by Debra Rubin of the Jewish Link | December 18, 2025
Rutgers Chabad raised more than $1.8 million at its 47th annual founders dinner helping to fund its growing array of food services, programming and outreach to Jewish students.
The dinner drew about 400 people on December 9 to Chabad House on the university’s main campus in New Brunswick. Honored were Leslie D. Hirsch, president and CEO of St. Peter’s Healthcare System, and Drs. Arkady and Marni Kaplan Broder for their community service and dedication to the healthcare field.
Chabad Executive Director Rabbi Yosef Carlebach also announced that Chabad’s Sinai Scholars Program, which has about 100 students participating in Jewish learning, would be dedicated to the memory of former Chabad board chair Danny Kahane. Its Aron Kodesh is being dedicated to the memory of former board member Dr. Elliot Rudnitzky, who was honored at the Chabad dinner two years ago for his 45 years of continued support.
Rudnitzky’s widow, Sandye, said her husband, a former cardiologist and attending physician at JFK Medical Center in Edison, was never too busy to take a call from Rabbi Carlebach, who she described as “a spiritual adviser to our family” with whom her husband had a 47-year friendship.
The son of parents who escaped Nazi Germany, her husband grew up to be someone for whom “prayer and Torah guided his life and I can’t think of a better way to honor his legacy.”
Rabbi Carlebach noted that since the terrorist attack by Hamas on Israel two years ago, Chabad has ramped up its services, including JCafe, which offers weekly themed events with food that can run all night and draw up to 600 students. Chabad itself sees 600-700 students come through its doors on a daily basis and 7,000 students annually. Its kosher kitchens are also kept busy not only serving students on meal plans but now partnering with the Jewish Family Service of Middlesex County to prepare 1,000 meals weekly for the kosher Meals on Wheels program. It also supplies kosher sandwiches to student stores throughout the campus and to the St. Peter’s University Hospital’s cafeteria.
Hirsch was honored for continuing to further cement the longstanding relationship Chabad has had with the New Brunswick hospital, which maintains a suite in Chabad House where observant Jewish patients’ families can stay.
“In terms of any project we’ve asked him to do for any of the holidays, he’s been on board with us,” said Rabbi Carlebach. “We’ve brought patients from Israel and other places who were treated expeditiously, and when charity is needed it is always given. He is a consummate friend.”
Hirsch joined the healthcare system as president in 2015 and became its CEO in 2017. Hirsch, who is himself Jewish, noted he has worked for secular, Jewish and Catholic medical institutions and has relished the relationship he has built with Chabad, which he called a wonderful institution.
He told the crowd he was honored to have his “St. Peter’s family here,” and said, “It is my honor to be the leader of such a wonderful organization.”
“I take great pride in being the Jewish CEO of a Catholic organization that has such strong Judeo-Christian principles,” said Hirsch in announcing St. Peter’s is contributing $30,000 to Chabad.
In addition to its Eternal Light Award, Hirsch was surprised with a new tallis and pair of tefillin by Rabbi Carlebach.
“I got my tallis about 60 years ago,” said Hirsch. “My grandmother gave it to me for my bar mitzvah. I will wear the new tallis proudly.”
The Broders were described by Rabbi Carlebach as “humble people who have lived chesed all their lives.”
Arkady Broder is vice chair of the department of medicine at St. Peter’s and a gastroenterologist. A native of Odessa, Ukraine, his family fled to the United States in 1988. Although not religious while living in the former Soviet Union, he later became observant.
“We weren’t an Orthodox family but we were strongly identified,” he said, adding that a trip to Israel changed his life.
Marni Kaplan Broder is founder of the Podiatry & Ankle Center of Excellence in Somerset and an ankle specialist who supports educational initiatives and outreach programs that promote mobility, wellness and preventive care.
She is also the daughter of Michael and Penny Kaplan, who were honored at last year’s Rutgers Chabad dinner.
She had a humorous anecdote about her husband, explaining that every night when he was young his mother would whisper in his ear, “You are going to grow up to be a nice Jewish doctor and marry a nice Jewish woman.”
The couple are Edison residents and active members of Congregation Ohr Torah there.
