As a campus Chabad rabbi, Hersh Loschak often approaches students asking if they want to wrap tefillin. It’s a powerful Jewish ritual. It can also be completed in minutes.
Yet after Oct. 7, Rowan University students started approaching Loschak. It started with a knock on the door of the rabbi’s home. David Chehet, a junior, wanted to wrap tefillin to connect with God in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israel.
“This never happens,” Loschak said.
But then it kept happening.
Students come by between classes. Some show up several times a week. And whenever Loschak goes to campus, he finds more willing participants than ever before.
“Dozens of Jewish boys have been putting on tefillin in honor of Israel,” a recent Chabad at Rowan Facebook post said.
Before he stopped by after Oct. 7, Chehet knew that Rowan had a Chabad house. But he had never visited. On the Monday or Tuesday after the attack though, he felt he needed to.
“Something inside me. I woke up late. But it didn’t feel right to go about the day without doing the mitzvah and trying to have that connection,” he said.
After the junior showed up at Loschak’s door, the rabbi decided to go to campus. It was early October. He had to take down the Chabad house’s sukkah. The rabbi posted on Instagram to invite students to help and talk about Israel. A group of students showed up, and the rabbi wrapped tefillin on all of them.
Later in the semester, Ezri, a luxury backpack company started by two Orthodox Jews and recent Cornell University graduates, offered to send free backpacks to students who wrapped tefillin for 40 straight days. The bags cost $200 each. Chehet is now part of a WhatsApp group with six other Jewish students who are participating. They post daily about their tefillin-wrapping sessions.
During winter break, one Rowan student met another in the parking lot of a grocery store. Another visited the Chabad house in his hometown. Another took a picture of himself completing the ritual three minutes before sunset.
The rabbi has held BLT, or bagels, lox and tefillin, gatherings on campus for a couple of years. Before Oct. 7, maybe two students showed up. Since, as many as 10 are joining for the ritual.
“Tefillin is that power that everyone feels like, ‘I’m doing something,’” Loschak said.
The ritual of wrapping tefillin dates to biblical times (around the 13th century BCE). But the modern Chabad movement’s emphasis on it can be traced to Israel’s victory in the 1967 Six-Day War. During that conflict with Egypt, Jordan and Syria, the rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the father of the modern Chabad movement, encouraged Jews to wrap tefillin. The rebbe quoted the Talmud in saying it would provide spiritual protection.
That belief continues today, according to the rabbi. It’s important to help provide physical protection by supporting the Israel Defense Forces. The rabbi said he donated to the IDF yesterday and continues to try to send goods. But he also can’t donate to the IDF every day.
“So, I’m going to do my part to add in that spiritual protection as well,” he said.
Since Oct. 7 and the outbreak of war, there have been a few pro-Palestinian protests at Rowan, according to Loschak. At those rallies, students chanted, “from the river to the sea,” a call to eliminate the Jewish state.
The rabbi and Jewish students wanted to do something in response. So, they organized a “tefillin challenge,” as Loschak described it, at the same spot where a rally was held: an owl statue on campus. There, they also said the Shema and sang Oseh Shalom, the prayer for peace.
Thirteen students joined. While they were praying and singing, a Jewish student walked over. He told Loschak that the other day, he was walking out of class when he heard the “from the river to the sea” chants. The student explained to Loschak that the chant made him sad. His parents are Israeli.
“He joined and sang with us and put on tefillin,” the rabbi said.
“We wanted to combat hate with love, darkness with light,” Loschak added.
Chehet now calls tefillin wrapping his “morning routine.”
“You wake up, get dressed, brush your teeth and you wrap tefillin if it’s not Shabbat. We all wake up and have this decision to make: What do I choose to connect with before I go out in the world?” he said. “If all else fails, at least I wrapped tefillin and thanked God.”
