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On College Avenue in New Brunswick, Rutgers students explore their Jewish identities at Hillel, Chabad, and an unlikely third destination -- Au Bon Pain.

The coffee shop is the site of numerous one-on-one meetings between students and Rabbi Yehoshua Lewis, director of the Rutgers Jewish Experience (RJX), or other RJX mentors. During the sessions, students learn Torah and discuss religious and personal issues in an intimate setting they say they often couldn't find at other campus programs.

"We laugh that it's their office," Rutgers senior Laura Cohen, who has been having coffee meetings with Lewis' wife, Esther, for three years, said of Au Bon Pain.

Lewis said that RJX, founded in 2004, allows him to be the personal rabbi "of at least 50 kids here on campus." He said he meets with about 20 students per week and hosts 5-10 more students at his Shabbat table in Highland Park.

At meetings, Lewis said he tries to explain how Torah works and how mitzvot affect us, among other big-picture questions that students may have never a chance to articulate.

"I'm here for the students, so whatever they are interested in, that's what I'm available for," he said.

RJX receives about half of its funding from the New York-based Afikim Foundation and the Israel-based Meor Foundation, and raises the other half through private donations, Lewis said.

While facilitating individual relationships is one hallmark of RJX, the program's main focus is providing "thorough and rigorous education about any topic in Judaism," Lewis said. Each semester, 30 students receive a $400 stipend for taking part in the Maimonides Leadership Fellowship program, which involves weekly seminars from 8-10:30 p.m. on Tuesday nights.

The first portion of each Maimonides session involves a presentation from a guest lecturer, such as a psychologist speaking on Torah and the human ego, or a doctor on Jewish attitudes about euthanasia, to show students a paradigm for what they can become and give them Jewish role models who aren't necessarily rabbis, Lewis said.

After students break into discussion groups, the third portion of Maimonides is a class on basic Jewish topics like Shabbat or prayer taught by Lewis or Rabbi Meir Goldberg, the program's other director. Graduates of Maimonides move on in subsequent semesters to the Sinai Experience from 7:30-9 p.m. on Tuesdays, which combines formal discussions with self-paced learning.

Lewis described RJX as an outreach organization trying to inspire Jews to take a more active role in their Judaism and enjoy their religion. To achieve those goals, he said RJX aims to help students answer two central questions: "What does Judaism do for me?" and "Why should I be Jewish?"

"We find that [students] come out of Hebrew school and bar mitzvahs, and they don't have that much inspiration or drive to be Jewish," Lewis said.

Eric Weinberg, now a graduate student in Rutgers' School of Management and Labor Relations, said that Hebrew school during his childhood in Toms River covered Hebrew language, holidays, and the Holocaust. But when he transferred to Rutgers after two years at Ocean County College, Weinberg met Lewis at an activities fair and ever since has been learning deeper aspects of Judaism that he can apply in his daily life.

"It's a better version of Hebrew school," Weinberg said of RJX.

Zachary Klein, a Rutgers senior who began learning with Lewis last fall, went to a small Jewish day school in the Bronx before attending Science High School in Hackensack. When he got to college, Klein said he was initially more involved in being social and taking classes than Jewish life.

"I was pretty detached at the time," Klein said.

Though he already had a "decent background in Judaism," Klein said RJX got him refocused "on what's important."

"[Lewis] gave me the best explanations for why I'm doing [Jewish activities] and why things are the way they are," Klein said.

Cohen said that before taking part in RJX programs, she had a traditional upbringing regarding Jewish customs, but not in Torah-based learning.

"It was just sitting and learning and opening up your mind, and discussing it with other friends," Cohen said.

RJX organizes two large Shabbaton programs per semester and an annual trip to Israel in conjunction with the Meor Foundation. Cohen said she met many of her closest friends on the Israel trip, which she took in the summer of 2008, and that the trip helped her "identify who I am and what I want to be in the future."

Cohen is on the executive board of another RJX initiative called JMed, which holds several medical ethics panels per semester featuring doctors from the Jewish community or elsewhere who discuss practical issues such as getting into medical school and how to deal with residency programs with schedules that conflict with Shabbat.

"These are things that we are not traditionally hearing in our classes," Cohen said.

Formed this spring, JMed was an extension of JBiz, a networking program RJX runs for students looking to be business professionals.

RJX also helps students transition to post-college life by getting them thinking beyond campus, through involvement in the Highland Park community. Highland Park residents give RJX access to their homes for a weekly Thursday night "cholent shiur," and also donated lulav and etrog sets this Sukkot to eight Rutgers students who never had them before, Lewis said.

Weinberg explained that taking part in Shabbat meals in Highland Park "has more of a community feel" than large meals on campus. The atmosphere at Chabad or Hillel is often overwhelming when scores of students "eat and leave" in large cafeterias, Weinberg said, but going to Highland Park gave Weinberg the family-style environment he previously didn't have away from home.

That environment made such an impression on Weinberg that he ended up moving to Highland Park.

"If it weren't for RJX, I wouldn't have moved to Highland Park and I wouldn't have known how awesome of a community it is," he said.

Cohen learned that much like the coffee meetings, meals at the Lewis' Shabbat table also provided the individualized attention that sets RJX apart from other campus groups.

"It's a very intimate home setting where we can talk about Judaism or just talk about our week," Cohen said.