Even for students, getting around the University at Albany campus is a schlep. For visitors, you need to pay for parking and make your way through a 610-acre maze of buildings, pillars and even a pool. It takes determination. Still, on Sept. 9, many from the wider Jewish community trekked to the university in New York’s capital city to celebrate being Jewish along with students.

The visitors witnessed a view of college life not often talked about as antisemitic incidents flare across American campuses. The campus ballroom was flooded with a sea of students, waving glow sticks and bouncing together to the beat of Hassidic rapper Nissim Black’s hits.

The event was part of Chabad on Campus’s Let Here Be Light! tour, which is stopping at nearly 50 schools across the United States and Canada this month. Driving from campus to campus in light purple vans beaming the Let Here Be Light! branding, four groups of roughly a dozen Chabad staff are bringing a traveling carnival complete with tents, arts and music.

Additionally, many campuses including Queens College, Binghamton University and University of Southern California held mega events along with the larger Jewish community featuring a concert with the rapper. The initiative cost between $500,000 to $600,000.  

“The question is not how much it costs, the question is how much of a difference it makes,” Rabbi Yossy Gordon, CEO of Chabad on Campus International, told eJewishPhilanthropy.

The investment is unprecedented for Chabad on Campus, but it was needed because “it’s a historic time,” Gordon said. “We need to do things that are beyond what has ever been done before, because the Jewish people require it. They require a measure of strength and inspiration that’s got to be fueled by a unique level of intensity.”

The tour came together at the last minute, with college Chabad houses scrambling to organize events within weeks.

“We didn’t run with it,” Gordon said. “We sprinted like you can’t imagine. We ran it on a motorcycle.”

For Mendel Rubin, the Shabbos House-University at Albany’s Chabad rabbi, the tour was an opportunity to throw a party they normally wouldn’t be able to afford. “We never have a chance to blow some serious money,” he told eJP.

They received a $10,000 grant for the concert, and along with other college Chabad houses, negotiated a reduced rate from Black. Additional funding was provided by the Jewish Federation of Northeastern New York and UAlbany Hillel. Students attended for free, but community members paid $10 per ticket, bringing in another $1,000.

“I’m so glad it was feasible, because, to be honest, I can’t take 10 grand and blow it up in one night,” Rubin said.

Over the past year, “Albany has been spared some of the intensity of other places,” he said, adding that he feels supported by peers and students of all backgrounds on campus. “UAlbany, generally, has been handling [protests and tension based around Israel] amazing, and there was a very big emphasis on civility and respect… Students don’t feel physically threatened here.”

But protesters recently disrupted a candlelighting ceremony and presidents’ convocation during orientation. “The student intifada at UAlbany has just begun,” UAlbany Students for Justice in Palestine posted to Instagram after interrupting the president’s speech.

For new freshmen, “they walked into something very disturbing for them,” Rubin said. “They needed a boost in the arm, something exciting that would celebrate their Judaism in a big, strong way.”

The University at Albany Let Here Be Light! festival held during the day featured crafts, airbrushed T-shirts and a babka tasting. It was attended by more non-Jews than Jews. “When non-Jewish people get a positive [view] of Jewish people, it can be a game changer,” Rubin said.

Campus communities have been supportive of the events, Gordon said. “They want to support the Jewish people. The world knows that the Jews have been attacked, and Israel has been attacked, and that Israel needs to be supported, and that the Jewish people are worthy people, and this is an opportunity for them to be able to express it.”

Nearly 250 people attended the University at Albany concert, about half from the larger Jewish community. Many students brought non-Jewish roommates and friends.

Bringing in the larger Jewish community to campus events is not always what is best for students, Rubin said. “[The larger Jewish] community doesn’t always pick up what students want,” Rubin said. “Some community [members] are very eager to do stuff on campus, like put up kidnap posters or to make a rally. Most students don’t want that. They’re not all interested in the confrontation piece… Students benefit most from student-only events” because then they feel like they have their own space.

But bigger events such as the concert offer a great opportunity for visitors to share in the students’ glee, and allows students to feel their love.

“It was good to be able to enjoy it with [the larger community],” Ari Klein, a University at Albany junior who is president of UAlbany Chabad, told eJP. “Enjoy something positive and not just something serious that is pretty sad.”

Planning the event “was the most stressful week I’ve ever had at this school,” he said. Still, “it was the most fun I’ve ever had.”

At the concert, Klein and his buddies were in the front row, but they made room for a crew of children attending with their parents. “L’dor va’dor, from generation to generation,” he said. “It was embodying that.”

After Black showed up without a DJ, Rubin scrambled to find someone to spin, offering Ari Leverton, a junior at the school, an incredible opportunity. “It turned out to be a major blessing,” Rubin said. “It was such a booster for this student.”

At each concert on the tour, Black told eJP he saw “proud Yids, smiling faces, some funny dance moves.” “Despite everything going on,” the rapper said, “we continue to sing and dance as one.”