d

Ground has been broken, and buildings are soon
to rise on the site of the Lubavitch Campus of
Living Judaism.

LYNNE MEREDITH COHN STAFF WRITER

T

here is not much more than
open fields on a 40-acre plot
west of the Jewish Com-
munity Campus in West
Bloomfield — now.
But if the bulldozers that are
currently clearing weeds and
woodlands keep up their pace, it
won't be long before the Campus
of Living Judaism starts to take
shape.
The Lubavitch-sponsored cam-
pus will house the first four-year
Jewish college in the state of Michi-
gan. The Agency for Jewish Edu-
cation formerly offered a two-year
master's degree in Hebrew litera-
ture and teachers certification.
While its buildings are not yet
built, the college goes by the name
of the Michigan Jewish Institute
and has already graduated sev-
eral students. Classes are cur-
rently held in the Lubavitch
Foundation of Michigan building
on Middlebelt Road in Farming-
ton Hills.

The three-year-old college
grants bachelor's degrees in com-
puter information systems and
business information systems,
and also has a certificate pro-
gram in talmudic studies and le-
gal jurisprudence, through a
traditional yeshiva curriculum.
But the new campus will also
be home to a shul, a fully stocked
Jewish library and a retreat cen-
ter, according to Rabbi Kasriel
Shemtov, the institute's vice
president.
Following the Lubavitch phi-
losophy, "this campus is [for] out-
reach. The shul is not just
another shul," says Rabbi Shem-
tov; its purpose is to reach out to
the unaffiliated community.
Rabbi Yitschak M. Kagan, as-
sociate director of the Lubavitch
Foundation of Michigan, says
the Jewish Community Center
and the Campus of Living Ju-
daism are perfect complements.
The latter provides "a re-

source center [that is] religious
and educational, as distinct from
the social and athletic resource
center that is the JCC. We com-
plement each otfier beautifully;
our location is great. They run a
health club for the body; we run
a health club for the soul."
Rabbi Shemtov calls it "a
shopping center for anything
Jewish."
"What I think it will add to
the Jewish community is a place
where people of every possible
affiliation in the community,
from all the way to the right to
all the way to the left, will feel
comfortable dropping in and
availing themselves of the dif-
ferent educational resources
there," Rabbi Kagan says. "It's
the first time that I know of that
a cluster of institutions like this,
basically outreach institutions,"
service a community other than
the one which built it.
"Hopefully [the campus] will
be a pilot project for Lubavitch
nationally," says Rabbi Shem-
tov.
The buildings should be open
by 1998. Rabbi Kagan says the
infrastructure — roads and sew-
ers — is under construction.
Within two months, bids will be
sought from prospective build-
ing contractors, the rabbi says.
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