College Trips to Israel Curb Intermarriage

Atop Mt. Zion in Jerusalem, dancers at Pascale Gozlan’s wedding pulsed to a Sephardic middle eastern beat. Grooving along with the radiant groom, Tomer Chazan, was Rabbi Yossi Witkes, director of IsraeLinks. He held his two-week-old baby daughter in one hand and a Skype-enabled videophone in the other.

Watching on the other end of the videophone connection thousands of miles away was Rabbi Yisroel Bernath, director of Chabad of NDG and Loyola Campus in Montreal. He stayed up to odd hours of the morning to be part of the wedding, virtually, at least. Gozlan’s wedding was an emotional passage for the rabbi, “like marrying off a child of my own.”

The two rabbis extended themselves to be part of the celebration because it was through their programs that the bride turned her minimal Jewish cultural identity into a knowledgeable one, a Jew committed to marrying Jewish.

Advancing Jewish Engagement Through IsraeLinks

Her dream of going to Israel was realized when she joined Chabad on Campus’s IsraeLinks program. At the end of three weeks of intense study, she wanted more. Chabad’s Maayanot Women’s program fit the bill. She studied there and later met Tomer Chazan, a South African who made aliyah to Alon Shevut. The Chazans will be living in Israel.

“Marrying a Jew, marrying an involved Jew, living in Israel, if other students on IsraeLinks achieved but one of these three, I would be happy, but Pascale did all three,” said Rabbi Witkes. There are about 400 IsraeLinks alumni, a program that started four years ago, and of the 20 that married, he hasn’t heard of one intermarriage.

Chabad on Campus’s executive director Rabbi Yossy Gordon says that marrying Jewish is a facet, not a focus of IsraeLinks. “Our emphasis is on Jewish growth. IsraeLinks is for students ready to reach for the next level of a healthy, happy Jewish life,” said Rabbi Gordon. For some that means keeping kosher. Others are ready to keep Shabbat, or at least stop checking Facebook on the day of rest.

Chabad Reps Facilitate Jewish Dating/Marriage

For Rabbi Bernath, it means marrying Jewish, and several months ago he launched a matchmaking site, JMontreal.com, which counts 120 matches so far. Personalized and more private, JMontreal.com is limited to Montreal residents. More than 1,000 people have signed up, and Rabbi Bernath estimates that three or four couples are getting close to popping the question.

At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Rabbi Dovid and Goldie Teitchtel have also spent their summer attending students’ weddings. As a result, a new trend is emerging at Illini: couples brought together by Chabad programs are returning to campus to round out their degrees or pursue grad and post-grad work.

Rabbi Teichtel, proud and pleased, acknowledges, “It is a very big responsibility to be there for the couple’s emotional needs, different from those of the other students on campus.” With three couples on campus, and more to come, the Teichtels are adding classes in Jewish family laws and traditions to the Chabad’s schedule.

Shimon and Gila Zimbovsky are well prepared to teach those classes. Shimon, who is back at Illini pursuing a MLA in Landscape Architecture, met the Teichtels six years ago at the Chabad Illini table on the quad.

In much sunnier Florida, a friend brought Gila, then Caitlin Asprinio, to Chabad of West Palm Beach. She stayed in touch with the Chabad Student Center in Boca Raton, and spent vacation on a Chabad on Campus Snorkel and Study. At a regional Shabbat weekend for Chabad students in Florida, she signed up for IsraeLinks. Shimon signed up for the same trip.

The two met, became friends, lost touch and reconnected a few years later when they were studying in Israel, he at Technion, she at University of Haifa. They married in the summer of 2010, spent a year at the Rabbinical College of America, and came back to Illini this September.

While Shimon studies, Gila is serving as an associate Chabad representative alongside the Teichtels. Looking out across the quad, Gila sees young women just like the student she was a few years ago. “I see how much work there is to be done. It’s an honor to give back.”