A Campus Rabbi On a Mission to Build

Amidst continued hostility towards Israel at many U.S. schools, the head of Chabad at Haverford College leans in to create a bigger Jewish presence.

By Allan Ripp

It’s a challenging time to be a campus rabbi.

Jewish enrollment is down, especially among liberal arts colleges in the Northeast long popular with Jews. Many Jewish students have pulled away from religious observance and markers that make them targets of anti-Zionist sentiment amidst Israel’s ongoing war with Hamas. Others have thrown their lot in with the encampments, sloganeering protests and boycotts of all things Jewish.

Eli Guervitz is all too aware of the trends. As head of the Rohr Center for Jewish Life at Haverford College near Philadelphia, Guervitz acknowledges a pullback in attendance at his modest Chabad House across the street from the school’s leafy Main Line entrance. Whereas Jews comprised well over 20% of Haverford students in 2017, the percentage dropped to 14% by 2024, according to Hillel International. The 2025 portion is apparently lower still.

“We’re still dealing with trauma post October 7,” says Rabbi Guervitz, 45, a native of “the holy city of Crown Heights, Brooklyn,” who first arrived at the Quaker-founded school in 2006. “There’s a pattern that if you’re a proud Jew who supports Israel, expect to be harassed, antagonized and canceled.”

Although Haverford’s tensions haven’t headlined like those at other schools – see Harvard, Penn, UCLA, Northwestern or Columbia – the stridency around Israel has been just as polarizing. Social media posts by tenured professors call the Jewish state a Nazi death cult and claim that genocide is “on brand” for Israel. Another popular shared meme is a cartoon that calls Israel “a continuation of Euro-American colonial barbarism.”

“Being associated with Israel has become completely unkosher,” Rabbi Guervitz says. “Unfortunately, the administration has refused to curb extreme viewpoints for fear of inhibiting free speech, even when faculty urge Intifada uprisings.” He adds that besides shading their Jewish identities, students ask him not to post photos of their Birthright trips to Israel over concerns they’ll be outed.

In May 2024, a group of students filed suit against Haverford in federal court in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, alleging the school fostered a hostile environment for Jews. The complaint claimed administrators were non-responsive when hostage posters were torn down or when students were rejected by their peers to lead campus tours because they were “Zionists.” Last fall, a workshop hosted by the Anti-Defamation League was shouted down by pro-Palestinian protesters banging on the windows.

This past August, the Department of Education announced a Title VI investigation into civil rights violations at Haverford over its tepid treatment of discrimination and intimidation of Jewish students. The DOE stated that “senior leadership at Haverford allegedly told Jewish students they should be ‘brave’ in the face of anti-Semitic harassment, and not expect to be ‘safe,’ and even blamed ‘the wind’ for vandalism and removal of hostage posters and posters advertising Jewish life events.”

Lawmakers have taken notice. At a hearing on Capitol Hill in May, New York Representative Elise Stefanik tried repeatedly to get Haverford President Wendy Raymond to explain the school’s inability to discipline staffers celebrating Hamas’s attacks against Israel, along with overt acts of antisemitism. “You still don’t get it. Haverford doesn’t get it,” Stefanik fumed.

Rabbi Guervitz reached his own inflection point when, during a stream of sleepless nights at the end of 2023, he fielded a call from an alumnus urging him to pack it in after 17 years. “You’ve had a good run, maybe it’s time to find a new thing,” his friend advised during the wave of post-Oct. 7 animosity.

“That’s when I realized we had to go the other direction,” he says. “Entrepreneurs take bold risks to create companies, philanthropists form charities. We needed to do the same for Jewish education, in a big way to make clear we’re not going anywhere.”

Thus was born a plan to expand the Rohr Center, not only for Haverford but to draw Jewish students at sibling schools Bryn Mar and Swarthmore. Whereas holiday gatherings currently convene under an outdoor tent, Rabbi Guervitz envisioned a student center with ample space for services and study, events, kosher dining, “and just hanging out,” he says.

The project caught a break when a couple of longtime donors agreed to sell at a steep discount a lot they owned adjacent to the existing Chabad House. The combined one-acre parcel meant the center could keep its prime College Avenue location, though Rabbi Guervitz and his wife Bloomie had to appeal to the Haverford Zoning Board seeking a change to their property from residential use to a house of worship. Among those speaking on their behalf at a public hearing in June 2024 was a psychologist neighbor who described seeing students arrive at Chabad in tears and leaving in a relaxed state. “Helping students away from their families and usual sources of support is an excellent resource,” she said.

Next up was the town’s planning commission, which blessed the project in January after reviewing everything from overflow parking and outdoor lighting to community impact (Haverford itself supported the expansion effort). A fundraising flyer for the proposed 15,000-square foot center highlights a cafe, music and quiet rooms, commercial kosher kitchen, dining for 100, plus a second-story shul and library, with offices and multipurpose rooms. Six guestrooms will accommodate overnight stays and the basement will feature a homework bar and game room.

The Guervitzes have impressively raised $2 million towards a $6 million goal, for landscaping, furnishings, design plans, construction, as well as security. In grand Jewish tradition, naming rights are available for the dining hall ($900K), garden and entrance lobby ($250K each) and the building itself ($2.5M). Initial construction could start next spring, meaning the couple will need to relocate with their five-year-old twins (their three older kids are out of the house – “an Orthodox rabbi with only two children at home is considered an empty nester,” Rabbi Guervitz jokes).

The real $6 million question is whether continued fallout over Israel — with or without a deal to end fighting in Gaza and free remaining hostages — will keep students away or make the community come under greater threat. Rabbi Guervitz sees well past that.

“When my wife and I first arrived in 2006, we were perhaps the first full-time Chabad House in the country serving a small liberal arts college,” he recalls, adding that even many of his religious colleagues “told us we were crazy. I remember one alum warning, ‘Haverford will never be a welcoming place for Jews and you’ll always feel out of place.’ But we pressed forward with conviction that this was the right thing to do. Today, Chabad can be found at virtually every liberal arts school – the connection we offer to students is essential, and it goes beyond hostilities around Israel.”

“We understand the urgency to keep fighting – for Israel and against antisemitism, but that’s not our primary mission,” he continues. “We exist to offer a positive Jewish experience for students – intellectually, spiritually and socially. Ten, twenty years from now we’re going to look back and say there was a crisis. What are we going to show for ourselves? We need to create a permanent, positive space for Jewish students that will outlive the crisis. Now is the time to build.