Jennifer Anne Perez – Chabad.edu
Burlington, VT — Last semester, Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Zalman Wilhelm and his wife Chani spent the minutes between 1 and 2 a.m. each Friday waiting for an unusual special delivery. Like clockwork, a visitor would emerge from the darkness at the home of the directors of the Chabad House at the University of Vermont, knock on the door and drop off a box of some challah rolls.
The mysterious early morning delivery is a quirky snapshot of the Shabbat-to-Go program, in which the Wilhelms assembled 80 Shabbat “care packages” and passed them out to students each Friday. The free kits included grape juice, a candle, a small snack and instructions on how to celebrate Shabbat; each package had a sticker on the outside telling students what time the sun would set that evening so that they could light the Shabbat candle at the proper time.