www.770EasternParkway.com

Voting ends 11/22 vote today!

2011-11-16T13:31:00.001-08:00

Please help us help others with your votes to win a grant from Chase Bank.All the information is here at: http://www.chasevote.comThank you so much for your vote. Please use share buttons on the page.

Op-Ed: Why donors like Chabad

2010-11-10T14:36:00.000-08:00

By Dovid Efune · November 10, 2010

Dovid Efune

NEW YORK (JTA) -- Two mammoth Jewish gatherings were held recently: the General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America and the International Convention of Chabad Emissaries. While both are awe inspiring in their grandeur and focused on Jewish continuity, the Chabad movement continues to grow rapidly and the federations appear to be largely stagnant.

The JFNA is a well-oiled machine with an established infrastructure, smooth mechanisms and operational hierarchy. By contrast, although there are a number of supporting bodies, Chabad from an organizational perspective appears in some ways to be a band of ragtag rabbis independently operating without an authoritative organizational body, central CEO or board of directors, and endowment, trust fund or investment portfolio.

As opposed to the federations, few if any studies, polls or annual reports are conducted or written within the Chabad movement, and no center can quantify the precise number of its members. One would be hard pressed to find a flow chart or academic assessment of Chabad’s growth, but agreement essentially is unanimous on its rapid rise.

Chabad institutions have attracted some of the most sophisticated and advanced business and industry leaders as donors. At Sunday's concluding banquet of the conference, the guests included the likes of Michael Steinhardt, Guma Aguiar, Lev Leviev, Eduardo Elsztain and Ronald Lauder. Gennady Bogolubov delivered the keynote speech.

One may wonder why the informality doesn’t drive away savvy investors that are used to detailed reports, due diligence and rigorous accountability. The answer is simple: Those who give money to Chabad know they will see the fruits of their contribution. Donating to Chabad embodies what has become known as true venture philanthropy or entrepreneurial idealism.

Chabad delivers instant tangible results, which is what any shrewd investor appreciates or giant of industry demands in today’s fast-paced world. Donations are not swallowed up by antiquated mechanical financial infrastructures; there is no red tape, application processes, panels or mazes of bureaucracy. The Chabad institutions are focused on the immediacy of the task at hand and are adverse to anything that will slow them down.

Additionally, donors can be sure that a donation to a Chabad establishment will support a Jewish cause. The federations, by contrast, earmark large contributions for general humanitarian causes in the spirit of "tikkun olam," or repair of the world, but with so many modern-day Jewish challenges with which to contend, many donors are saying that our own should come first.

Much of the donor interest in Chabad can be crystallized further by making a comparison to the Tea Party movement. The movement’s primary concerns include, but are not limited to, cutting back the size of government, reducing wasteful spending, reducing the national debt and adherence to an original interpretation of the U.S. Constitution.

Chabad’s primary concerns include cutting back the top-down, parochial mode of Jewish practice, maximizing the use of every philanthropic dollar (there are no earmarks or pork barrel spending), lifting the pride and confidence of the Jewish people, and adherence to an original interpretation of Jewish law.

Chabad is a purist, entrepreneurial, visionary and versatile, action-oriented and results-driven organization. For venture philanthropists seeking immediate high returns, there is no better investment.

(Dovid Efune is the director of the Algemeiner Journal and the GJCF-the Gershon Jacobson Jewish Continuity Foundation.)

Beyond The End Of One's Nose

2010-11-10T14:30:00.000-08:00

There is no doubt that Chabad takes whatever it does to extremes. There is no Jewish group more active in more far-flung places of the world than them. Despite a lack of local resources that would drive out less-committed Yidden, Chabad emissaries live full Jewish lives in scattered places around the globe, providing a taste of Yiddishkeitto any of our brethren who happen to wander by. Their dedication to kiruv is also unmatched and they work with great fervour to bring back lost Jews to Torah.
Unfortunately it is human nature to let extremism cut both ways. While a moderate often refuses to take a defined stand on anything, an extremist will have a firm opinion about everything and a refusal to budge from it. The problem with Chabad's extremism is that its desire to bring Jews back to Judaism is matched by a belief that their Judaism is the only real kind.
As Rav Shmuely Boteach, former black sheep of the movement, notes in a recent piece in The Jerusalem Post:
I knew then in theory what I just witnessed in practice: Chabad emissaries would one day take over the Jewish world. Why? Because of the grandness of their vision and the passion with which they pursued their mission. Other Jewish organizations sought to educate people about their tradition, but Chabad sought to raise all Earth’s inhabitants to a higher God-consciousness, and to make Judaism the driving force in every decision of daily life.
The passionate dedication of the Chabad emissaries was infectious. They did not preach the Torah. Rather, it coursed through their veins, seeping out of every pore. Hassidic teachings about the approachability of God and the accessibility of a higher spiritual reality were grafted onto the average Chabad activist’s very DNA, becoming an inseparable part of his or her character and personality.
WITNESSING THE fulfillment of that promise at the conference was an awakening. Chabad is no longer merely a Jewish movement. It is Judaism. I find it astonishing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew in to attend the Jewish federations’ annual General Assembly but bypassed the Chabad conference. If an Israeli prime minister wants to be part of the unfolding of modern Jewish history, he has to address Chabad. No other organization even comes close to its global reach or grassroots impact. And it is growing exponentially.
They don't read newspapers and are unlikely to care about what Rav Boteach says but one can imagine going to the Rebbes of Ger, Belz and Satmar (both of them), all of them significantly larger in size than Lubavitch despite a total lack of outreach, and telling them: "Did you know that Chabad is Judaism?"
Indeed, Rav Boteach should know this. All the shluchim should know that theirs is not the largest sect within Orthodox Judaism and that within the Chareidi community they are relegated to the fringe with the Bratzlovers, a kooky sect that might be scrupulous in the performance of some mitzvos but which endorse beliefs and worldviews unacceptable to the main group.
Then there's the Modern Orthodox and Dati Leumi who would also be shocked to know that they are not Judaism. Never mind the pantheon of thinkers and towering figures they lay claim to. Never mind all the learning and practice. They aren't Judaism because they're not Chabad?
Yet there is the other side that Rav Boteach mentions and must be emphasized. As Rav David Berger notes in his book on the subject, Chabad is expanding within significant parts of the Jewish community through a clever strategy. Just as leftists realized long ago that if one infiltrates the school system to ensure that children are raised with a socialist/politically correct philosophy so as to create a large group of support later on, Chabad realized long ago that going where no frum Jews could be found was like mining for gold. There is a reason Chabad is found in isolated small Jewish communities that no one else pays attention to, why they show up on campuses even in cities with a large Torah-observant population and why they pay so much attention to Jewish communities and travellers in such places as Russia and India.
Generally one does not find Chareidim in these places since they prefer large centres where they have resources, yeshivos and other such supports. One doese not find Dati Leumi there either since the movement's focus is on Eretz Yisrael, not golus. Asd a result, if you're a non-religious Jew living in a small town in the American mid-west, or a student venturing onto a university campus, or a villager someone in Siberia, chances are the only frum Jew you'll ever meet is a Chabad shaliach.
The consequence of this is obvious - if all you ever want from the Chabadnik is chicken soup on Friday night and the occasional raucous Purim party, that's fine but if you want to learn more about Judaism you will be introduced to Torah observance but through the Chabad lens which is, in many ways exhaustively documented elsewhere, different from conventional Torah observance. What's more, you will be taught that theirs is, like Rav Boteach say, the Judaism of our ancestors, the only real type, the kind that Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, brought down from Har Sinai.
One might raise an objection by pointing out that Aish HaTorah and Ohr Sameach are hardly different in that approach to kiruv. This is definitely true. Ask an Aish or Ohr rav about the age of the Earth and you will be told the only legitimate answer is 5771 years. They won't teach you about the Rav or Rav Kook either in those places.
But the significant difference is that Aish and Ohr generally restrict themselves to large communties, as I noted above regarding Chareidim in general. You won't find Aish in Woebegone, Minnesota. You just might find Chabad.
Through their kiruv, Chabad is indeed working very hard to present a specific type of Torah Judaism to the non-religious masses who don't know about the depth and variety of Torah observance. They are working hard to convince the multitudes that Nusach Ari is the only siddur God hears you pray and that a certain deceased rabbinical figure really is the Moshiach, that it is a fundamental principle of Judaism and an actualhalacha to believe this, and that he is just waiting for the opportunity to reveal himself and bring the final salvation.
That Chabadniks don't realize that Judaism is far bigger than them and that their beliefs are not standard in the rest of the Torah community is regrettable. That the rest of the Torah Jewish community is sitting back while they divert our non-religious brethren into their narrow camp isn't.

