My brother Aharon Dovid is 16 years younger than I am. He was born when I was in the 11th grade. When I am with him and some of his students, he likes to introduce me as his younger sister. The students look a little shocked, but it always gets a good laugh.
Aharon Dovid, also
known as Rabbi E, is an expert at getting people to laugh and connecting to
others. All the things he used to do that annoyed his teachers when he was in
school he now uses for his career. To be a kiruv
professional, you need those skills. Aharon Dovid works as a kiruv rabbi on the NYU campus, where the
students he meets love him and look up to him. I know he is always busy, but I
am not sure what he does all day. I thought it would be interesting to hear
about his activities, goals, what he considers a success, and whether things have
changed since the war in Israel began.
* * *
Devora: What is your job and who hired you?
Aharon Dovid: I work for an organization called Meor,
together with R’ Aron Grossman, Rabbi Eliyahu Greenberg, and additional staff.
Meor pays our salary, and our job is to connect to as many Jewish students as
we can and to teach them about Judaism. There are thousands of Jewish students
in NYU, and many of them know almost nothing about Judaism. I want to help as
many students as I can reach their Jewish potential.
D: How do you get students to come to your programs?
AD: There is the old-fashioned way and the
techy way. The old-fashioned way involves standing behind a table in a park
near NYU at the beginning of each semester and asking people who pass by if
they are Jewish. Most of the people ignore me, some say no, and occasionally, they
will admit that they are Jewish. (I assume they are telling me the truth.) Then
I ask them if they would like to come over and say hello to a nice rabbi. I
tell them about the programs we run and welcome them to participate. The techy
way is to attract students through Instagram.
D: Have things become more difficult during this time
because of the war in Israel? Are you afraid to identify yourself as a Jew
around a college campus?
AD: No one has bothered me personally, but it
is a little unnerving to walk past a demonstration calling for the destruction
of Jews. The situation has actually been good for “business.” The Jewish
students are more aware that they are Jewish and more likely to respond to my
requests. Just as an example, I was
trying to get a certain student involved for a while, but he was not
interested. When the war started, he became a pro-Israel activist. I met him
one day; he ran over to me and said, “There is a pro-Palestinian protest going
on now. Will you come and sing Am Yisrael
Chai?” – which I did.
D: What kinds of programs do you run?
AD: We have a few different kinds of
programming. Some of it is open to whoever wants to come – like a big Shabbat
dinner every month, rallies for Israel, and WhatsApp contests. In one contest, I
post a video with Jewish content. Everyone who responds to the video and shares
their takeaway is entered into a raffle.
Recently we gave
out bracelets that said “echad” and
asked students to wear them. We also sponsor trips to Israel and to Poland.
We have more
advanced programming for students who have expressed an interest. We pay a
stipend to students who attend a weekly learning class and come to two Shabbatons per semester. Eventually, we hope to get students to come
learn without needing a stipend.
D: I know you have a program called a podcast
fellowship. What is that?
AD: The podcast fellowship has been very
successful, with about 3,000 participants. The idea came about when I had a
student who was very interested in our classes but lived too far away to
attend. I hadn’t seen her for a while, and when I met her again, she had
drifted away and was no longer connected to Judaism. I made her an offer: How
about if you listen to 10 podcasts that I will send you and write a summary of
each. I offered to send her a stipend of $150. She was thrilled. A couple of
days later I had a well-done summary in my inbox, but I never saw the girl
again.
I met another two
girls and offered them the same thing. They were very excited, but they never
finished all 10 podcasts. Then we had another idea: Instead of offering 10
podcasts for $150, I suggested one podcast for $15. Instead of asking the
students to write a summary I connected them to local people to whom they could
repeat the podcast. That way, there would be instant gratification and a
personal connection.
One day, I invited
an Israeli student out for coffee. He arrived on a motorcycle. He lived in
Manhattan, so I asked him where he parks the motorcycle in Manhattan. He said
he chained it to a pole in front of his apartment. “Doesn’t it get towed away?”
I asked. He explained, “Policemen know how to give tickets for speeding or
double parking, but when they see a motorcycle chained to a pole, they are not
used to that, so they just leave it alone.”
What a great idea!
I would put signs about our podcast fellowship all over Manhattan and see if I
got a response. It worked! But even though the police did not take this guy’s
motorcycle, my signs kept on getting torn down and disappearing. There was a
Muslim man selling halal food from a truck near the sign. We pay him $100 a
month to take care of our sign! We are the only kiruv organization in America that has our Muslim cousins working
for us.
