Rabbi
Chalom Boudjnah
Nickname: Boom Boudjnah
Age: 27
where he’s at now:
Program director for Chabad House at SDSU and chapter rabbi
at AEPi.
why he’s on this list:
Whether engaging undergraduates in paintball fights or leading
them on parachuting and bungee-jumping expeditions, Boudjnah wants students
to know he’s ‘not your father’s rabbi.’ “You
can’t go to campus and be like every other rabbi,” claims
the spry spiritual leader, who enlivens holiday gatherings and Shabbat
parties by performing back flips and somersaults. “You have to reach
out to students in a way where you show them a good time and show them
they can do everything they want to do, but at the same time do it with
Jewish people and in a Jewish environment.”
why boudjnah can kick your ass:
“I took three years of boxing when I was in France,”
says the father of two, who grew up in Paris. “I was always being
attacked, with knives and glass bottles, for being Jewish…. When
I came here and saw young Jewish people who are not connected at all,
I also saw I could give them that pride of and love for being Jewish.
It makes me so happy to see [them being] openly Jewish, because we never
had that chance in France.”
where will he be in 18 years?
“We have something very special here that I want to
share,” he notes. “I want to bring rabbis to students at their
own level…. I want to have somebody for UCSD, I want to have somebody
for San Diego State, and then somebody for all the other community colleges.”
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