2 comments:

Jennifer in MamaLand said...: Well, okay. But are you suggesting we ALL move to Woebegone?I lived in a small Jewish town; it was challenging - and tiring. While I was there, I WAS Chabad, organizing public menorah lightings, trucking in kosher meat, sending letters to politicians, rounding up the city's straggling few Jewish kids for a month of super-fun camp (run by flown-in bochrim).I don't quite understand - if Lubavitch's unique brand of mishegas compels them to live in Nowheresville, gei gezundheit. And more importantly, what would you offer the Jews of Nowheresville in return for giving up their Chabad connections??? Or are you simply demanding that every Chabadnik give equal time to the teachings of the Rav along with the Frierdiker Rebbe?Answers - we want answers, not just more questions!!! :-); 10 November, 2010 9:50 AM
Garnel Ironheart said...: If one has no problem with a Jewish group going around and telling people about a dead Messiah who will be resurrected to bring the Kingdon of God to Earth, only his name is Menachem Mendel, not Yoshke, then there's no problem.The difficulty is that the Jews in Yenemsville are going to be taught this belief which is heresy to the rest of us.Should more of us be moving to those small towns? As someone who currently lives in one, I say yes. There is benefit to groups from YU and similar places going on and competing for Jews with Chabad.; 10 November, 2010 10:39 AM

Noahides establish website for interested followers

2010-07-23T10:10:00.000-07:00

by Toby Tabachnick
Staff Writer

07.22.10 - 11:06 am

Amy Boiles lives in Denver City, Texas, a town of some 4,000 residents, situated near the New Mexico state line. Boiles, like the others in Denver City, was a practicing Christian — until about a year ago, when, as she puts it, she could no longer “pretend that the New Testament is true.”

Through a high school friend, Boiles began learning about an alternate way for gentiles to serve G-d. And with the help of Michael Schulman, a Lubavitch physicist in Pittsburgh, she found spiritual guidance, as well as a community.

Boiles is a Noahide, a gentile who follows the seven commandments that G-d gave to Noah and his children after the flood to ensure order in the world. The laws prohibit (1) idolatry, (2) blasphemy, (3) homicide, (4) forbidden sexual relations, (5) robbery, and (6) eating meat taken from a live animal (cruelty to animals) and require (7) establishment of courts of justice.

“There are two paths to serve G-d and to have a reward in the world to come,” Schulman said, “that of the Jew, and that of the non-Jew. The Noahide has seven commandments given as part of the Torah. If a gentile accepts these seven commandments, the person recognizes that these are coming from G-d, so that’s his path.”

Schulman has been running a Noahide outreach organization, Ask Noah International (ANI), since 1999. Although he was employed as a senior research engineer from 1988 through 2006, he no longer works as a physicist, and is devoted full time to Ask Noah.

The organization, founded by Chaim Reisner, also of Pittsburgh, boasts an extensive website (asknoah.org), with educational and outreach materials and essays, and fields the questions of those interested in the Noahide laws. Schulman and Reisner also work to connect Noahides with each other, helping them find community.

Boiles was attracted to the Noahide commandments after being inspired from a verse in Genesis where G-d tells Cain he will be forgiven if he improves himself.

“This was contrary to Christianity,” Boiles said, “In Christianity, you can only be forgiven through a blood sacrifice — through Jesus Christ. I didn’t know there was another option. I didn’t know that under the umbrella of Judaism there is a place for non-Jews.”

“G-d doesn’t require man to go through Jesus. You can go straight to G-d. That’s liberating for me,” she said.

At age 61, Larry Telencio, of Naples, Fla., having rejected his Christian background, was searching for meaning. He found ANI on the Internet and now studies the universal laws, as well as Torah, although “not too deeply. Deep delving into the Torah is forbidden to a gentile,” he said.

“The Noahide path was basically all the things I believed in,” Telencio said. “I believe in one G-d, and Hashem is the only G-d.”

While the Lubavitch are known for their efforts of outreach to other Jews, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, saw a mandate to reach out to gentiles as well, Schulman said.

Although the sages of the Talmud understood the importance of spreading the word of G-d to gentiles, that duty was suppressed for centuries in favor of “self-preservation,” Schulman said, after the Jews’ exile following the destruction of the temples. About 30 years ago, Jews began to resume the mission of educating non-Jews.

“In the 1980s, the Rebbe said the time has come, and societies are open enough. Jewish people have success in the world. There is a new obligation to pick it up again,” Schulman said.

