When billionaire businessman Edgar Bronfman Sr. rolled into Gainesville on Thursday morning, he didn't come to talk business. Instead, Bronfman focused on one of his other favorite subjects: nurturing the faith in Jewish college students.
The University of Florida's Hillel Chapter, a campus organization that serves the estimated 6,500 Jewish students at UF, welcomed Bronfman as its guest of honor. Bronfman, former head of the Seagram business empire, is chairman of the Hillel International Board of Governors. He stands at the center of what some describe as a Jewish Renaissance on college campuses. It's a movement determined to capture the imagination of today's Jewish youth with the story of one of the oldest ongoing religious traditions in the world.
"We have to reach out to students from all over," Bronfman told a crowd of about 65 people at a kosher luncheon in Hillel's Norman Lipoff Hall.
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