Jewish Coffee Houses and Residences Established in Many Communities

Coffee houses featuring Israeli entertainment have been set up on ten campuses and a series of Jewish residences have been established on major state universities, Ivy League campuses and others, it was reported by Dr. Arnulf Pins, chairman of the American Zionist Youth Foundation. Most of the coffee houses are run on a weekly or monthly basis and have succeeded in attracting hundreds of students through their activities, which include reading of literature and serving Middle Eastern food. In Philadelphia, the coffee house operates on a daily basis and is used for meetings of different student groups in the city. Another coffee house, on a daily basis, is soon going to start its activities in Chicago. Jewish residence houses have been established at Berkeley, the University of Washington, University of Maryland, University of Texas, University of New Mexico and at other campuses.

A Jewish house has also been established at Cornell. In addition to providing kosher food, these houses sometimes operate as communes, hosting different guest lecturers and artists. They also serve as a drop-in center for other concerned Jewish students on the campus. In some of the houses, as in Oberlin, Ohio, Hebrew is a basic medium of communication. In them, students are accepted only if they commit themselves to a certain number of weekly hours of Jewish study. The atmosphere, as reflected in the decoration within the houses, is Israeli, and the topic of conversation centers around Israeli and Jewish problems. The University Service Department of the AZYF is assisting an increasing number of the coffee houses and the residences with educational material. This year, a total of 4,000 high school and college students will be sent to Israel on summer seminars and institutes by the AZYF.