The Lubavitch decided to take up the cause to ensure the Noahide laws were conveyed to non-Jews in accordance with the Torah.

“There were others outside Lubavitch that took this up more quickly than Lubavitch groups,” Schulman said. “They were spreading the seven commandments, but in some cases, they were not properly educated. In some other cases, they had their own agendas. There needed to be a dedicated Torah-based organization that has oversight to take up this message.”

Schulman became involved with spreading the word of the Noahide laws when Reisner sought some help with his fledgling website.

“I became the webmaster,” Schulman said, “and from there, I started seeing how much this was needed. I saw the [Noahide] movement was going offtrack, and saw that it needed to go on the path of a Torah teacher.”

The movement is growing, according to Schulman, and is becoming more widely accepted, although there is a notable lack of Noahide communities in the United States, and Noahides here must go to the Internet to find other Noahides with whom to connect.

Noahides in other countries, such as the Philippines, the United Kingdom and Kenya, have had more success in building Noahide communities, Schulman said. While these communities do not have rabbis, they have community leaders who aid with learning Chumash and Tanach.

Schulman has developed a set of courses on Noahide principles of the commandments and faith, and, more recently, has been putting together appropriate prayer services to help these communities.

He is also helping to edit a comprehensive codification of the commandments.

“The Rebbe wanted a codification of the Noahide commandments, like the Code of Jewish Law,” Schulman said. “The Rebbe said there should be one for the Noahide communities.”

Codification of the Noahide laws has become one of Schulman and Reisner’s “major goals,” Schulman said, and they recruited Torah scholar Rabbi Moshe Weiner to take on the project. While Weiner thought he would be able to complete the project in a year, it has taken four years to cover just the first six of the seven commandments. In 2007, ANI published volume one, covering the first three commandments, and the principles of faith, and in 2008, the second volume, covering the second three commandments, was published.

While some Noahides do aspire to convert, most are content living as non-Jews, following the Noahide laws.

“It is not a goal at all to encourage conversion,” Schulman said, “although some do decide to go down that road. Most people just want to connect with the truth.”

Both Telencio and Boiles appreciate Schulman’s help in connecting them with a virtual Noahide community.

“There are no other Noahides in Naples,” Telencio said. “Most of my contacts are through the Internet.”

And community, wherever one finds it, is important, especially after leaving behind the religion in which one is raised.

“When you leave Christianity and the church, you lose community,” Boiles said. “And my family has been a problem. But I had to do it. Now I see that my job is to align myself with Jews, and that we have a collective mission.

“I’m very magnetically drawn to Judaism. Part of me yearns for conversion, but I take this very seriously. Right now my path is as a righteous gentile, and to serve Hashem.”

(Toby Tabachnick can be reached at tobyt@thejewishchronicle.net.)

The 50 Most Influential Rabbis in America

2010-06-29T07:33:00.000-07:00

Two rabbi watchers release their 2010 list.

by Michael Lynton and Gary GinsbergJune 28, 2010

This year’s top rebbe is Yehuda Krinsky (center), the head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

In the fall of 2006, Sony Pictures chairman and CEO Michael Lynton and his pal Gary Ginsberg, now an executive vice president of Time Warner Inc., began working on a list of the 50 most influential rabbis in the U.S. The friends devised the following unscientific criteria to rank the leaders, whose specialties range from kashrut to Kabbalah: Are they known nationally/internationally? (20 points.) Do they have political/social influence? (20 points.) Do they have a media presence? (10 points.) Are they leaders within their communities? (10 points.) Are they considered leaders in Judaism or their movements? (10 points. ) How big are their constituencies? (10 points.) Have they made an impact on Judaism in their career? (10 points.) Have they made a greater impact beyond the Jewish community and their rabbinical training? (10 points.) NEWSWEEK published that first list around Passover, 2007, with this caveat: “Is the list subjective? Yes. Is it mischievous in its conception? Definitely.” Now in its fourth year, Lynton and Gisberg’s list includes eight fresh names and a new rebbe in the top spot.

1.Yehuda Krinsky—As the leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Krinsky is the contemporary face of the Hasidic branch. (2009 Ranking No. 4)

2.Eric Yoffie—Yoffie represents 1.5 million Jews in more than 900 synagogues in his role as president of the Union of Reform Judaism. (2009 Ranking No. 8)

3.Marvin Hier—Founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Hier is No. 3 for his tireless work combating issues such as anti-Semitism, bigotry, and hate. Hier’s many connections with major world leaders, politicians, and entertainment-industry bigwigs give him an international platform from which to speak on various matters affecting the Jewish people. (2009 Ranking No. 2 )

4.Mark Charendoff—A leading authority on the future of Jewish philanthropy, Charendoff serves as president of the Jewish Funders Network, an international organization of family foundations, public philanthropies, and individual funders. (2009 Ranking No. 3)

5.David Saperstein—Having just completed his term as the only rabbi serving on President Obama’s White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, Saperstein continues to act as a major influence in Washington in his role as director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. (2009 Ranking No. 1)

6.Schmuley Boteach—Calling himself “America’s Rabbi,” Boteach continues to share his views on marriage, parenting, and relationships with the world, appearing on The Oprah Winfrey Show, counseling various celebrities in their times of crisis and releasing his most recent book, The Michael Jackson Tapes. (2009 Ranking No. 7)

7.Irwin Kula—Kula, a bestselling author who serves as co-president of CLAL (the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership), is nationally known for his commitment to reshaping America’s spiritual landscape. (2009 Ranking No. 10)

8.David Ellenson—Under Ellenson’s leadership as president, Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion continues to develop, train, and support the dynamic Jewish leaders of tomorrow. (2009 ranking No. 5)

9.Robert Wexler—Wexler continues influencing generations of Jewish students and scholars as president of American Jewish University. (2009 Ranking No. 6)

10.Morris Allen—As program director for Magen Tzedek, the ethical kosher seal, Allen is changing the way the world thinks about kashrut and the ethical issues surrounding the hechsher. (NEW)

11.Uri D. Herscher—Herscher is the founder, president and CEO of the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles. (2009 Ranking No. 9)

12.Norman Lamm—Lamm is the chancellor of Yeshiva University in New York City. (2009 Ranking No. 14)

13.David Wolpe—Considered by many to be the No. 1 pulpit rabbi in America and a major leader of the Conservative movement, Wolpe is the rabbi of Sinai Temple in Los Angeles. (2009 Ranking No. 11)

14.Yehuda Berg—Berg is known as the world’s leading authority on the Kabbalah movement. (2009 Ranking No. 13)

