Shabbat Dinner for 100

By Romi Laskin

Last Friday was our semi-annual Shabbat 100 Dinner at the Tri-Co Rohr Center for Jewish Life. The goal of Shabbat 100 is to have the Chabad House filled with over 100 members and friends of the Jewish community who come together to enjoy a meal with great company and delicious food. This semester, we passed this goal with flying colors. We had over 110 students there, mostly from Haverford and Bryn Mawr. It was a fantastic mix of class years, students new and old to Chabad, and men and women. As we do every week, we were fortunate enough to eat a delicious meal including challah and chicken soup prepared by Blumie. It is Sunday night as I write this post, and my friends are still talking about how exquisite the 3 types of kugel were.

My personal highlight of the Shabbat dinner was when individuals at each table, prompted by Blumie, went around and introduced themselves and shared something they were looking forward to in the coming week. At Chabad we typically do this as a whole group, but listening to all of our guests would have taken an extremely long time, so we divided by table. About half of my table consisted of my friends, and the other half consisted of people I recognized, but didn’t know personally. I very much enjoyed meeting new Bi-Co students, and learning about the exciting week my friends were expecting. Overall, the buzzing and warm Shabbat 100 was a great way to end the Jewish year, and start off the academic year with a bang.

Here’s a link to a Bi-Co News Report of our first “Shabbat 100” in 2011 It’s amazing that four years later we’re still able to keep this momentum!