Shabbat for 2,000 celebrates Jewish culture

Walking into the large, white Chabad house on 40th and Pine streets on Friday, one was greeted by the sight of hundreds of bottles of wine and grape juice, packages of kugel and a bustling group of students.

The students, Jewish Heritage Programs interns, were helping prepare for the annual Shabbat for 2,000 dinner that was celebrated all over campus.

Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest that lasts from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. For the Shabbat for 2,000 project, JHP’s goal was to get 2,000 students to participate each year, no matter what religion they practice.

Participating is easy, College sophomore Lauren Kreps said, explaining that you simply “sign up to be a host, and we give you an entire Shabbat dinner.”

“Anyone can sign up and you can invite whoever you want. Non-Jews are encouraged to attend, added Kreps, one of JHP’s lead interns on the Public Relations and Community committee .

This year, Shabbat for 2,000 had over 1,400 members of the Penn community signed up. “We have freshman, sophomores, juniors, seniors, sororities and fraternities participating,” Kreps said.

JHP provides a full dinner at no cost to each host who signs up. This year, JHP gave over 800 pounds of chicken, 300 Challot breads and over 500 pounds of kugel and salad. The hosts of the dinner were also provided with Shabbat candles and a Shabbat program created by the interns.

While JHP overlaps with Hillel and other Jewish groups on campus from time to time, the Shabbat dinner is exclusive to JHP. “We’re trying to promote awareness of Jewish culture on campus,” said Mae Hochhauser, a College and Wharton sophomore and co-lead intern on the Public Relations and Community committee. “It’s more of a cultural event than religious.”

That same philosophy is behind the JHP program. “We’re a Jewish program that seeks to engage previously un-affiliated Jewish students by focusing on cultural and social aspects,” said Melissa Kaplan, the campus organizer for JHP at Penn. The group specifically seeks to reach out to Jewish students who are not religious. Each of the student interns who join are required to host Jewish events and are encouraged to invite all of their friends. It’s through these events that they spread awareness of Jewish culture.

“The beauty of [the dinner] is that the host can make it however way they want,” Hochhauser said. There are no restrictions on how they host the dinner, from a formal sit-down dinner to a casual gathering of friends in a dorm room. “It was really fun. Very informal,” said Kayla Fuchs, also a sophomore in the College, about the dinner one of her friends hosted. “We got to show the non-Jews a lot of things like kugel and challah.”

Whether the students sat down to a formal dinner or not, at the end of the day, many had been exposed in a fun and relaxing way to a new cultural experience. Kreps, referencing the logo of this year’s dinner said “S2K. Do it your way,” Kreps said.

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