15.Joesph Telushkin—Telushkin is an internationally known bestselling author and speaker. (2009 Ranking No. 15)

16.Menachem Genack—In his role as CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division, Genack has steadily supervised and maintained the organization’s stringent kosher requirements throughout a series of recent scandals. (2009 Ranking No. 17)

17.Ellen Weinberg Dreyfus—As president of the CCAR (Central Conference of American Rabbis), Dreyfus represents nearly 2,000 Reform rabbis. (2009 Ranking No. 18)

18.Avi Weis—A leading Modern Orthodox rabbi who heads the Hebrew Institute if Riverdale, N.Y., Weiss recently caused a stir in the Orthodox community with his controversial decision to grant his student, Sara Hurwitz, the title of “rabba.” (2009 Ranking No. 38)

19.Jeffrey Wohlberg—Wohlberg is president of the Rabbinical Assembly, the international association of Conservative rabbis. (2009 ranking No. 19)

20.Steve Gutow—Gutow is president and CEO of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the public-policy and community-relations coordinating agency of the American Jewish community. (2009 Ranking No. 20)

21.Yehiel Eckstein—As founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, Eckstein is recognized as the world’s leading Jewish authority on evangelical Christians. (NEW)

22.J. Rolando Matalon—As senior rabbi for Congregation B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, Matalon presides over a congregation of more than 1,800 families. (2009 Ranking No. 16)

23.Dan Ehrenkrantz—In his role as president of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College, Ehrenkrantz is recognized as a leading expert in issues pertaining to the Reconstructionist movement and American Jewish history.

24.Haskel Lookstein—Lookstein is principal of New York’s Ramaz School and rabbi at Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun. (2009 Ranking No. 22)

25.Sharon Kleinbaum—Kleinbaum is senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Simchat Torah, the world’s largest synagogue for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered Jews. (2009 Ranking No. 25)

26.Jack Moline—Moline, the spiritual leader of Gauds Achim Congregation in Alexandria, Va., is also the Rabbinical Assembly’s newest director of public policy. (NEW)

27.Steven Wernick—Wernick is the newly appointed executive vice president and CEO of United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism. (NEW)

28.Art Green—As dean of Hebrew College’s Rabbinical School, Green is internationally recognized as an authority on Jewish thought and spirituality. (2009 Ranking No. 27)

29.Peter J. Rubinstein—As senior rabbi for New York’s Central Synagogue, Rubinstein presides over a congregation of more than 1,700 families. (2009 Ranking No. 12)

30.M. Bruce Lustig—As senior rabbi for Washington’s largest synagogue, Washington Hebrew Congregation, Lustig presides over a congregation of more than 3,000 members. (2009 Ranking No. 26)

31.Sharon Brous—Founder of Los Angeles’s progressive spiritual community, IKAR, Brous has received international attention and acclaim for her leadership and impact within the Jewish community. (2009 Ranking No. 31)

32.Michael Siegel—In addition to serving as senior rabbi at Chicago’s Anshe Emet congregation, Siegel is also nationally known as the co-chair of the Heksher Tzedek Commission. (NEW)

33.Abraham Cooper—As the associate dean of the Simon Weisenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance, Cooper is internationally known as an activist for human and Jewish rights. (2009 Ranking No. 29)

34.Arthur Schneier—Known as the first rabbi to host the pope at his Park East Synagogue in New York, Schneier is also the founder and president of the Appeal of Conscience Foundation. (2009 Ranking No. 36)

35.Ephraim Buchwald—Buchwald is the founder of the National Jewish Outreach Program, which aims to address issues such as intermarriage and Jewish assimilation. (2009 Ranking No. 35)

36.Sara Hurwitz—Hurwitz rose to national attention when Rabbi Avi Weiss (No. 18) bestowed her with the title of “rabba.” She is considered the first Orthodox woman rabbi ordained in the United States, and in this role she has had an impact on the roles considered acceptable for modern Orthodox women. (NEW)

37.Kerry M. Olitzky—As executive director of the Jewish Outreach Institute, Olitzky is one of the leading rabbinical advocates for outreach to interfaith and unaffiliated families in America. (2009 Ranking No. 34)

38.Bradley Shavit Artson—Artson is dean of the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies at the American Jewish University. (2009 Ranking No. 40)

39.Naomi Levy—Considered a leader in the Conservative movement, Levy is a nationally recognized speaker and author as well as founder and leader of the Los Angeles-based Jewish outreach organization Nashuva. (2009 Ranking No. 39)

40.Harold Schulweis—In addition to being considered one of the leading voices of the Conservative movement, Schulweis is internationally known for founding Jewish World Watch. (2009 Ranking No. 21)

41.Marc Schneier—Schneier is president and founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, which seeks to strengthen relationships between ethnic communities in the United States. (2009 Ranking No. 33)

42.Zalman Schacter-Shalomi—Schacter-Shalomi is known as the founder of the Jewish Renewal movement in America. (2009 Ranking No. 45)

43.Elliot Dorff—As chairman of the Rabbinical Assembly’s Committee on Jewish Law and Standards. Dorff serves as the leader of Conservative Judaism’s top lawmaking body. (2009 Ranking No. 41)

44.Bradley Hirschfield—A nationally known proponent for interfaith dialogues and pluralism, Hirschfield is co-president of CLAL. (2009 Ranking No. 42)

45.Steven Leder—In addition to serving as Senior Rabbi at Los Angeles’s Wilshire Boulevard Temple, Leder is also a bestselling author. (Returning from 2008)

46.Ed Feinstein—A noted author and speaker, Feinstein is senior rabbi of Valley Beth Shalom in Encino, Calif. (2009 Ranking No. 44)

47.David Stern—As senior rabbi for Temple Emanu-El in Dallas, Stern presides over the largest congregation in the Southwest. (2009 Ranking No. 30)

48.Michael Paley—Paley is the scholar in residence and director of the Jewish Resource Center of the UJA-Federation of New York. (2009 Ranking No. 50)

49.Jill Jacobs—A leading expert in Jewish social-justice issues, Jacobs serves as the rabbi in residence at the Jewish Funds for Justice. (2009 Ranking No. 48)

50.Mark Dratch—As founder of JSafe (The Jewish Institute Supporting an Abuse-Free Environment), Dratch is a nationally recognized speaker and consultant in matters of domestic violence, child abuse, and professional abuse within the Jewish community. (NEW)

Gimel Tamuz: Chabad mourns on the 16th Yahrzeit

2010-06-16T10:01:00.000-07:00

ג' בתמוז: חב"ד דואבת בפעם ה-16

14/06/2010

יקי אדמקר וחנן ויזנטל, בחדרי חרדים

הלילה, ליל ג' בתמוז, ימלאו 16 שנה ליום בו עלה הרבי מליובאוויטש זי"ע לגנזי מרומים • אירועי ההילולא בארץ נפתחוצאי

שבת פרשת חוקת, בו ניצחו האראלים את המצוקים, וכ"ק האדמו"ר מליובאוויטש התבקש לגנזי מרומים.

