The Cornell Eruv has been completed, and we thank the Cornell Eruv Committee for its hard work and dedication.

Please see the full article in The Cornell Daily Sun at: cornellsun.com

or on the JLIC website at jliconline.

In the first Shabbos back after vacation we saw a very nice turnout for all the events of the weekend. Friday night saw our largest minyan of the year with a good number of women also representing. Dinner numbers were above average. Divrei Torah focused on the Kiddush Hashem of Jews in the Media during the last couple weeks, and urged a student effort in response to the earthquake in Haiti. The Oneg Friday night saw a nice increase in participation as well as many more students had time this early in their semester to stay and sing and share words of Torah with us. Shabbos day was truly the day of the minyan men. After davening Shachrit and finally musaf with only 9 present, 2 students came in and saved the day allowing for Torah to be read, Baruch HaGomel to be said, and for a special guest maftir to be said. All in all, it was a strong Davening experience with lots of singing and divrei Torah as we kept our hopes alive for our minyan.

by Mordechai and Nisa Harris
This past weekend saw a resurgence of life to the SUNY Albany Shabbat community (despite the fact that it's right before finals). Hillel brought in a comedic duo to tell us all about the difficulties of dating in college, and the result was a student turnout that rivaled opening week turnout. The orthodox minyan alone had almost twice the usual turnout. It also meant that dinner was longer then usual to accommodate the usual divrei Torah and announcements on top of the show. By the time the show finished, it was already an hour after the usual end time of dinner, nevertheless our Oneg regulars joined by a few new faces to Friday night still managed to stay for another couple of hours, singing and discussion. Inspired by the weekly Parsha's wrestling match, we wrestled with the topic of what it means to be Bnei Yisrael, and our responsibility to struggle with... well, everything. Needless to say, conversation got lively, and it was clear pretty quickly that this was only the beginning of many future conversations. Saturday resumed it's usual course as we were reunited with Chabad for the first time at full strength since the beginning of the semester. (Our other trips had found that at least the Chabad Rabbi was away which gave us an opportunity to fill in, but it was good to again work with.) For the first time in recent campus memory we had a minyan within the first half hour and prior to the first Kaddish opportunity. Latecomers were happily shocked to find that instead of being the 10th man, they were the 15th or 17th. The davening reflected that positive energy, and that energy was carried into a delicious lunch filled with divrei Torah and the first snow storm of the season. Following lunch the men and women went their own ways as a special womens' shiur on Chanukah was given upstairs. The men had a lively discussion on Israeli politics and In vitro meat's Kashrut status over a Sudah Shlishit which no one really had the appetite to eat (short Shabbos at fault and not the discussion of test tube meat...) After Shabbat there was a quick Mariv and a nice Havdallah before the Chabad Rabbi drove everyone home through the bitter snowstorm. Due to weather and finals, there was no Sat. night event. We look forward to a great next semester.

Orthodox students have support on campus, panel says
By SHERI SHEFA, Staff Reporter
Thursday, 10 December 2009

TORONTO — Jewish student group leaders, rabbis and Orthodox Jewish students held a panel discussion last week to let concerned community members know that there are many opportunities available for Orthodox Jewish students on secular campuses.

Toronto’s JLIC director Rabbi Aaron Greenberg, left, and Hillel of Greater Toronto executive director Zac Kaye were two of six panelists talking last week about Orthodox Jewish students attending secular universities. [Sheri Shefa photo]

The Orthodox Union’s Heshe and Harriet Seif Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus (JLIC), a North American program that helps Orthodox students balance their Jewish upbringing with living in a secular world, in conjunction with Hillel of Greater Toronto, invited parents and university-bound students to Bnei Akiva’s Yeshivat Or Chaim for a lecture titled “Observant Jewish Life on the Secular College Campus.”

Jewish Learning Initiative turns 10
By Michael Orbach
Issue of December 4, 2009/ 17 Kislev 5770

To go or not to go is no longer the question.
“75 percent of the graduating population of the Modern Orthodox day-schools are not going to YU or Touro,” asserted Rabbi Ilan Haber, director of the Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus. “The issue is not should or shouldn’t they go to secular university — they are going. The issue for us is how to help them make educated decisions to choose a college environment amenable to their growth and how to best serve their needs once they’re in the college environment.”
The Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus was founded in 2000. Rabbi Menachem Schrader, then a rebbe at Yeshivat Torat Yosef-Hamivtar in Efrat, realized that yeshivas in Israel were helping students in Israel but students in secular universities back in America had only a limited support system.

“It became clear that we were taking students from campuses all over the world, teaching them Torah and then sending them back after a year or two and there was a deep sense I had that we were sending them back to nothing,” said Rabbi Schrader, who is now the director for Nishmat. “Why shouldn’t we try to create a reference of Torah Studies for them to go back to?”

In response, Rabbi Schrader came up an idea that he hoped would allow students to continue their Jewish studies. A partnership between the Orthodox Union and the Hillel campus organization placed Orthodox couples on college campuses to supplement Hillel programming.

To read the full article, click here.