When we started
getting many calls from around the world to join the podcast fellowship, a
former graduate of our campus programing, Rabbi Tuvia Kopstein, took over this
project. Once, after Shabbos, I turned on my phone and saw 95 applications for
the podcast fellowship. A student later explained that a Jewish comedian has
posted a picture of our sign with the heading, “I think I’ll quit my day job.”
D: What do you consider success with a student?
AD: I have no control over what students
choose to do. My goal is for the students to grow Jewishly. The path they
choose is up to them.
D: I know you named one of your daughters, Shevi, after
a former student who passed away at a very young age. It is real evidence of
the connection between you and your students. Tell us about Kirstin.
AD: When I was working at the University of
Michigan, I oversaw an apartment house with a few apartments that I rented out.
Once, after Shabbos, I saw 19 missed calls from one of my tenants. It turns out
that she wanted to break her lease because she got a flea bite. I advertised an
apartment for rent, and a young woman responded. Her name was Kirstin Quinzy.
When she came to look at the apartment, she saw that we were having a program.
I explained that it was a program for Jewish students. “I am Jewish,” she
informed me.
A few months later,
I met her again and she was holding a sign saying, “Dialogue for Peace.” She asked me if
I knew any Palestinians she could talk to. She explained that she was trying to
create a new program for Jews and Palestinians to talk to each other.
“Who is going to
represent the Jewish side?” I asked. She said she was. I said, “But you don’t
know anything about Judaism.” We agreed to learn together about Judaism so she
could know more. One thing led to another, and she went on our Israel trip and
settled in Israel.
Tragically, soon
after she had her first son, she passed away from cancer. The night after her petira, my wife and I were driving to
the hospital to have our seventh child, and I said, “If we have a girl, let’s
name her Elisheva after Kirstin.”
We just had a get
together for Kirstin’s yartzheit because her son became bar mitzvah, and
we all shared memories of his mother. Kirstin was a wonderful success story and
was very close to my wife and the rest of our family.
D: I find this fascinating. I have a much clearer idea
of how you spend your time and the creative programs that you run. I am proud
to be related to you. If anyone reading this article would like to help Aharon Dovid
in his holy work, you can be in touch with him at rabbie@meor.edu.
Sidebar
Everyone Has a Story
As my brother Aharon
Dovid told me, you never know what will light a spark. His job is to open the
door to Judaism; how far people take it is up to them. In our Baltimore community,
there are many people who have chosen to join the frum community even though that is not how they were brought up.
For some it was a personality, for some it was a book, and for some it was a
Shabbos invitation. Here are some of their stories:
Lisa* was
recruited to the frum life by the
legendary Rabbi Meir Schuster, “the man at the Kotel.” Rabbi Schuster
approached her and asked if she was interested in learning about Judaism. She
answered that she might be but not yet. A few months later, she came back to
the Kotel, and Rabbi Shuster approached her again. He remembered her name, what kibbutz she
worked on, and whatever else she had told him the last time they met. The fact
that he cared enough to remember the details of one young woman among hundreds
lit a spark with Lisa. Not long after, she returned to the Kotel to find Rabbi
Schuster and set out on the path to a religious life.
Rivka,* the
daughter of survivors, grew up in the 1950s and ’60s. Although her family was
not frum, being Jewish was a major
theme in their lives. In high school, Rivka joined Young Judea, a Zionist
organization. Although it was not a religious organization, they kept kosher
and accommodated religious members. In fact, it was at their national summer
camp that Rivka first heard bentching.
After high school, Rivka went on Young Judea’s year-long Israel program. There,
one of the teachers was frum and introduced
her to a book called The Modern Jew Faces Eternal Questions. That book convinced her of the truth
of the Torah, so when it came time for the kibbutz part of the program, Rivka
chose to go a religious kibbutz. Returning to the U.S., she went to Stern
College to learn about her new lifestyle. Thus began a lifelong journey.
Leah* was a
musician, whose professor invited Jewish students to his house for Shabbos.
Once, there was a miscommunication, and the professor was not home when she
arrived shortly before Shabbos. Leah decided to knock on the door of the
neighbors, who welcomed her to stay with them. Leah continued to come to that
family for many weeks. Today she is married to a rabbi and still keeps up with
her “Shabbos family,” to whose influence she attributes her observance.
* a pseudonym
