Brown/RISD Hillel's new rabbi, Mordechai Rackover, got to College Hill late last week to start his new job.
But -- awed and blown away by the Brown community -- he feels like he's been "dropped in Times Square."
Rackover, who will replace Serena Eisenberg '87 as the Hillel rabbi, said he's been impressed by the intelligence and creativity of the people he's met so far.
And, he added, "unbelievably impressed by the range of fashion choice."
Eisenberg's position has been split into two: an executive director will focus on administration and finance, while the rabbi will focus on teaching. That means Rackover will have more opportunities to educate than past rabbis, said Megan Nesbitt, executive director of Hillel.
"He'll be more accessible," Nesbitt said. Because of traveling, fundraising and other administrative duties, Eisenberg "just didn't have enough time to do as much as she would have liked" in the realm of teaching, Nesbitt said.
Rackover comes to Brown reflecting many of the qualities Brown students have themselves, said Janet Cooper Nelson, chaplain of the University.
"(He's) exciting to talk to," she said, adding that Rackover is a vibrant teacher and "has a good sense of humor."
"Students find him compelling," she said.
After an "elaborate search process" involving the Hillel Board, a University committee, the Office of the Chaplains and Religious Life, Cooper Nelson says that Rackover is "a good match for Brown."
Rackover hails from Montreal, where he was raised in a "culturally Jewish" but not strictly observant home.
As he progressed through high school, he became more involved with the local Jewish community, he said. At McGill University, he joined Hillel and immersed himself in Jewish life. But after about a year, he dropped out to attend a yeshiva, or seminary, outside of Jerusalem.
"I was really not observant to begin with," he said. "I was just studying and learning."
Rackover said that his rapid progression though Jewish studies "freaked me out a little bit," especially since he had yet to complete college. He returned to Canada and finished his remaining two-and-a-half years at McGill in 19 months, leaving with a B.A. in Jewish Studies.
He headed back to Israel, finished seminary and was ordained. While there, he met his wife, Nechama Lea, a native of the Czech Republic. They were married four-and-a-half months later.
Rackover decided that he wanted to find a way to turn his knowledge into a career, and he began studying education at Pardeis University in Jerusalem, "a more liberal and open environment," he said. He also took courses at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
After finishing his studies, Rackover moved to Potomac, Md. to teach at a Jewish day school. He took a second job as the youth director at a 450-family Orthodox synagogue, where after two years he became the assistant rabbi and director of education.
Rackover came to Brown for an interview at Hillel and was most impressed by the students.
"The faculty and staff are all really nice people, but it was really the interest level of the students," he said.
After working at a suburban synagogue, the religious life at Hillel was eye-opening, he said. "Here people come only when they want -- they're really interested. There is no sense of obligation."
Though Rackover is Orthodox, he feels he has "a pretty healthy sense of the broadness of Jewish life."
Hillel's student president, Liz Piper-Goldberg '08, is Reform, and said that he "will focus us in a good direction."
"I'm excited for us to fill the spectrum (of religious involvement) and help people connect in different ways," she said.
Rackover has no specific plans for what he will teach and said he wants to see what students would like to explore. In general, he'd like to enable an integration of culture with daily life.
"People get an Ivy League education and they may not have the Jewish knowledge that matches," he said. "It's important that I give people those tools to be more balanced with their tradition and culture."
One of the many voices involved in the search process for a new rabbi was Eytan Kurshan '08, the former Hillel president. Kurshan found that Rackover "electrified" students in a way no other candidate did. The fact that Rackover had no experience working at a Hillel before was actually a selling point for Kurshan.
"He was different, and that appealed to me," he said. "At a place like Brown/RISD Hillel, it's important to have someone who's open to different ways of expressing Judaism, but also someone who's learned enough in the different types of Judaism to help students in their personal journeys."
Rackover's openness, Kurshan said, "is really hard to come by."
Rackover said he wants to make Hillel "as comfortable as possible, for as many people as possible." He wants Hillel to be a place where people can "come by, hang out and learn," he said.
For the Rabbi, the first few months of school are all about learning, too. He wants to follow a student through a day-in-the-life to understand the pace and experience of Brown, and he said he would like to attend classes, meet advisers, eat in the Ratty, visit the libraries and experience dorm life.
"If a student comes to me and says, 'Rabbi, I can't stand my dorm!' I want to understand what that means," he said.
Rackover's wife and three children - Tuvya Shalom, 7; Simcha Avraham, 4; and Eden Sara Sasha, 15 months - join him on Brown's campus and will be present at Hillel. "We want to be available to people as a family," he said.
Rackover said the "hanging-out element" of school was most critical to his formative years of learning, and he hopes to emulate the same experience with students here.
"They've chosen to be here, it's not by accident," he said. "The most important thing I can convey is that I will spend a couple months really learning about Brown."
