NORTHAMPTON — Today will feel like being in third grade and heading off for the first day of school. It will have the smell of a new car. The universe will have a fresh start. It is an exciting new day.
These are the words of Rabbi Shmuel Kravitsky, who went around spreading this message on the streets of downtown Northampton last Thursday, as he told people the good news of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year — a celebration that began Monday night at sunset and will last through Wednesday.
“It’s not just a calendar day. It’s not just a day of the year,” he said, speaking with the Gazette in between talking to shoppers, students, and stopping inside Harrell’s Ice Cream, the only kosher business in the region.
He continued, “It’s a day that a whole new energy, a whole new world, a whole new you comes down to the world and you understand a whole new energy — all of us, Jews and non-Jews together.”
In keeping with tradition, Kravitsy went out with honey sticks and recommended people go out and treat themselves to something sweet, whether that be getting an ice cream or eating a candy apple.
Praying over people, he invoked God to give them joy.
And despite it not being the holiday yet, he blew his shofar, or ram’s horn, for those who wanted to hear its high pitched sound. The ram’s horn is used ritually to announce the new year.
For 15 years from 2008-2022, Kravitsky worked with college students in Amherst as part of Chabad of Northampton, a local chapter that’s part of a worldwide network that prioritizes spreading Judaism by visiting people in one-on-one settings on the street, college campuses and other place outside of the structure of a synagogue.
The Chabad movement originated in 18th Century Russia and became popularized in the United States following the Holocaust. Chabad is an acronym that expresses the movement’s defining principles that focuses on wisdom, comprehension and knowledge.
Vital to his outreach, and the Chabad model, is giving intellectual arguments on behalf of his faith. “It’s all about having a spiritual intellectual path to get into the spiritual self as well,” he said.
After a three-year hiatus to take time for renewal, Kravitsky and his wife, Ariella Kravitsky, have returned to the region this year to serve Mount Holyoke, Amherst, Hampshire and Smith colleges, as well as the broader Northampton Jewish community.
To that end, they will celebrate Rosh Hashanah to welcome the year 5786 with morning services at 9:30, followed by a Shofar Party at 5 p.m.
Chabad is not just about lectures, the law, or making converts. It’s about developing human connections, Kravitsky explained.
“We bring people to our houses to come and worship … we actually sit down, and we actually have conversations,” emphasizing that point since coming together is a lost artform of communication in 2025.
“People need help,” he said, whether that be spiritual, financial, a sense of loneliness or other sad realities of the human condition.
The core of his message begins with the belief that there is a God.
“My core message is that God is real. Because God is real, we have a need for spirituality. Spirituality is real,” he said. “And if spirituality is real, we’ve got to be nice to one another.”
Kravitsky has been doing outreach on the streets since he was 18. He said occasionally people will spit on the ground and that he has been the victim of less than savory comments from time to time.
But as he walked, even when people dodged him or weren’t interested, he’s just move on entirely unfazed looking for more people to talk to. Erasing his smile seemed to be a nearly impossible task.
This format of in-person outreach, he said, is essential.
On the one hand messaging often gets lost in a seemingly infinite world of social media posts with various voices vying for attention. On the other hand, he said, people are inclined to share their experience of talking with him on their own social media platforms.
“Then before you know it, somebody on the other side of the world hears it, remembers it,” he said.
To RSVP for Tuesday’s celebrations email rabbishmuel@chabadnorthamkpton.com.
