by Mordechai and Nisa Harris
This past weekend saw a resurgence of life to the SUNY Albany Shabbat community (despite the fact that it’s right before finals). Hillel brought in a comedic duo to tell us all about the difficulties of dating in college, and the result was a student turnout that rivaled opening week turnout. The orthodox minyan alone had almost twice the usual turnout. It also meant that dinner was longer then usual to accommodate the usual divrei Torah and announcements on top of the show. By the time the show finished, it was already an hour after the usual end time of dinner, nevertheless our Oneg regulars joined by a few new faces to Friday night still managed to stay for another couple of hours, singing and discussion. Inspired by the weekly Parsha’s wrestling match, we wrestled with the topic of what it means to be Bnei Yisrael, and our responsibility to struggle with… well, everything. Needless to say, conversation got lively, and it was clear pretty quickly that this was only the beginning of many future conversations. Saturday resumed it’s usual course as we were reunited with Chabad for the first time at full strength since the beginning of the semester. (Our other trips had found that at least the Chabad Rabbi was away which gave us an opportunity to fill in, but it was good to again work with.) For the first time in recent campus memory we had a minyan within the first half hour and prior to the first Kaddish opportunity. Latecomers were happily shocked to find that instead of being the 10th man, they were the 15th or 17th. The davening reflected that positive energy, and that energy was carried into a delicious lunch filled with divrei Torah and the first snow storm of the season. Following lunch the men and women went their own ways as a special womens’ shiur on Chanukah was given upstairs. The men had a lively discussion on Israeli politics and In vitro meat’s Kashrut status over a Sudah Shlishit which no one really had the appetite to eat (short Shabbos at fault and not the discussion of test tube meat…) After Shabbat there was a quick Mariv and a nice Havdallah before the Chabad Rabbi drove everyone home through the bitter snowstorm. Due to weather and finals, there was no Sat. night event. We look forward to a great next semester.