בריכוזי חב"ד בכל רחבי העולם נערכות התוועדויות ומתקיימים אירועים לצורך התחזקות בדרך אותה התווה הרבי עבור חסידיו וההולכים בדרכו.

בהתוועדות מרכזית בכפר חב"ד • רבבות ינהרו ל'אוהל' בקווינס

הלילה, ליל ג' בתמוז, ימלאו 16 שנה לאותו לילה שחור-משחור עבור כל חסידי חב"ד ורבבות יהודים בעולם, מובישראל נפתחו אירועי יום ההילולא בהתוועדות המרכזית הנערכת בשעות אלו בכפר חב"ד, בה משתתפים אדמו"רים, רבנים, אישי ציבור וח"כים, לצד אלפי חסידים מכל רחבי הארץ.

בשעות הקרובות, יחלו רבבות לנהור אל ציונו של הרבי, בבית העלמין מונטפיורי שברובע קווינס בניו-יורק - שם הוכשרו אוהלי ענק לקליטת המוני המתפללים מכל רחבי ארה"ב והעולם.

האפשרות להיכנס אל תוך האוהל בו טמון הרבי, תינתן לכל אדם למשך של 2-3 דקות, וזאת על מנת לאפשר לכולם להשתטח על חלקת מחוקק ספון.

במהלך יום ההילולא יתקיימו בבית 770 בניו יורק שיעורים והתוועדויות אותם יגישו 'שלוחים' מכל רחבי העולם שהגיעו לרגל היום הזה לניו יורק.

במקביל, באותן שעות יעבירו שלוחים התוועדויות ברחבי העולם כולו ומאות אלפי חסידי חב"ד יתחזקו בדרכו של הרבי מליובאוויטש זי"ע.

חסידי חב"ד ינהגו ביום ההילולא על פי המנהגים שקבע כ"ק אדמו"ר מליובאוויטש לאחר הסתלקות חותנו, אדמו"ר הריי"צ זצ"ל. הדלקת נר נשמה, כתיבת 'פדיון נפש', לימוד המשניות של אותיות השם, וקיום התוועדויות חסידיות בחוג המשפחה ובכל קהילה ומוסד.

Google Translate:

Tonight, the night's Go, will be 16 years that black night - black for all Jews and tens of Chabad-Lubavitch world, Saturday night affair Constitution, which won Harelym the cliffs, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was asked Ginzei deceived.

Chabad centers worldwide events are held Ahthooaedweut exist for strengthening the way it made a rabbi for his followers going on.

Israel opened Ahhilula Day events held at the Central Bahthooadot these Kfar Chabad, where participants Rebbe s, rabbis, public figures and MKs, along with thousands of followers from around the country.

The next few hours, tens of thousands flock to the start of grade Rebbe, Montefiore Cemetery in Queens in New - York - where huge tents were trained to absorb masses of worshipers from all over the U.S. and the world.

Entering into the tent where a maximum cache will be given to any person for the 2-3 minutes in order to allow everyone to lie down on a patch of legislative Spawn.

During the day Ahhilula will be held at 770 New York lessons Vahthooaedweut them submit 'emissaries' from around the world from this day pilgrimage to New York.

At the same time, those hours will pass Shluchim Ahthooaedweut worldwide and hundreds of thousands of Chabad will strengthen the path of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Rebbe.

Chabad will act on Ahhilula customs established by Lubavitcher Rebbe after the departure of his in-laws, Ahrei"c Rebbe of blessed memory. Candle lighting, writing, mental revenue, secondary schooling name letters, and conducting Ahthooaedweut hasidic in the family and community institution.

Chabad emissaries gathering in D.C.

2010-06-16T09:50:00.000-07:00

June 15, 2010

WASHINGTON (JTA) --

A Chabad-Lubavitch event is drawing hundreds of emissaries to Washington for meetings with Congress members and Obama administration officials.

The Living Legacy Conference, organized by American Friends of Lubavitch, will take place Wednesday and Thursday.

Guests at the events include top Congress members, such as U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House of Representatives majority leader, and Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio), the House minority leader, as well as a number of U.S. senators.

The emissaries will lunch with ambassadors from the nations where they serve; the event is expected to attract emissaries from 40 nations as well as 40 U.S. states.

Private meetings also will be held with top administration officials.

Rabbi’s Biography Disturbs Followers

2010-06-16T09:28:00.000-07:00

By PATRICIA COHEN

Dressed in a white straw hat, tan chinos and a blue shirt, Samuel Heilman, the co-author of a new book about Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, stood at the rebbe’s grave site among scores of pilgrims — a vanguard of the thousands expected to visit on Tuesday, in the Jewish calendar the 16th anniversary of his death — who arrived at a Queens cemetery a few days early to commune with their beloved leader.

“It is very holy,” Mr. Heilman said outside the open-air mausoleum, or ohel, that contains the graves of the rebbe and his father-in-law and predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. Hasidim believe that the spirit of a great sage remains after death, and many Lubavitchers think the rebbe is not only a sage, but also the messiah.

The biography’s look at Schneerson’s personal life is already causing a stir in the continuing discussion about his legacy.

Mr. Heilman pointed to a headstone facing the ohel that refers in Hebrew to the rebbe as “the Messiah of God.”

“It’s etched in stone,” he said. Rabbi Schneerson, the seventh and at this point the last leader of the Chabad Lubavitchers, remains as powerful a presence in death as in life.

Over the course of his more than 40 years as grand rebbe, he transformed this tiny Hasidic sect, with its headquarters in Brooklyn, into an influential global network of Jewish followers and emissaries and turned it into one of the most important religious movements within American Jewry. His life and philosophy are essential to understanding contemporary Jewish life.

Mr. Heilman, a sociologist at Queens College, and Menachem Friedman, a professor emeritus at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, offer a view into his world in their new biography, “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson” (Princeton University Press). But they have provoked a growing chorus of complaints from people inside and outside Chabad with their characterization of the rebbe.

