noticed by experts who study Jewish communal life in the English-speaking world. According to a study by the Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA) 44 percent of Jews affiliated with Chabad report being more immersed in Jewish life than ever before since Oct. 7, and when they arrive, they stay. Chabad’s retention rates hold steady over time, the report added, making it one of the “stickiest” groups it assessed.

While some campus Jewish organizations have struggled to retain students disillusioned by divisive debates over Israel, Chabad, experts and students say, has largely avoided the pitfalls of politicization by focusing on relationships, spirituality, and culture, translating its belief system into a social space which welcomes all Jews.

Sam Abrams, a nonresident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and professor at Sarah Lawrence College, said Chabad can sustain its success by sticking to its time tested and proven model.

“It’s not proselytization, it’s preservation, and they’re willing to abstain from contesting others’ belief systems to keep folks Jewish, period, and that’s the overarching value to what they do,” Abrams explained. “At a time when undergraduates are looking for someone to stand up for them, Chabad rabbis answer the call … they’re going to protect and try to promote continuity.”

“They want Jews from any political or denominational background to be part of an environment that is not only inclusive but encourages them to be committed to their Jewish practices, their Jewish identity, and the Jewish future,” said Shabbos Kestenbaum, a Jewish campus activist who recently graduated from Harvard University. “You can go to any Chabad in the world and their principles, their values, and their beliefs will remain consistent.”

Chabad’s growth mirrors a larger demographic trend within American Jewry: the steady rise of more religiously engaged communities. According to the JFNA study, Chabad is drawing more Jews to its doors than Reform and Conservative institutions. Chabad’s campus model taps into that energy, giving even nonobservant students an accessible way to taste ritual life without demanding ideological conformity. In effect, it serves as a bridge between a broadly secular student population and the vibrancy of traditional Jewish practice, helping to normalize deeper engagement at a time when many students are searching for meaning and community.

“On an average Friday night, we have between 200-300 students who join us for Shabbat dinner,” said Rebbetzin Miriam Lipskier of Chabad at Emory University. “The majority would not in any way consider themselves traditional or orthodox, many of them may not even be Halachically Jewish. For many it is their first Shabbat dinner and they’re wondering ‘What is it?,’ ‘What do we do?,’ ‘What are we saying?,’ ‘What’s the Rabbi saying?’, and the fascinating and beautiful part is that after the main dinner is over and the majority of the students leave to go clubbing, to go to the library, or whatever it is that they’re doing, there are three or four dozen students who stick around, and they really connect one-on-one.

The ‘Pintele Yid‘

The flourishing of Chabad on campus is not an accident of the post–Oct. 7 climate, but the continuation of a half-century-old movement. In the late 1960s and 70s, as American Jewish assimilation rates spiked and a countercultural generation sought spiritual depth beyond suburban synagogues, Chabad under the leadership of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, pioneered what became known as the baal teshuva (“returning to tradition”) movement. Young Chabad couples fanned out to college towns and city centers, setting up storefronts and student houses where disaffected Jews — hippies, seekers, draft resisters, and the newly spiritually curious — could encounter Judaism in a nonjudgmental, experiential, and personal way.

That spirit of openness to all comers, rooted in the belief that every Jew has a “pintele yid” — a spark of Jewish soul waiting to be fanned into flame — became the DNA of Chabad’s outreach model. On campuses in the 1970s, when Jewish identity was often subordinated to broader political movements or abandoned altogether, Chabad offered an alternative: a Judaism that was traditional but warm, unapologetic yet welcoming, serious yet infused with joy. The template those early emissaries created — Shabbat dinners in private homes, farbrengens with song and conversation late into the night, and one-on-one learning encounters — is the same template sustaining thousands of Jewish students today.

“This is a place of essence,” said Rabbi Zarchi, the Chabad Rabbi at Harvard University. “Even the student who is not focused on or looking for an intense reflective conversation about the core tenets of Jewish spirituality but simply wants to be in community is welcome. Whether it’s rituals or meals, or being together, or having conversations about the ordinary matters, it’s done in a matter that relates to things and to people and not in the way that’s typically done in the university. It’s authentic. We try to be real.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.