Following days of festivities, the University of Maryland Chabad community celebrated Purim with a “roving party” consisting of 12 stops around campus.
During the “lively, fun” evening on March 2, participants donned costumes, read the megillah, made noise with groggers and, of course, ate hamantaschen. The stops included Jewish fraternities and sororities, residence halls and the Chabad center on Hopkins Avenue.
“That’s our night,” said Rabbi Eli Backman, UMD Chabad’s director. “Our night is running around engaging people where they are, bringing the holiday spirit.”
Students pregamed Purim over the weekend by decorating masks, making hamantash sushi on North Campus, celebrating with the nonprofit Friendship Circle and noshing on kosher staples at a UMD basketball game. “There was lots going on,” Backman said.
March 3 was more informal, with a focus on megillah reading. Backman served bagels and led a megillah reading near the freshman dorms: “We wanted to make sure everybody got to hear the megillah.”
That evening, the rabbi hosted a Purim seudah — a sit-down dinner of soup, brisket, sides and salads — attended by about 250 students. His wife, Nechama, baked 15 different kinds of hamantaschen for a cookie bar, including gingerbread, pumpkin, cookies and cream, apple pie, blueberry crisp, Neapolitan and even pistachio grapefruit.
“There was a lot of singing, a lot of dancing,” Backman said.
“We must’ve read megillah 25 times over Purim, and we must have seen hundreds and hundreds of students between all the different locations,” he added. “It was a terrifically fun 24-plus hours of Purim.”
Engaging students where they are is a large part of how UMD Chabad operates, according to Backman, who has served the UMD community for 30 years.
“We found, over the years, that not all students are going to come and leave where they are to join something,” he said. “You have to want to do that.”
Instead, Backman creates a schedule, where he may tell the campus chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi, the Jewish fraternity, that UMD Chabad will show up at 9 p.m. “When we show up, they have their whole house waiting for us,” Backman said.
Showing up to students’ gathering places or homes allows the community to meet those they wouldn’t normally encounter.
“Hopefully, they’ll connect to us and they’ll join us for other events, but at this point, it’s a way to find [students] in an easier kind of place, a comfortable place,” Backman said. “They’re at their place with their friends, their chapter house. They’re more comfortable to join.”
He added that Jewish students may want to do something to celebrate Purim, but may not go out of their way to register and attend a campus event.
“But when they hear all their friends are getting together, and then when we walk in with a lively group and they all put on costumes [and] take pictures, they get [students] involved,” Backman said. “The goal is to make them comfortable, because there’s enough barriers that can exist between celebrating Purim and college life already. I don’t want to put another one there.”
That’s why, Backman said, he goes the extra mile to bring holiday spirit to students’ dorms and Greek life houses. UMD-College Park’s campus spans 1,300 acres, according to UMD Catalog.
Backman recalled a time he went above and beyond to bring Chanukah to students more than two decades ago. “We didn’t just bring latkes because that’s not good enough,” the rabbi said.
He brought a frying pan and potatoes to the lobby of a residence hall for students to fry latkes. The elevator doors opened, revealing a student who could smell the latkes from the seventh floor.
“Bringing [holiday spirit] there, creating it in a fun, exciting way, helps others pick up on it,” Backman said. “It’s harder for us, but for me, it’s much more rewarding, and connection engages a lot more students.”
He’s even been able to reach non-Jewish students through Chabad programming. Especially during Greek life events, non-Jewish students will stop by and ask, “What is this?”, giving Backman a chance to explain the tradition. “We’re a fun, open community,” he said. “The more public we are, the more people learn about what we’re doing as well.
His primary goal? “Let’s engage more Jewish students where they are in their comfort level to join,” Backman said. “But inevitably, it also teaches the wider community about Jewish life, Jewish community [and] how welcoming we are.”