Controversy is perhaps inevitable. “Any attempt to humanize the rebbe is going to provoke this reaction.” said Elliot R. Wolfson, a professor of Hebrew and Judaic studies at New York University and the author of “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision.”

What some early readers have found most disturbing is the authors’ description of the rebbe as a not especially pious young Hasid. They argue that Rabbi Schneerson’s initial dream was to be an engineer and that he mostly absented himself from Lubavitcher affairs before World War II, living in Berlin and Paris outside of a religious Hasidic community.

Only after he escaped from Europe and arrived in the United States in 1941, when he was a childless refugee with little English and few job prospects, and millions of his people had been massacred did he see he himself as having a different mission, the book contends.

Rabbi Schneerson was a man who “must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God,” the authors write.

Sitting outside the ohel visitor center as a large brown tour bus pulled up, Mr. Heilman, a modern Orthodox Jew, spoke of his “profound respect” for the Lubavitchers but noted that his responsibility as a scholar was not simply to celebrate the rebbe’s accomplishments. “They just can’t accept that he transformed himself, that he was not always going to be the rebbe,” he said.

Mr. Heilman and Mr. Friedman did not have access to Chabad’s private archives, though there is already a monumental amount of published material from and about the rebbe, with a new collection of 1,200 documents soon to be released. The scholars did speak with many movement members, some of whom are now critical of the biography.

Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a Lubavitch spokesman who is thanked in the book, labeled their speculations “psychobabble” and disdained their attempt to put “themselves in the rebbe’s head while ignoring his deeply expressive correspondence and his scholarly approach.”

Other critics take the authors to task for not relying more on published material. Steven I. Weiss, the head of news at the Jewish Channel, a cable television network, criticized the book for presenting what he called lurid details and ignoring a vast amount of “primary material which would frequently contradict its assertions.” He also chastised the authors for not noting outright that Mr. Friedman served as an expert witness against the rebbe during a lawsuit in the 1980s over ownership of the Chabad library. Mr. Heilman said, “We have no ax to grind.”

And Mr. Wolfson of N.Y.U. argued that bypassing the rebbe’s religious writings was a mistake. “There is no question that Menachem Mendel and his wife were spreading their wings” during their sojourn in Paris and Berlin, he said. But the diaries from those years show that he was also completely absorbed in Hasidic thought and Jewish learning. “The world he lived in was completely structured around his ideas,” he said.

Mr. Heilman maintained that Lubavitcher accounts can’t be trusted because they are hagiographies and said that he and Mr. Friedman did not examine the rebbe’s extensive writings on scripture because they were interested in his personal history, not his scholarship.

The American and Israeli professors are colleagues and friends who have independently studied the Lubavitchers for nearly 20 years. It was their wives, though, who suggested in 2007 that the two collaborate on a book while they were all vacationing together in Croatia.

In Mr. Heilman’s eyes, the key to the movement’s success was Rabbi Schneerson’s global vision. He figured out how to permit younger followers to engage with the modern world while remaining true to their Hasidic beliefs. By becoming shluchim, or missionaries, they could spread Lubavitch practices, thereby hastening the arrival of the messiah and redemption.

Rabbi Schneerson told his shluchim not to limit their efforts to the most religious but to every Jew. “They take everyone,” Mr. Heilman said.

More books and biographies are on the way, insuring that the Talmudic-like debate about Rabbi Schneerson’s life will continue.

Chabad Lubavitch celebrates moving into new home

2010-06-14T07:45:00.000-07:00

CHRISTIANA LILLY

June 11, 2010

When the congregants walk into the temple, they gaze at the chandeliers hanging from the elevated ceilings, the new marble flooring and the fresh blue paint on the walls. With music playing in the background, they talk and enjoy appetizers and a drink in front of a portrait paying homage to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. Within minutes, the foyer is filled with people standing shoulder to shoulder.

When Rabbi Mendy Posner and his wife, Chanie, walk into the temple, they are greeted by congregants with hugs, handshakes and proclamations of "Mazel Tov!" It has been a long time coming, but the family of Chabad Lubavitch of Plantation finally has its own, freestanding temple to call home.

"In this economy, people think it's a nice dream, but no one believed we could pull it off," the rabbi said.

To celebrate the grand opening of the temple, located at 10165 Cleary Blvd., a gala was thrown with about 500 people in attendance, Posner estimated. The social hall was opened up to accommodate the guests in a reception with food, music and memories. A slideshow presentation of past holidays and events was projected onto the wall.

Hugo and Hilda Bamberger, who have been coming to the temple since it opened, attended the gala and said they were blown away by the new building.

"When you pass the outside, you want to go inside. That's what sums it up," Hugo Bamberger said. "It's a wonderful building and we needed it; we were always squeezing."

His wife described her reaction to seeing it for the first time as being "dumbstruck."

Shelley Drujak has been coming to the temple for six years, ever since she was looking to make a change in her religious life. She originally attended a conservative church, and after attending a service at the Chabad, she never left. Drujak said it was the warmth, spirituality and acceptance of the people that drew her to stay. With the new building, she said it was a gift to the community.

"Every nail that went in was because of the rabbi's dream," she said. "He dreamed of it and he made it happen."

The temple is 12,000 square feet, larger than the 800 square feet of the original one that Posner founded in 1993. The groundbreaking was in August 2008, and the rabbi worked closely with an architect to design the building. The new synagogue has children's classrooms, a men's mikvah pool, library, offices for the rabbis, a kitchen and a social hall.

"We feel that we'll be able to offer so much more to the community," Posner said.

At the front of the temple sanctuary stands the Torah ark, which the rabbi hopes to grow in size as well. He wants it to be 36 by 16 feet with the 12 tribes of Israel. But for now, he is worrying about putting the finishing touches on the temple.

Ivor Bamberger, the master of ceremonies for the gala, said the temple is a place for growth in one's Judaism, and the size of the temple shows a need from the growing orthodox community.

"If you build it, people will come," Bamberger told the congregants.

Copyright © 2010, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

The shekel drops / Missionaries in Ramat Aviv

2010-06-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

The battle raging Ramat Aviv isn't just about the neighborhood's character. It's a battle over Israel's image.

By Nehemia Shtrasler

The sight was elevating: 800 neighborhood residents took a break from what they were doing and went out to demonstrate. Their goal: to protect their homes. They weren't asking for much: just to maintain their way of life, the character of their neighborhood, their values, dignity and right to educate their children as they see fit.

Nobody was paying them. They had no political party or foreign sponsors. They collected the money to fund their demonstration themselves because they knew that if they didn't, the missionary group Chabad could continue to slowly take the neighborhood over, just as is happening in Migdal Ha'emek, Beit Shemesh and Jerusalem.

