Recently, the Jewish campus outreach movement Heart to Heart, part of the Orthodox Union’s NextGen Division, attempted to raise $60,000 in 24 hours. In the end, they didn’t raise the $60,000.

They raised $80,000!

Heart to Heart began as a simple idea. While studying bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008, Hart Levine realized that most of the thousands of Jews at Penn were devoid of anything Jewish in their lives. He felt compelled to do something about it.

He thought, “Why not give them a warm, stimulating Shabbat meal with their Penn peers?” He promptly met with a group of fellow Orthodox students, urging them to get the word out to every non-affiliated classmate they knew. “I knew that they could reach other students in a way that no organization could,” he says.

 

 

 
Attending to the needs of Jewish college students one Shabbat meal at a time: Heart to Heart logo from website.

That first Shabbat dinner led to many more and soon included holiday celebrations. Hart enlisted the help of rabbis who educated the group on how to run a seder according to Jewish law and what the seder represents. According to Hart, between the two nights in the first year, roughly 150 students participated in the seders.

His brainchild quickly turned into a thriving grassroots movement, as campuses across the country readily implemented the, aptly named, Heart to Heart program. Orthodox students told Hart Levine, “This is exactly what our campus needs.”

Looking to network about the growing program, he asked Rabbi Dave Felsenthal, director of OU’s NextGen division, to mentor him and to work with his leaders. Rabbi Dave was so impressed that he invited Hart and Heart to Heart to join the OU. With the OU’s help, Heart to Heart continued to expand, allowing thousands of unaffiliated Jewish college students to experience meaningful Judaism for the first time.

Evidently, the campaign generated considerable excitement. “We would tag people on Facebook, saying, ‘Thank you to Sara and David for giving,’” recounts Hart. “Their friends would see it and think, ‘All my friends are giving; maybe I should give too!’” And they did – in droves.

Hart reports that the vast majority of donations came from people who had been involved in the program. “Five or six years after they’ve graduated from college and are into their careers, many of them wanted to give back,” he says. “The whole model of Heart to Heart is built around empowering the students. So this was a natural extension.”

The $80,000 coup will certainly keep Heart to Heart’s outreach efforts on the current 50 campuses going strong.

“There are a lot of colleges with a dozen to hundreds of Torah observant students and thousands of uninvolved, unaffiliated Jewish students who have never been to a Shabbat table, who don’t know other Jews on campus,” Hart Levine said. “They are thrilled that someone cares about them enough to share a meaningful [Jewish] experience with them.”