This was the first year in many that a nice-sized group came from Albany to the annual Chabad on Campus NYC Shabbaton. It was an amazing weekend with close to 1,000 students from campuses all over the United States and Canada, as well as Paris, Amsterdam and other places. The biggest takeaway was the incredible energy and especially the dancing, lively and spirited from Lecha Dodi on Friday Night to the Havdalah and 8th Day Concert on Saturday Night, plus the spontaneous singing and dancing on the NYC Subways and at the Times Square in Manhattan.
Many thanks to those who hosted our students: two hosts on Union Street, two on Montgomery Street and the Galperins on Empire Blvd. Thanks to Grant and Larry for driving down in addition to our minivan. Thanks to our students for being an involved, interested, invested group throughout the Shabbaton weekend. Some highlights for our students, aside for the dancing and being together with students from all over, was meeting up with old friends from home or from various trips to Israel or study programs, hearing David Weiss sharing his story on Friday Night, the student from Ottawa speaking about weeds, some found the Sunday trip to the Rebbe’s Ohel very meaningful, others enjoyed other speakers and workshops and our spontaneous crazy wild singing fun midnight trip on Sat Night to Times Square.
At large events like this, Mendel enjoys the sport of meeting people, learning something interesting about them, trying to remember their name and campus, playing a little Jewish geography and learning something new from different people, people are quite interesting and often very inspiring. This event certainly didn’t disappoint in that regard!
We took a bunch of pictures, and Chabad on Campus posted a bunch of professional photos on their facebook page. Hope to post some here soon!