Young Jewish Professionals Can’t Get Enough of the Upper East Side

When Rabbi Yosef Wilhelm and his wife, Devora, moved to Manhattan five years ago, they had a list of about a dozen names of young adults in the area.

They had come to Manhattan’s Upper East Side specifically to start a Chabad-Lubavitch branch for young professionals, as an independent entity under the umbrella of Chabad of the Upper East Side.

In fact, they wound up being at the forefront of a phenomenon that’s emerged over the past seven or eight years of targeted programming for young adults. At first, the Jewish world had been slow to embrace millennials, but then started reaching out to them with gusto.

“The Jewish world has shifted,” says Wilhelm, “and Lubavitch has shifted with it.” In this case, Lubavitch can be said to have helped prompt that shifting.

From the get-go, the Wilhelms decided to connect through direct relationships—meeting people for coffee or for lunch, often one-on-one; having them over for Shabbat meals; and, eventually, hosting larger holiday events.

“We just reached out from one friend to another friend,” recalls the rabbi. Their programs grew, and soon, they were leading small weekly classes, in addition to learning with people individually. They kept adding new faces to their Shabbat table and having people from their programs take on leadership roles. To the couple’s credit, they single-handedly drew participants from all over Manhattan to the Upper East Side, creating a powerhouse from scratch.

The Upper East Side is home to about 13,000 Jews in the 20-to-40 age bracket. Today, the Wilhelms estimate that they have met more than 3,000—and look forward to getting to know the rest.

The couple welcomes young people to their monthly “Holy Hour Happy Hour,” which starts with Friday-night services and is followed bykiddush, cocktails and an open bar.

They rent chic venues and bring in the bar if there isn’t one, making multipurpose spaces comfortable enough for prayer, and then later, for a mixer. Their largest yet has drawn a crowd 400-strong. “It brings out a lot of people,” acknowledges Wilhelm.

Then there’s Friday-night dinner, which tends to be a more intimate scene of about 20 people invited to meaningful conversation around the Shabbat table. In addition to hosting meals at their house, the Wilhelms—ages 29 and 26, respectively, and the parents of four young children—have encouraged both men and women to host Shabbat dinners for their own friends and others in the community.

“We’ve gotten people to open up their homes, which in Manhattan can be rare,” he says. “They’re making a Shabbat dinner, which some of them have never done before. They invite their friends and people they don’t know, many of whom we’re setting them up with.”

And just like that, there’s a whole community of people participating in Shabbat, he says.

There are also all kinds of holiday programs where young people deliver words of inspiration and attend services geared just for them, as well as a “break fast” event for Yom Kippur. And Chabad of the Upper East Side runs a mega-event known as “Shabbat 18,000,” which takes place in January, and is deemed the largest young professionals’ sit-down Shabbat dinner in America.

“It’s a real gala event in a Shabbat setting,” says Wilhelm. The young professionals themselves run many of the programs and help get the word out that they’re taking place.

Something for Everyone

Chabad is also home to a Friendship Circle group, where young-adult volunteers spend time with young adults with special needs via a program called “Hang’n with Friends.”

And there come the weekly learning sessions: an advanced Monday-night program, a women’s class on Wednesdays, and classes for friends on a weekly or monthly basis, as well as a lecture series, with a couple’s class that meets in individual homes.

Eliyahu Zafran, 23, moved to New York in January. He settled in on a Friday, and by that night he was seated at the Wilhelms’ table at the recommendation of Zafran’s Chabad rabbi from George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

“I was a new kid in a new city, and it was perfect to have an intimate Shabbos like no other,” says Zafran, a commodities analyst. “It was the best welcome I could have gotten.”

It’s a group that brings people from various Jewish backgrounds who don’t know each other together in a very special way, he explains. “The essence of our Chabad is the fact that everyone’s growing and everyone’s pushing themselves to take on a new mitzvah or wrap tefillin a few more times a week, to keep Shabbat again and again,” he says. “I think that’s how you define success in a Chabad atmosphere.”

Thanks to the Chabad and its programming, he has developed a core group of friends, in addition to those he knows from work or school. He plays football with them, goes to dinner or a party with them, and more, he says, adding that “you can also spend Shabbat with them.”

In a place like New York, where ambitious young people flock to focus on their careers, taking part in Chabad activities is about pushing oneself in a different manner, he says: “It’s about improving yourself, and you need that wherever you are, and especially in New York City.”

Zafran adds that being involved with Chabad keeps him grounded. “And I’m sure it’s the same for everyone else.”

Ali Nyman, 26, got involved with Chabad in December at the suggestion of a friend from high school.

After several years in New York, Nyman, a social worker for a nonprofit organization, says it was nice to find a place in the city where she felt a connection. Now, she and her brother are familiar faces, going for Shabbat dinner at the rabbi’s house, as well as on holidays.

“It was a low pressure-type of situation,” she says. “It was really inviting, and I enjoyed it from a spiritual perspective and socially, and on a lot of different levels.”

Nyman recently added the Chabad’s Friendship Circle project to her roster, taking part not only in the events themselves, but in the group’s organizational body.

In what can seem like a sea of Jewish entities competing for overbooked young adults’ time, she says this was the place she connected to. “For me, it really is a community and a place I feel is nonjudgmental and welcoming,” she states. “It’s a good foundation for me, to the point where I’ve been able to get involved in so many different things.”

She’s also hoping to get some of her friends involved; on the flip side, has invited friends she has made at Chabad to be part of her “secular life” as well. Whether they went to the same college or just have common interests, they have become a big part of each other’s lives through meeting there, she says. Thanks to the warmth and openness of the rabbi and his wife—in addition to the environment and community they’ve created—“it feels like I’m part of a family,” affirms Nyman.

The power of the place encourages her to make it a priority, she explains, in a very natural way. “I just felt like that was my time to disconnect from the hassle and stress of New York and the day-to-day life of New York,” she says. “It’s the highlight of my week.”

Charles Muhlbauer heard about Chabad young professionals from a friend, and turned up for a Friday-night event full of singing, great food and good people.

The 32-year-old, who works in business development at a tech startup, came back based on that initial positive experience, and now often leads the prayers for “Holy Hour Happy Hour.” Also a professional chazzan (cantor), he says he’s glad to be able to help out.

“It’s cool, it’s fun, it’s enjoyable,” he notes.

The prayer part of the evening gets packed, as does the happy hour, says Muhlbauer, acknowledging that “I would have thought the [prayer] part wouldn’t be so crowded.” That stands as a testament to what people like about the evening, he adds.

Meanwhile, Chabad has gathered together Jews who otherwise would have never met.

“Because of them, Jews literally came out of the woodwork—out of nowhere,” affirms Muhlbauer. “They’ve really done a lot for bringing people together.”