A few people set up a counter-demonstration against the 800. They believe that the people in question are merely "good Jews" who just rented a few apartments to preach Torah there. All they want is for us to put on tefillin a little, to light candles on Friday night. What charming simplicity.

They don't realize that it's a well-organized plan to take control of the neighborhood. They aren't even aware that a yeshiva opened in the neighborhood staffed by "messengers" who are prepared to sacrifice their souls for their Rebbe.

These "messengers" have one explicit goal: to return the people of the neighborhood to Judaism. The more Jews keep the Sabbath and follow the mitzvoth, the faster the Messiah will come. Though actually he already did come, in the form of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, according to Chabad. The Rebbe has died in the meantime, but he lives on - their belief system is a mystical, un-Jewish thing, about which the Rabbi Shach commented: "Chabad is the cult closest to Judaism."

As in every neighborhood, here too they identified the most vulnerable point: the young. That's why every Friday they ply the grove by the Alliance school, trying to persuade the children to put on tefillin and drop by the Chabad House for a "conversation." At night they lurk among the trees and on benches for the teens, offering refreshments and sweet talk. They cunningly tell these kids, "You have the soul of a righteous person," and don't cavil at saying that their mothers and fathers are sinners. They even whisper that people who don't honor Shabbat are doomed to hell.

Puberty is a vulnerable stage and some of these kids, who want to rebel against their parents anyway, listen. The nice people of Chabad have no problem taking in a youngster and destroying a family in Israel.

Where are the police and the municipality as strangers badger children among the trees at night?

The Chabadniks understand that the middle class is groaning under its burdens. So they opened a few kindergartens in the neighborhood that charge little and give much, including a hot meal. Some parents succumbed to the temptation - and lost their children. This neighborhood sorely lacks kindergartens without religious affiliation. But the city allows Chabad to open one kindergarten after another, even at the expense of a building that had been a cultural center until two years ago.

These Chabadniks with their butter-wouldn't-melt smiles have no problem flouting the law. They rent apartments and turn them into studios. They build without permits, establish hostels and mikvas in violation of municipal ordinances, but the city doesn't block them. Mayor Ron Huldai did denounce Chabad in Ramat Aviv, saying they were harassing the residents. But his job is to stop the harassment, not just talk about it.

Imagine what would happen to me if I went to Kfar Chabad, rented an apartment and dared to open a class to teach a modern interpretation of the Bible, or women's rights or Darwinism. In the evening I'd go out and roam the neighborhood, trying to persuade their children to visit my home on Shabbat to see what a nonobservant Jew does on the day of rest.

Soon enough you'd have to visit me at the burn ward at Ichilov Hospital, if not worse.

And if all that happened, the good souls among us would say: Why did he have to interfere in their way of life? Why provoke them?

But when they come from Kfar Chabad to Ramat Aviv, these same good souls say, in the name of an artificial, suicidal liberalism, "We should understand them," and, "We mustn't oppose others because that is unenlightened racism."

Only they are allowed to sell their rotten goods, rife with ignorance, superstition, terrible discrimination against women, bottomless hatred of Arabs and Gentiles, and nonsense about the Messiah. We may not even protect our values of humanism, education, rationalism, equality, literature and the great inventions of science that changed the face of mankind.

The battle in Ramat Aviv isn't just about the neighborhood's character. It's a battle over Israel's image, and the 800 residents who got up and left their homes and went out to demonstrate last Monday are just the harbingers.

Loss becomes gain

2010-06-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

What happens when a religious leader's spiritual guru is no longer available?

That can be a difficult road, said Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort, director of Chabad at La Costa, who was crushed when his mentor, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, died.

Schneerson, often referred to as "the Rebbe" (a highly venerated leader in the Hasidic community), is largely heralded as leading the modern Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judiasm to found Chabad centers and unite Orthodox Jews nationwide.

Eilfort, 43, knew him personally: It was the Rebbe who sent Eilfort to the West Coast to open a Chabad center.

"When the Rebbe passed away, that was a very difficult day, a challenging day for all of us in the chabad movement," Eilfort said of the religious leader's death in June 1994. "The Rebbe and his wife did not have any biological children, but when they passed away they left so many orphans."

Eilfort said it was hard to fathom a world without the Rebbe.

"I was saddened that I would not be able to, in a physical sense, go to him when I had a question," he said. "I wouldn't be able to go and sit at one of his Hasidic gatherings and feel the inspiration when I went, and the way he would be able to take a Torah passage and make it vibrantly relevant in today's age. A little of the shine came off the world for me."

And a burden arose.

"I would have to be the rebbe for my children," Eilfort said.

Yet since Schneerson's passing, there has been amazing growth in the Chabad movement, Eilfort said.

"When the rebbe passed away, maybe there were 1,500 Chabad centers," he said. "Everyone was saying 'Chabad was not going to grow because the rebbe's not there.'"

What his followers learned was that the rebbe's directive and approach were very much alive, he said.

"Today there are 3,500 Chabad centers around the world," he said, adding that faith in God has underscored that expansion.

"When things happen that I don't understand, it doesn't challenge my faith: It challenges my way of thinking," Eilfort said.

"I feel my relationship with God is beyond a faith relationship. It's a relationship of knowledge. Just like you know the sun is going to rise tomorrow, I feel ---- I know ---- God in my life."

New bios of Lubavitcher rebbe dig for the man behind the myth

2010-05-24T08:48:00.000-07:00

By Sue Fishkoff · May 17, 2010

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Sixteen years after the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a flurry of new publications indicates not only how enduring the interest is in his life and legacy, but how potent the minefield is surrounding his mythology.

Writing a biography of a larger-than-life figure is never easy. And when that figure is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, the charismatic leader of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the usual challenges of sifting through sources and evaluating mountains of research material are complicated by internal politics, religious sensibilities, personal loyalties and a lack of reliable first-person information.

Then there’s the Messiah business.

Until now, the only recountings of Schneerson's life have been hagiographies written by Chabad followers. Now there are two new biographies by academics outside Chabad circles, with a third in the works.

New York University Professor Elliot Wolfson came out last fall with “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson,” an examination of Schneerson’s leadership within the context of Jewish esoteric tradition.

Next month will see the publication of “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,” by Samuel Heilman of City University of New York and Menachem Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, an examination of Schneerson’s early life and what the authors describe as his growing Messianic pretensions.

And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of several best-selling books on Jewish life and thought, is in the early stages of a book focusing on the source of Schneerson’s charisma and the influence he continues to exert on people’s lives.

