Despite Doxxing and Threats, Elon’s Jewish Students Answer With a Packed House

When Rabbi Mendy and Rivka Minkowitz shared a flyer for their Shabbat program at Chabad-Lubavitch at Elon University in North Carolina on their Instagram story, they were unprepared for the antisemitic hate and threats that would follow.

The Sept. 4 Shabbat dinner was set to feature an Israeli soldier speaking about his service defending the Jewish people in the Holy Land since the Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. Within days, the Minkowitzes found themselves the target of a “student activist” who set off a coordinated campaign of violent threats and harassment.

“We’ve held events like this regularly over the past decade,” Rabbi Minkowitz told Chabad.org. “But this year, it caught all the wrong kind of attention.”

Chabad has become the center of Jewish life at Elon, a small campus town located between Greensboro and Durham. When the Minkowitzes arrived there in 2015, Elon’s Jewish student population stood at roughly 400. Today, out of an undergraduate body of about 6,000, nearly 900 students identify as Jewish, with Chabad having driven much of that growth. Friday nights regularly draw 150 students to the Chabad center; the High Holidays bring out 300.

The student who launched the attack campaign on Chabad shared the event details with antisemitic groups and an anti-Israel social media creator in New York. The creator posted photos of the Minkowitz family alongside their phone numbers, emails and home address to his massive audience, inciting them to harass and threaten Chabad at Elon into canceling the event.

“The calls and messages flooded in from around the country,” says Minkowitz, “calling us every antisemitic slur and slander in the book. They were overtly threatening, encouraging each other to bring weapons and shut the event down by force.”

Over 100 students came to the event, which was moved to alternative location to avoid the protesters. (Photo taken before Shabbat)

The campaign also circulated doctored posts attributing quotes and actions to the soldier that he never made to demonize his service for Israel. Leaders at a local mosque said they were arranging buses to ferry in protestors. A local fringe political candidate told police he was bringing “his thugs.”

“You hear about antisemitism on college campuses, but you never think it’s going to happen to you, particularly at Elon, with such a large Jewish student population,” says Jackie Velikiy, student president of Chabad at Elon.

By Thursday, officers in Elon, a town of roughly 10,000 with a police force of about 20, were bracing for a crowd in the thousands on a residential street.

For Velikiy, the initial flood of threats was the most difficult.

“The first 24 hours were definitely overwhelming,” she says.

“The police were very concerned for our safety, and suggested out of an abundance of caution that we cancel,” says Minkowitz. “But we were never going to give in to the mob; that was never a question for us. That is not the way the Rebbe [Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory,] taught us to handle moments like these, and the police understood and respected that in a very meaningful way.”

The police floated an alternative: let the crowd believe the event had been called off. Chabad at Elon would not lie and give the antisemites a win, so organizers posted that the event would not move forward in the same format as originally planned. The protesters eventually stood down.

What they didn’t know was that police, private security, a K-9 unit, a drone team and officers from neighboring departments were preparing for the event at an alternative location. Two hours before Shabbat, invitations to students who wanted to come were sent out.

“I was worried that students would be scared off by the hatred, but the opposite was true,” Minkowitz said.

More than 100 students showed up, and the atmosphere was electric. Inside, instead of fear, there was an overwhelming sense of Jewish pride and joy.

"It was the normal Shabbat event, but with so much more joy and energy,” said Jackie Velikiy, student president of Chabad at Elon. (Photo taken before Shabbat)

“We all realized that no matter what the trolls are saying, our Jewish pride far outweighs and is stronger than all the hate in the world,” explains Velikiy. “We definitely felt targeted, and we collectively found strength in our Jewish student community. And when the event actually went ahead, the number of people that came was insane. It was the normal Shabbat event, but with so much more joy and energy.”

“There were students in tears, crying with a particular joy that surfaces only after facing down something that felt insurmountable. The Jewish student community at Elon was tested, and this was what winning with Jewish pride is all about,” says Minkowitz.

The rabbi says the community is grateful to the Elon Police Department and Secure Community Network for their support and collaboration in ensuring the event could proceed.

With the event taking place the week before Rosh Hashanah, which begins on Friday, Sept. 11, Minkowitz encouraged the students to harness the joy they were all feeling and channel it into the year ahead.

“We’re all feeling an injection of Jewish pride here that we have to build on, not let fade into the background,” he said. “We have to carry that into the High Holidays and into the New Year, and we’ve already seen a major increase in reservations for Rosh Hashanah services and events for students looking to continue riding this wave of inspiration.”