Chabad Reaches a New Frontier: Teaching the Teachers

We know how to reach students. But who is teaching the teachers?

Chabad Houses have done extraordinary work reaching Jewish students. But Rabbi Menachem Schmidt saw a question nobody was asking: what about the academics who teach those students every day, the scholars whose ideas shape what an entire generation believes is true and worth caring about?

He cofounded Chabad on Campus and founded Chabad at Penn, JRA, JBN, JHP, OCJAC, and Chabad of West Philadelphia, and is now launching his newest groundbreaking project: bringing Chassidus to academics.

The Rebbe always said that a professor has an extraordinary opportunity to benefit students by word and by example. The Institute for Jewish Spirituality and Society (IJSS) makes that opportunity real.

On October 11-12, IJSS convenes at Stanford University for a national conference on Jewish thought, prison reform, restorative justice, and literacy. Chassidic scholars Mrs. Rivkah Slonim, Shlucha to Binghamton University, and Rabbi Eli Rubin, Contributing Editor of Chabad.org, are deeply involved, joined by IJSS Lead Scholar Dr. Ziva Hassenfeld of Brandeis University.

Rabbi Yossi Bryski, Director of Alternative Sentencing at the Aleph Institute, will attend, along with Dr. Elaine Leeder, Professor Emerita of Sociology at Sonoma State University, a cousin of the Rebbe, host of her own podcast, and a scholar of the Rebbe’s views on prison reform. Dr. Yehudah Pryce, who served more than 16 years in prison before his release in 2018 and is now a psychotherapist and criminal justice advocate, will also take part.

The conference is co-organized by Dr. Ariel Evan Mayse, Professor of Religious Studies at Stanford and IJSS Lead Scholar, and sponsored by Stanford University. Approximately 15 Stanford faculty are expected to participate, including Dr. Michaela Hulstyn of Stanford’s Structured Liberal Education program and Rabbi Eliezer Shalom Weinbach of Stanford Hillel.

“IJSS is teaching the teachers so that professors are not just learning Chassidus from us, but they are now teaching it themselves. It is entering their papers, their books, their classrooms.”
Rabbi Eli Rubin, Contributing Editor, Chabad.org

Watch the conference live. Click here to receive the information.