In a recent conversation about Jewish life at elite universities, someone asked me, “At what point do we just give up?” The question wasn’t an expression of cynicism, but of exhaustion. At institutions where Jewish enrollment is statistically declining, where Israel is increasingly demonized, and where religious expression often feels out of step with prevailing campus culture, it’s tempting to look at the landscape and wonder whether it’s time to invest elsewhere.
But to give up is to misunderstand the stakes, and to miscalculate the important successes already unfolding on campuses. And standing stubbornly, and joyfully, against this tide is Chabad.
The reason is simple, even if it sounds radical: Chabad doesn’t take its cues from numbers. It takes its cues from faith: faith in the Jewish soul, in the vitality of Torah, and in the enduring power of presence. That’s why, even as others lament shrinking rosters or shifting identifications, Chabad sees something else: packed Shabbat dinners, vibrant Jewish learning at midnight, big crowds at menorah lightings in the middle of finals, and students who never thought they had a place in Jewish life discovering not just a seat at the table, but a home.
Jewish life is not disappearing from elite universities. It is flourishing. The narrative of decline doesn’t tell the whole story. As Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, taught nearly a century ago: “In matters of the spirit, numbers do not decide. Even if only a hundred retain their devotion against a thousand who do not, the hundred will triumph because theirs is a spiritual, and therefore a superior strength.”
Many campus Chabad houses can boast impressive numbers of students showing up to their programs, but Chabad’s success on college campuses is not merely statistical; it’s spiritual. It rests on the students who feel seen, welcomed, and religiously alive for the first time in their lives. That number, in my experience, is growing.
What the Numbers Don’t Say
In 2023, Tablet magazine published a widely cited article claiming Jewish enrollment in the Ivy League had dropped nearly 50 percent since the early 2000s. But the article relies on comparing informal estimates compiled by Hillel (the major American Jewish campus organization) from 2002 to 2010 with later data based on surveys that asked students to report their own religious identity—thus comparing statistical apples and oranges. Both methods, moreover, come with their own flaws. Self-reporting in particular tends to undercount Jews with no religious affiliation, those brought up in interfaith families, and so forth. In my twenty-two years as rabbi of Princeton’s Chabad House, it is this demographic, among others, that makes its way to Chabad. None of this is to say that the decline isn’t real; it is, but we should be careful not to exaggerate it or jump to conclusions.
Moreover, many Jewish students today don’t identify as religious. At Princeton, I’ve seen students with no discernibly Jewish last name become central pillars of Jewish life. Others, with clearly Jewish last names, may never engage. If Jewish presence is measured only by last names or self-reported religion (a tool used in some of the attempts to calculate the number of Jewish students), we miss the actual story. What’s disappearing, if anything, is not the Jew, but the ability to measure Jewish presence in predictable ways. It won’t always look like a checkmark in a census box. That’s not a crisis. That’s a call.
Even if you accept the bleakest statistical estimates, they don’t describe the actual experience of students. At Princeton, our Shabbat dinners routinely overflowed the tents in which we held them, and we’ve had to build a new Chabad House to keep up.
This is true at all eight Ivy League campuses. It’s true at virtually every one of the top 50 U.S. colleges. That’s not a coincidence.
Why Chabad Works
At Chabad, every Jewish student is family. There are no prerequisites: not observance, belief, background, or literacy. Nor are there expectations of those who arrive. Students come as they are, and are welcomed—not tolerated, not assessed, but loved. What Chabad has done—quietly, patiently, and with tenacious faith—is reject despair. If students are like the child at the seder who doesn’t know how to ask, we celebrate the fact that they are present and give them space to grow.
This strategy is not new. Chabad has been engaging young Jews even when Jewish affiliation was ostensibly stronger. The aforementioned Rabbi Schneersohn dismissed the narrative of “vanishing Jews” as early as 1930, insisting instead that “American Jewish youth possess a deep longing for Yiddishkeit,” that is, for Judaism and Jewishness. That remains true today, and the spirit of these words animates the 554 Chabad couples (in the United States, 840 worldwide) who devote their lives to working on college campuses. For them, this isn’t a stepping-stone on the path to a pulpit or an academic post. It’s a lifetime calling.
Chabad’s secret is unwavering faith in the Jewish soul. On campus, it promotes unabashedly Jewish life, fearless and joyful Jewish visibility, and unwavering support for the Land of Israel. The families who run Chabad Houses give up comfort, stability, and sometimes safety to serve the Jewish people out of love, not obligation.
That love is contagious. When students see someone build their entire life around faith in them—the Jewish student who never went to Hebrew school, the one who isn’t sure what she believes—they begin to believe in themselves too. These are also the students who are least likely to decide, as high-school seniors, to avoid major universities because of growing anti-Semitism or hostility toward Israel. And that alone is reason enough not to give up on college campuses.
Why We Can’t Give Up on the Universities
In this regard, we must follow the example set by G-d Himself. The Talmud teaches that after the destruction of the Temple—a divine punishment for Israel’s sins—G-d wept for His people. Even G-d’s disappointment, even His anger, does not lead to abandonment; it leads to compassion, to covenant, to continuity. We, who have no reason to be angry with Jewish students, must certainly remain present.
But it’s not only for the sake of the Jewish people that we can’t abandon the universities. Jewish life belongs on college campuses not merely to preserve itself, but to help the university remember its own soul. American higher education is undergoing a crisis of meaning, of identity, of moral confidence. Judaism, practiced with warmth and depth, offers a model for intellectual and spiritual renewal.
This isn’t a survival strategy: it’s a conscientious rejection of the cautious approach that follows the data and calls for retreat. It’s a moral vision, urging us to do more. It’s the winning approach.
If you want to know what the Jewish future at elite universities looks like, visit a Chabad House. What you see won’t always fit neatly into the usual categories. But you’ll find light, joy, commitment—and perhaps many more students than you expect—coming home.
