Photo Gallery: 278 Rabbis Ordained in Morristown

Nestled on a wooded hillside just outside Morristown, the Rabbinical College of America has become an international force in Orthodox Judaism’s Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

In the college’s graduation ceremony, 278 new rabbis — men from 14 countries and 23 states — were ordained today at a celebration where the keynote speaker was Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, the former chief rabbi of Israel.

The ceremony in a packed auditorium on the Morris Township campus proves “We can promise the continuity of the Jewish community,” said Lau, a 75-year-old Holocaust survivor who was liberated by the U.S. Army from the Buchenwald concentration camp when he was an 8-year-old orphan. “The chain will be unbroken.”

Lau had left Israel only once before to attend an ordination ceremony. That was about five years ago and it demonstrated the revival of his native Poland’s Jewish community, which had been virtually annihilated during World War II.

Most of the graduates will become rabbis at Orthodox congregations or will lead local Chabad Houses, which reach out to Jews “of every background” to provide educational and cultural programs with “a social and spiritual component,” said Rabbi Mendel Solomon, assistant dean at the college and the leader of a Chabad in Short Hills. Many will be heading to areas that don’t have Chabads to establish new communities, he said.

Those graduating yesterday had earned bachelor’s degrees in religious studies before entering the ordination program which takes another two to three years and is on a par with a master’s program, Solomon said.

Unlike most Jewish groups, the Lubavitcher movement does outreach to gather new members, although “We don’t seek to convert,” Solomon said. “We seek to enrich.”

Said Toive Weitman, a Rabbinical College graduate from Sao Paolo, Brazil: “You learn to serve – to build a Jewish home and to do the practical thing, to serve a Jewish community. You need to be able to tell people what to do.”

Three graduates – natives of Sweden, Italy and Wayne, N.J. — said they are following in their fathers’ footsteps as Jewish leaders and plan to start their own Chabads within two years. But first, they said, they must get married, pointing out that it’s necessary to have wives to lead the groups properly.

Elya Silfen from Chapel Hill, N.C., said that while he’d “love to be a rabbi,” he’s planning to use his rabbinical studies to improve Jewish education.

“Education is very important in our community,” he said, noting he’s using his new knowledge in his work for the Jewish Learning Institute, which develops adult, college and high school curriculum materials for Chabads.

Why was this year’s ceremony the biggest ever?

Solomon noted the college holds the mass ordinations just once every five years, with about 100 at the last one. It has smaller graduations most years. He added that the college has been expanding and its reputation has been growing while the Lubavitcher movement has also been growing.

“The program has gained popularity nationally and worldwide,” Solomon said. “It’s a beautiful, picturesque campus, a perfect setting to dedicate yourself to serious studies.”

The Lubavitcher movement began growing in the United States in the 1940s under the direction of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the movement’s charismatic leader, who died in 1994. The Rabbinical College was started in Newark in 1956 and moved to Morris Township in 1971.