Courtesy of Zach Pan

Hundreds of students — both from Yale and other schools — gathered for the Slifka Center for Jewish Life’s first Asian Jewish Shabbaton, a weekend of programming centering on the Jewish sabbath, which included the second annual Asian-themed Shabbat dinner. 

Working with Slifka, the Asian Jewish Union applied and received a $35,000 grant from Hillel International, a Jewish student organization that awards funding for intercollegiate events, Zach Pan ’27, a co-president of the Asian Jewish Union and the organizer of the Shabbaton, said. The union also partnered with Asian-ish, a mixed Asian group at Yale, and worked with Asian-Jewish groups from Brown, NYU and Princeton, Pan said. 

According to Pan, roughly 460 students attended the Friday night dinner, which he estimated was one of the largest recent events at Slifka. He added that approximately 150 and 60 people attended a book talk with Angela Buchdahl ’94, the senior rabbi at Central Synagogue in New York City, and a panel with Florence Pan, a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., respectively.

Zach Pan and Jamin Nuland ’27, the co-presidents and founders of Yale’s Asian Jewish Union, said they had two distinct goals in mind while planning the Shabbaton this year: to celebrate Jewish Asian culture and to encourage Asian Jews from other universities to start their own groups. 

“We just wanted to make this Asian Shabbaton as inclusive and as big a production as possible,” Pan said. “One-tenth of young Jewish people in America are Jews of Color now, and broadening what it means to be Jewish, bringing more people into Jewish community and into community with each other, is one of our goals.”

Pan said that 30 Asian Jewish students from 11 universities, from as far away as Stanford, came to New Haven for this event. 

Nuland and Pan both said they thought the event succeeded in bringing all communities — not just Jewish or Asian — together and fulfilled the mission of exploring what it means to be an Asian Jew.

The two credited the success to two months of intense, meticulous planning. 

“We cultivated those relationships pretty early,” Nuland said. “We’re grateful to all these groups for being able to kind of support us on this journey.” 

Pan said that many Yale students opened up their homes to host students from other universities. Ahead of Friday night, more than 30 students also helped with set-up, decorating and taste testing, Pan said. The Shabbat dinner menu included beef bulgogi, spring rolls, barbecue tofu, biryani and tofu made with Nuland’s mom’s recipe, as well as mochi for dessert.

Unlike the previous year, which only included a Shabbat dinner, the addition of “speaker events and sharing circles,” as Nuland said, enhanced community building over the weekend.

The Shabbaton featured a book talk with Buchdahl on her recent memoir, “Heart of a Stranger.” Buchdahl discussed faith, identity and pluralism within the Jewish community in her talk, Pan wrote to the News. 

“It was very emotional in the front two rows where the Asian Jewish students were sitting,” Nuland said. “Her words were inspiring.” 

Florence Pan, the federal judge and Zach Pan’s mother, talked to students about her legal career and her Asian Jewish background. 

She told the audience about her personal journey to converting to Judaism, which she said began when she started to plan on marrying her husband, who is Jewish. 

“I’ve never seen or felt any disconnect or conflicts between the two identities,” Florence Pan said in her talk. “It’s just been very seamless to me, and certain things I’ve always valued are reinforced in Jewish culture.”

She also said that the Shabbat dinner on Friday was the first time she saw so many Asian Jews gathered together in one room.

“All of that I thought was just a very meaningful and inspiring experience for me,” Florence Pan said in an interview. “I can only hope that they can continue to build in terms of their membership and in terms of their presence and in terms of the support that they can give to the community.”

Nuland and Zach Pan said they wanted to bring individuals to the Shabbaton that represent different lenses of what it means to be Asian Jewish, which is why they invited Buchdahl and Florence Pan. 

“One is a very faith-based rabbi, but also a mixed Asian Jew. The other one is someone who married in and converted,” Nuland said. “These are important perspectives that add nuance and plurality to what it means to be an Asian Jew today.”

Zach Pan said both speakers are “inspirations” in their different career paths.

The Slifka Center is located at 80 Wall St.