The Episodes
There’s a new rabbi in town.
Limited series · ten episodes
They came to stay. It lasted two years.
The 2006–07 school year, followed by the founder’s removal and the Kollel’s departure.
- Aug 2006Wagon TrainRon goes to heckle the new rabbis and stays to argue.The night before he moves into his UT dorm, Ron dreams of a house across the street with HAREDI HOUSE lettered over the door and a Mercedes in the drive. A week into classes, Rabbi Hirsch stops him and Maya on the West Mall, where every campus group sets up a folding table, and argues that the Psalms were the first concept album. Ron goes to the Kollel’s first class to heckle Rabbi Salant. Salant enjoys it.
- SeptNever Been to HillelThe Kollel’s house is full of Jewish students Ron has never met.The Kollel’s rented campus house is full of Jewish students Ron has never seen at Hillel, the Jewish student center, each with a rabbi who meets with them alone. Josh, an engineering student from Corpus Christi who didn’t know a soul at UT, now studies with Rabbi Kotzk every Tuesday. Kotzk also lures three regulars away from Chabad, the Hasidic outreach house, gives his three-year-old a sip of beer at the Shabbat table, and pours for the freshmen.
- OctHer Own ThingLauren moves out of her boyfriend’s place and into the founder’s house.Six weeks after her first Shabbat dinner, Lauren moves out of her boyfriend Seth’s apartment and into the Salants’ house. At Hillel, the rabbis say it was entirely her decision. Salant’s father-in-law arrives and becomes rabbi of the little Orthodox congregation that has met in rented rooms for twenty years.
- Late OctMincha-MaarivA prank on the founder gets read aloud in the rabbis’ car.Seth and Ron’s roommate Benji make up a freshman on AIM who is ready to become religious this week, and use her to bait Salant. He sees through it in one line and forwards the chat. In the car to afternoon and evening prayers, Rabbi Tarfon reads it aloud. Everyone laughs, Ron included, until he works out what he is listening to.
- Nov–DecStatusRon learns the rabbis are debating whether he counts as Jewish.At the H-E-B kosher counter, Leah tells Ron and Benji the legend of her husband’s drive from Baltimore. At a bar mitzvah, a stranger asks Ron about his mother’s conversion, and Ron learns the rabbis have been discussing whether he counts as Jewish. Lauren moves back in with Seth before finals.
- Jan 2007The TripRon takes a paid job from the Kollel. A rabbi mentions he’s been driving past Ron’s house.Maya goes to Israel with the organization on a trip that is mostly adults. Tarfon emails Ron about Frisbee, a broken hookah and a paid student-coordinator job, all in one paragraph. Ron takes the job. Then Tarfon mentions that he drove by Ron’s parents’ house on a night Ron said he’d be home, and found only Ron’s mother there.
- Late JanThe DriveA shaken rabbi talks Ron out of worrying.Rabbi Brisk knows what Salant is doing, and he has been told to stand down. He arrives at Hillel visibly shaken and asks Ron to sit in his car. Ron gets in sure something is wrong and gets out reassured. Brisk is the teacher who was honest with him in December, so the reassurance holds.
- FebSnowMaya’s Friday nights move to the founder’s house.Maya’s Friday nights move to the Salants’ house in Northwest Hills, away from the campus house where her friends still eat. Salant drives her there and back himself. The one weekend it snows, Ron watches from his dorm window and can’t tell how much of what he feels is worry and how much is jealousy.
- MarShabbat for EveryoneHillel throws a Shabbat for everyone except the Kollel’s rabbis.Marcy, Hillel’s Jewish life director, builds a coalition of Reform, Conservative and Chabad rabbis for a Shabbat open to every Jewish student on campus, and tells the Kollel’s rabbis they can’t come. To keep its table on the West Mall, the Kollel needs a student club, finds a Sigma Alpha Mu brother willing to be president, and asks Ron to send its flyer to the AEPi email list.
- MarPurimA party in a rented dining room, and one rabbi fired.The Kollel and the little congregation rent Hillel’s dining room for their Purim party. It has one of the only kosher kitchens in Austin, and Hillel rents it to anyone. The megillah reader is stuck at DFW. The hot-water urn trips the breaker every twenty minutes, and Marcy and Brisk have to fix it together. Between the reading and the hamantaschen, Kotzk is fired. The in-laws, back from Baltimore, ask why everyone is so quiet.
- That springThe rabbi is removed.The website says he visits monthly. On the first Sunday of every month his rental car is back on Far West Blvd. Nobody does anything about it.
- A year laterThe Kollel is gone.The moving trucks come back. The street sign stays.