Chabad on Campus Hosts Law Shabbat

Missouri Supreme Court Judge Richard B. Teitelman was the featured guest speaker at a recent Shabbat dinner hosted by Chabad on Campus, for Jewish students at Washington University in St. Louis.

Chabad’s annual “Law Shabbat” is an opportunity for Jewish students at Missouri’s Law Schools to spend a Shabbat with a group of their peers and meet leading Jewish legal professionals who share their views on the confluence of law and Judaism.

Judge Teitelman, the first legally blind and first Jewish judge to serve on Missouri’s highest court, addressed the group of over 50 students, including several visiting law students from Tel Aviv University, who participated in the Shabbat dinner.

In his remarks, the Judge noted that Jews have a biblical mandate to ‘pursue justice’ and told the students about his efforts to sensitize the legal community to the Jewish holidays. He also spoke fondly about his stint as Director of Legal Services of Eastern Missouri, and noted that legal aid is an expression of the Jewish commitment to help mankind.

Rabbi Hershey Novack is the director of Chabad on Campus, an organization that is less than two years old. He is very pleased with the success of this program and says that for some students “this is their first campus encounter with Judaism and their first taste of a traditional Shabbat.”

Novack also feels that “the Jewish legal professionals serve as important role models to our students, allowing them to see the integration of Jewish and American law.”

Howard Shalowitz, president of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis, also participated and led the Kiddush service.

The Law Shabbat is sponsored in part by a grant from the Uforatzta Endowment Fund. Chabad on Campus is under the aegis of Chabad of Greater St. Louis – Rabbi Yosef Landa, director – and is the beneficiary of a grant from the Rohr Family Foundation.