Imagine spending 15 hours in a kitchen, cooking chicken, meatballs and salads for a group of 1,500 students. That is exactly what student volunteers from the Chabad Center for Jewish Life at Binghamton University will be doing Thursday and Friday to prepare for Shabbat 1500.
Shabbat 1500, an event held by Chabad Center for Jewish Life at Binghamton University since 1996 in honor of the Jewish Sabbath, a day of rest and spiritual enrichment, will take place at 6 p.m. Friday in the West Gym.
“We start cooking Thursday afternoon and work straight through till Friday at 5:30 p.m. when we open the doors,” said Marni Strauss, a junior in the Decker School of Nursing and the food coordinator for the event. “We get a ton of volunteers, do a lot of cooking, preparing and dishing out of food.”
All of the food for the event is cooked and prepared at the Chabad Center on Murray Hill Road and then transported to the West Gym on Friday afternoon.
“It’s really hectic until you get everything together, but once you see everything set up it’s amazing,” Strauss said. “It really pays off when you see everyone seated and enjoying the food.”
Though feeding 1,500 people is a huge job, recruiting 1,500 students to attend the Shabbat dinner is also an elaborate task taken on by three dedicated committee chairs: Dayna Driscoll, Gabriella Zur and Ariel Yadaie.
“While [recruitment] may be difficult, once you get a lot of people to start talking about the event it encourages a lot of people to sign up,” said Driscoll, a junior double-majoring in political science and linguistics and vice president of Chabad. “This year we went through Binghamton’s organization listservs and any organization we thought would be interested in coming, we sent out personalized e-mails.”
Chabad held a “freeze mob” on campus Monday afternoon to garner publicity for Shabbat 1500.
Close to 100 students wearing Shabbat 1500 T-shirts froze on the Lois B. DeFleur walkway for approximately two and a half minutes to promote the event.
Saryah Sober, a senior majoring in political science who coordinated the freeze mob, said such a large event needs big publicity.
“We have never done this here before, but other Chabad organizations have,” he said.
The event, which originally started as Shabbat 1000, became Shabbat 1500 in 2008 when Chabad decided to increase its attendance goal.
“Our goal is 1,500 students, and a few years ago we came very close to that,” said Rabbi Levi Slonim, the programming and development director at Chabad. “We don’t know exactly how many people to expect, but probably anywhere between 1,200 and 1,500 based on past years.”
For most attendees, the family and group atmosphere of the event is what they enjoy the most.
“In the past, before I was on E-Board, my favorite part was seeing all of the people who don’t normally come to Chabad participate, but this year I will still enjoy seeing everyone come together, but it will be even better because I was a part of planning it,” Driscoll said.
Shabbat 1500 is spearheaded by Chabad at Binghamton University and co-sponsored by Hillel/Jewish Student Union as well as other groups on campus.