They join for the dinners, sponsored by the campus Hillel, to be together, to share their thoughts, to grieve and to hug.

It is an evening of comfort.

"I have stayed in Blacksburg since the tragedy and interacting with my fellow Jews has been the best therapy I could ever ask for," Mitch Pinsker, a graduating senior, writes in a blog that Virginia Tech Hillel executive director Sue Kurtz put together this week. "Sharing thoughts, giving and receiving countless hugs, crying in each others' arms has really helped me grieve and heal. I strongly feel these dinners helped fueled [sic] the love and sense of community I feel right now."

The dinners are one way that the organized Jewish community has reached out to the Virginia Tech community. Hillel has been providing the meals through a $10,000 grant from the United Jewish Communities. Kurtz is not certain if the dinners will continue through the end of the semester, nor is she certain how else the grant will be used.

Right now, she says, "we're sitting shiva."

Hillel also has dispatched two staffers from its international office in D.C. to help out. "This is an amazing campus and an amazing place," said one of them, Scott Brown, a vice president. "The kind of support that the students give one another, the pride that the students have Š leads me to believe that this campus is going to be all right."

UJC, meanwhile, has provided a rabbi to help out on campus. A member of the National Spiritual Care Disaster Response Team, Rabbi Zahara Davidowitz-Farkas provided what she calls disaster spiritual care for victims of Sept. 11 and Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

Since Friday, she has been at Virginia Tech. She will stay there until at least the week's end. The questions she's hearing are ones of grief, she said, the kind of grief that leads people to ask, "How can God let this happen?"

"I can embrace someone and say, 'that's my question as well.' Part of what people need it permission to be angry at God," she explained. "If they need to be angry, that's absolutely the right thing to do."

Chabad of Richmond, too, has been on hand to assist, and has announced that it would open a Chabad House in Blacksburg, to honor Liviu Librescu, the professor and Holocaust survivor gunned down trying to protect his students.

"I think this is the nicest thing the religious community could do to commemorate my father and help thousands of students," Librescu's son, Arieh, told TotallyJewish.com. "If just one student will really realize what his religion is and continue the Jewish heritage then it is great." ‹ Debra Rubin