Washington Students Pull Off First-Ever Joint Shabbat, Plan for More

SEATTLE, WA — In one of the colder and wetter parts of the United States, Jewish students from Western Washington University and the University of Washington bridged the rural distance between them to share some spiritual warmth as they joined to celebrate their first-ever Shabbat together.

The weekend program last month, known informally as the Shabbat of “Jew-nity,” brought together some 80 students from Western Washington in Bellingham and the University of Washington in Seattle, about 80 miles away. It was organized by Western Jewish Gals – a club sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center of Whatcom County – and the Banot women’s group at the Chabad House serving UW. Now, there’s talk of including other area schools in future programming initiatives, mirroring a recent trend that has seen Chabad student groups across the United States host regional Shabbatons with the help of the Chabad on Campus International Foundation. Those in Florida and California are among the largest.

“We wanted to bring our schools together because we really are so close to each other,” said Monica Neiman, 22, who describes her Western Washington Jewish community as “very much like a family.”

But despite the proximity, the Jewish communities at both schools had rarely had contact with each other, save for their members attending the annual Chabad on Campus International Shabbaton & Conference in New York. The turnout for last month’s program was heralded by organizers as groundbreaking for Whatcom County, where anywhere between 300 to 500 Jewish students study at the local university.

“There was a need for a Shabbaton so that we could convene and get to know fellow Jews from other parts of the region,” said Rahmin Buckman, a 25-year-old sports psychology graduate student at Western Washington.

Article continued (Chabad.org)