Tagged Chabad

(JTA) — After a week in which the headlines seemed to grow more grim by the day, it’s worth remembering that even as cities go dark across the globe, the world continues to turn. Babies are born, people are getting married, and thankfully the sun still rises every morning.… Read more »

LIVINGSTON, N.J. (JTA) — A new 11,000-square-foot shopping center here is home to 15 storefronts, including a bank, pet shop and clothing store. There’s a health center with a dentist and doctor’s office and a ShopRite supermarket. A traffic guard monitors the crosswalk, which is bisected by a plant… Read more »

(JTA) — The Israel-based humanitarian group IsraAID, B’nai B’rith International and Chabad are among those pitching in to help the Bahamas in the wake of Hurricane Dorian’s devastation, which has killed at least seven people. “We are in the midst of a historic tragedy in parts of the northern… Read more »

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) — When the last Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died in July 1994, I was one of many journalists in the Jewish media who did not see how the Hasidic movement he led could survive, much less thrive, in his absence. It has, of course. That… Read more »

BOSTON (JTA) — A fire outside the suburban Boston home of a rabbi that serves at a Chabad center is being investigated as a possible hate crime. Police in Arlington, Massachusetts, have asked for the public’s help in identifying a person caught on a neighbor’s video camera walking away… Read more »

WASHINGTON (JTA) –In the wake of a deadly attack on a Chabad synagogue in California, the movement will press for a mandatory moment of silence in American schools, a measure that it claims will reduce violence. In a release Sunday, the Washington-based American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) said chapters… Read more »

JERUSALEM (JTA) — “Everything is good.” Sandra Samuel is riding on a bus from Afula in northern Israel to the city apartment in Jerusalem that she shares with four other women from India and has agreed to talk to a reporter. She is coming from a weekly visit with… Read more »

NEW YORK (JTA) — After a mass shooting in a heavily Jewish area shocked the nation, Rabbi Yakov Saacks felt like his Long Island congregation was at risk. So the rabbi installed 17 cameras on the synagogue’s exterior that can zoom in to read numbers on license plates, as… Read more »

(JTA) — When he and his wife moved to Pensacola, Florida, on Sunday afternoon, Rabbi Mendel Danow expected to spend the following couple of weeks settling in and buying supplies for their new home. Instead, two days after getting off the plane, Danow found himself driving to a Walmart… Read more »

UTRECHT, Netherlands (JTA) — To the dozens of revelers of this city’s main Purim party, a Jewish grandmother who cooks the event’s annual Persia-themed holiday feast is a rare communal asset. Since she immigrated to the Netherlands in 2012 from her native Iran, the soft-spoken newcomer has been volunteering… Read more »

Rabbi Avi Feldman, left, and wife Mushky are moving with daughters Chana and Batsheva to Iceland. (Chabad.org)

(JTA) — The Chabad movement is sending a rabbi and his wife to Iceland, an island nation with 250 Jews where ritual slaughter of animals is illegal and circumcision is likely to be outlawed as well. Rabbi Avi Feldman, 27, of Brooklyn, New York, and his Sweden-born wife Mushky,… Read more »

DES MOINES, Iowa (JTA) — A Jewish woman walks into the post office to buy Hanukkah stamps for her holiday cards. The person behind the counter asks, “What denominations?” The Jewish woman responds, “Oy! Are we so polarized? Some Orthodox, some Conservative and some Reform.” Yes, we are so… Read more »

Happy birthday, Israel The Weintraub Israel Center capped off Tucson Celebrates Israel Week with a family-friendly Yom Huledet L’Yisrael (Happy Birthday Israel) party at the Tucson Jewish Community Center on Sunday, May 15. The event included Israeli party games, party favors and birthday cake.       Lag B’Omer… Read more »

Rabbi Yossie Shemtov

Two consequential decisions were made by Ahasuerus, King of Persia in the 4th century BCE. Both elicited the same crisis management, as told in the Book of Esther, which we will read on the upcoming holiday of Purim (Wednesday night, March 23 and Thursday, March 24). The first was… Read more »

Temple Emanu-El’s Greatest Hanukkah on Earth! XVII Some 450 people attended Temple Emanu-El’s “Greatest Hanukkah on Earth!XVII — Making Miracles” celebration on Sunday, Dec. 13. The event included songs, stories, parodies, drama, dance and a menorah lighting.           LEGO Chanukah at Chabad Mikaela Perry, Jonathan… Read more »

Chabad emissaries won't set foot in Havana's Orthodox synagogue, Adath Israel. (Josh Tapper)

HAVANA (JTA) — On the freshly painted, salmon-colored walls of Alberto and Rebeca Meshulam’s apartment, two portraits of the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, frame the entranceway leading to a wide, airy vestibule. Miniatures of the same portrait sit atop a glass-covered countertop near an image of the… Read more »

Rabbi Joseph Telushkin (Stephen Friedgood)

NEW YORK (JTA) — Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, was inarguably the most well-known rabbi since Moses Maimonides. Hundreds of prominent rabbinic figures have lived in the intervening 800 years since Maimonides died. But how many can be named before an audience of Jews from the… Read more »

WILKES-BARRE, Pa. (JTA) – The Bais Menachem Youth Development program in this northeastern Pennsylvania city is no typical Chabad yeshiva. The students wear flip-flops and T-shirts, not the typical black-and-white of Hasidic seminaries. In addition to Jewish law and Bible study, the curriculum includes improv nights, poetry slams and… Read more »

(JTA) — The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has pitted Jewish leaders from both countries against each other, touching off a discordant exchange between prominent rabbis on opposite sides of the border. The discord had been brewing since the onset of the protests in Ukraine in November, but it… Read more »

Vladimir Putin with Israeli President Shimon Peres during Peres' official visit to Moscow in 2012. (Mark Neyman/GPO/FLASH90)

(JTA) — When even Russian policemen had to pass security checks to enter the Sochi Winter Olympics, Rabbi Berel Lazar was waved in without ever showing his ID. Lazar, a Chabad-affiliated chief rabbi of Russia, was invited to the opening ceremony of the games last month by President Vladimir Putin’s… Read more »