![For the hundreds of students that come through Chabad at USC's building each week, particularly during the High Holiday season, the newly expanded 12,000 sq building is "a home away from home."](https://w2.chabad.org/media/images/1387/HtRN13872620.JPG?_i=_nF72F3FCB89E9790A548A28674376BE69 "For the hundreds of students that come through Chabad at USC's building each week, particularly during the High Holiday season, the newly expanded 12,000 sq building is "a home away from home."")
Every night for the past few weeks, 30 students can be found enjoying kosher schnitzel and shawarma on the roof of the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center at USC, a few blocks north of the University of Southern California campus in Los Angeles.
They’re eating at Chabad’s aptly named new kosher restaurant, The Rooftop, which opened several weeks ago in the Chabad center. On Friday nights and the High Holidays, the number of students at the center swells into the hundreds, filling the new synagogue and dining room built to seat 350.
This is the first High Holiday season in Chabad at USC since it opened in its expanded form earlier this month, and the building has hardly had a quiet day. Ava Schwartz, a student board member at Chabad of USC, said the season has a feeling all its own.
“It almost feels like summer camp,” she said. “It’s homey, you’re there almost every day with your crowd, and it really feels like a home away from home.”
Services for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were packed, and Schwartz said she kept running into students she knew from around campus and from her classes.
“To gather with your friends for something meaningful and important, like the High Holidays, is so special,” she said. “Chabad is the place to be, and it means a great deal to see students making Judaism a priority when college offers so many other distractions and things to do.”
She repeats a message from Rabbi Dov Wagner, who has directed the center with his wife, Runya, for 25 years. On Yom Kippur, he told students not to come only for the most somber day of the year, but also on the days when Jewish life is exciting and full of energy, such as the upcoming Sukkot and Simchat Torah holidays.
Over Sukkot, which begins Friday evening, hundreds of Jewish students will gather for services and meals, and the several daily events taking place in the sukkah. Rabbi Wagner said 800 to 1,000 people will shake the lulav and etrog at USC over the course of the holiday.
A Small Addition That Kept Growing
Only a few months ago, a holiday season this busy would not have fit in the building.
Chabad at USC purchased its home on Severance Street in 2002. By around 2011, the Wagners saw they could no longer comfortably host everyone coming for Shabbat, so they embarked on a project to add some 1,000 square feet to the dining room.
Rabbi Wagner said the historically protected house required a long approval process and careful planning. Permits, historic-preservation review, pandemic delays and a series of redesigns followed, and the project grew and developed, the budget reaching $10 million. With the original house and the new construction together, the center now covers some 12,000 square feet. Hundreds of students, alumni, parents, donors and university leaders attended the grand opening on Aug. 30.
Along with the rooftop and the new dining room, the building now has a synagogue and a student lounge. The old dining room is now a library, which is also used for the overflow crowd when even the new space is filled to capacity.
There are about 2,000 USC undergraduates who are Jewish, with slightly fewer in the graduate schools. A quiet Friday night now brings 150 to 200 students, and a busy one brings 300 to 400, the rabbi estimates.
“Jewish life on campus is popping,” Schwartz said. “Having such a beautiful home cements the importance of the Jewish student community, and what an asset it is. It is so comforting to have this safe haven, and to see how the Jewish community is thriving.”
She has made many of her friends there, “and it keeps me coming back,” she said.
‘Do It With Us’
The Rooftop is perhaps the most unique addition to the building. The students who eat there each night include some who already keep kosher in one form or another, and others who, Rabbi Wagner said, are eager to try it and make it part of their lives.
Not too long ago, USC had no freshly prepared kosher meals on campus.
“We worked together with the university for years exploring how to provide kosher on campus,” says Rabbi Wagner. “They tried offering grab-and-go options, which didn’t work well, and even commissioned a study to see how they could offer a kosher meal plan, but ultimately decided against it.”
As those talks continued, Chabad of USC offered the university another option:
“We told them to do it with us: If the new center were built to commercial kitchen standards, we could run a kosher meal program from Chabad,” Rabbi Wagner recalls.
Over the summer, the pieces fell into place. Chabad had already built and equipped the kitchen during construction, and it hired a team with experience running a restaurant. After several rounds of talks, the university agreed to what Rabbi Wagner called “maximum accessibility.” Any student with a campus meal plan can use a swipe at The Rooftop without restriction.
Schwartz said the restaurant’s importance extends well beyond the students who eat there.
“To have a kosher restaurant on campus is amazing,” she said, “and it expands USC as an option for Jewish students choosing a college.”
For her, though, what makes the building matter most is the people in it, especially at this time of year.
“Particularly for students, many away from home for the first time, to have this family environment and the Jewish atmosphere, is really very precious.”
Fantastic! Stories like this are heart-warming, and give hope to the world.