Chabad at UC Santa Barbara hosted its annual Mega Shabbat on April 4 at the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center in Isla Vista as the spring quarter kicked off. The event operated on a $97,000 budget from Associated Students that went towards kosher food, decorations and security, among other things.

About 1,000 people from the community came to participate in Mega Shabbat. Photo courtesy of Chabad at UCSB

Shabbat is the traditional day of rest and worship in Judaism, spanning from Friday to Saturday night each week. A festive meal is traditionally eaten on Friday night to mark its beginning. Locally, Shabbat dinners are hosted by Chabad at UCSB and Santa Barbara Hillel. Chabad is a movement within Orthodox Judaism with hubs and community centers around the world. Similarly, Hillel is a Jewish student organization with chapters on college campus around the world, seeking to empower Jewish students on college campuses internationally.  

About 1,000 people from the community came to participate in Mega Shabbat, an amplified version of the weekly Shabbat dinners hosted by Chabad at UCSB meant to promote community outreach and attendance. Along with sharing a dinner, attendees watched live musical performances of Hebrew songs and recited prayers.

Associated Students granted Chabad roughly $97,000 to host the event, with around $65k from the Finance Committee and around $32k from the Isla Vista Community Relations Committee. Some senators voiced their concerns with the large sum at a March 20 meeting, attempting to block the budget ratification. Ultimately the budget was approved.

Second-year biology major and head of the Mega Shabbat planning committee Paulina Gicquea said the amount was necessitated by the number of attendees, the cost of food and staff including waiters and security. According to the Chabad funding request in the minutes report for the Mar. 3 Finance Committee meeting, almost $42,000 was requested for food, almost $10,000 for “Religious Items,” among other requests for things like silverware.

“We had to rent out all of these tables, we had to purchase the flowers, a lot of food, if you think on average, it’s $20 to $30 per person for food, scale that up to 1,000 and then on top of that, we have all hands on deck. We have a whole crew of I think 20, 25, maybe 30 waiters that are helping us set everything up,” Gicquea said.

Kosher food– food permitted to eat by traditional Jewish dietary law–including challah, baba ganoush, Israeli salad and salmon for the event were prepared entirely by a team of Chabad volunteers according to third-year psychological and brain sciences major and Mega Shabbat coordinator Yulia Ivanytskyy.

“I believe we received some help from a separate kitchen, but everything is cooked ourselves. Nothing is catered,” Ivanytskyy said.

There were 100 decorated tables, each with 10 seats, as well as a photobooth and custom yamakas–a traditional skullcap worn by Jewish men–for attendees.

A team of five privately hired security guards watched the perimeter of the event. At the senate meeting where the budget was discussed, second-year global studies major Leah Khorsandi said security would be required due to concerns about increased antisemitism on campus.

“A large portion of this funding unfortunately is going to security because antisemitism is very real and that is something that Chabad has accounted for and it is necessary to have security and unfortunately that does get expensive,” Khorsandi said.

Organizers said Mega Shabbat is meant to be an inclusive time of community outreach. It was open to both members and non-members of the I.V. Jewish community; many Jewish students who regularly participate in Hillel or Chabad events brought their non-Jewish friends to share the dinner. 

“Shabbat is when we emphasize wanting to share our Jewish culture with the greater UCSB community,” Gicquea said. “I think oftentimes Jews can be quite exclusive and closed off. And so this is our occasion to show other people our pride and our love for being Jewish and share a little bit of what we care about.”

Third-year biology and Russian double major Simona Michaelson said that although she was an ethnically Jewish student, she doesn’t  practice the religion and that this was her first Mega Shabbat. 

“I know Mega Shabbat is open to everyone here. And I think that that’s really important to, you know, build community and to show that everyone’s welcome,” Michaelson said.