The Heilman-Friedman book is generating the most controversy. Written for a lay audience, it frames Schneerson’s mission, and that of the Chabad movement he led, as motivated by Messianism, here defined as the attempt to hasten the Messianic era through human actions. The Messianic mission was so much at the heart of the late rebbe’s leadership, the authors argue, that one cannot be a follower of the rebbe without full commitment to that goal.

The authors take a psycho-bio approach to Schneerson’s life, trying to get inside the man’s head to uncover his motivation -- always a tricky business.

They focus on Schneerson’s 14 years in Berlin and Paris -- the so-called “lost years” between his 1927 marriage to Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, and 1941, when the couple escaped Nazi Europe and arrived in New York to rejoin the Lubavitch court.

Left to his own devices, they write, Schneerson would have preferred to “settle in Paris, become a French citizen, and live as a Jew of Hasidic background pursuing a career in engineering.”

While not explicitly claiming that Schneerson and his young wife fell away from their Chasidic roots, the authors return again and again to the short beard and secular dress Schneerson favored until his arrival in New York, along with other similar details, as evidence of an Orthodox but not haredi lifestyle.

“There is no question he was an observant Jew, but he lived in places where Chasidim didn’t live, and he did things they wouldn’t do,” Heilman told JTA.

It was, the authors write, a combination of survivor’s guilt -- Schneerson was the only member of his close family to escape the Holocaust -- and the improbability of his becoming an engineer in America that led him by the late 1940s to set his sights on a new career goal: succeeding his father-in-law to become the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe.

“Mendel’s whole world had collapsed,” they write. “Now he was a childless refugee in America nearly forty years old with little or no English facility, with no job prospects in what had been his chosen field … a man who must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion, and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God.”

When Schneerson assumed leadership of Chabad, the authors continue, he was able to use this worldly experience to push a hitherto small Chasidic movement onto the world stage, launching the global outreach campaign that was to become its hallmark.

Eventually, they assert, Schneerson believed he was “the prophet of his generation,” the man destined to bring on the Messianic era. And because the rebbe was so alone, with no peers to contradict him, they ask rhetorically: Was he “getting lost in a culture of messianic delusion”?

This version of Schneerson’s life contradicts the official Lubavitch version of an unbroken journey toward the mantle of movement leadership and suggests a more nuanced life whose twists and turns might easily have led to a different outcome.

Even before its publication, the book has engendered considerable objections in Chabad circles. One female emissary said some of her colleagues "have been briefed by headquarters" to steer their people away from it.

Lubavitchers are ripping into it, disputing its details as well as its overall thesis, claiming it shows a lack of familiarity with readily available primary sources. According to these critics, the rebbe never trimmed his beard in Europe, he rolled it, and the rebbe attended synagogue regularly in Berlin -- videotaped interviews with Jews who saw him in shul prove it.

And the suggestion that Schneerson spent his European years divorced from Chabad activities?

Rubbish, they charge.

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, a Lubavitch scholar and dean of Britain’s Machon Mayim Chayin, points to a wealth of correspondence that exists between Schneerson and his father showing the two engaging in deep Talmudic and kabbalistic discourse.

“All this is a far cry from" the claim by Heilman and Friedman "that the father was guiding a son who had but an elementary or, worse still, a cursory interest in a Chasidic lifestyle,” he says.

In response, Heilman said in an e-mail to JTA, "We do not deny and indeed suggest that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was a primary religious and Chasidic guide for his son. Indeed, we quote from the letters they exchanged. We particularly note the exchanges around the time of the wedding of the son to the daughter of the Sixth Rebbe."

On the question of the rebbe's beard, Heilman said readers will be able to judge for themselves by looking at photographs of Schneerson, reading comments from his father-in-law and thinking about when those comments were made.

In general, Heilman says, it should come as no surprise that some Chasidim "see things differently from the way we do. But we have presented our viewpoint based on the facts we have gathered."

"Our book documents what we have learned about the years in Europe," Heilman said. "We explain that most of the activities of those years were focused around the primary activity that brought the young Schneersons to Berlin and Paris. That activity was pursuit of education, career, and a life distant from Lubavitcher areas of settlement. When they wanted more of the Lubavitcher life, they either returned to the Sixth Rebbe's court or visited with him when he came to where they were.

"We never question the future Rebbe's knowledge of Chabad or even his interest in it. But as we document, that interest was not always the center of his concerns while he pursued his engineering studies."

Chabad itself, through Jewish Educational Media, is about to release more than 1,200 documents related to Schneerson’s life and work, in English and Hebrew, including his own diaries and important correspondence between him, his father and his father-in-law, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe.

One volume will come out in late June, followed later by others, both in print at online at chabad.org. Chabad sources say this information will “clear up many misunderstandings.”

Wolfson, a philosopher, presents a much different take on Schneerson’s Messianism than sociologists Heilman and Friedman.

The NYU professor portrays Schneerson as having a very deep and radical understanding of Jewish esoterica.

“In his prime, his teaching was very dense, very laden with kabbalistic terminology," Wolfson said. "I don’t know how many really understood him; most were simply mesmerized by his style of presentation.”

Schneerson’s teachings are rife with internal contradictions, Wolfson says, including the subverting of Judaism’s gender hierarchy and the boundaries between the permissible and the non-permissible. But most of this was destined for the realm of theory. Schneerson never intended for them to be actualized -- not in this world.

“What the implications would be sociologically, what a Jewish community would look like if the Torah were superseded by the ‘new Torah’ he spoke about, a kind of law beyond the law, I don’t think he thought that through,” Wolfson said.

Wolfson agrees with Heilman and Friedman that Schneerson’s Messianic vision “was there from the beginning.”

“I feel he is using the rhetoric of a personal Messiah to mark not so much a political change but a change in consciousness that … involves reaching a state of personal perfection that exceeds the need for the Torah as we have it,” he said. “I don’t think he understood the impossibility of his own vision. And he took no steps to remedy that. He took no steps to name a successor. The whole history of Chabad from the Alter Rebbe [18th-century founder of Chabad-Lubavitch] to [Schneerson] is a Messianic line that comes to a close with him.”

Neither book will satisfy Chabad’s strongest critics, nor its closest friends. It remains to be seen whether the deluge of new material about to be published by JEM will cast further light on the most elusive aspects of Schneerson’s life and leadership.

“Like many mythic figures, he was a combination of opposites,” Heilman muses. “But you can’t really be sure what was inside his head. Who was he really?”

This article was made possible by the support of readers like you. Donate to JTA now.

Lubavitch's nerve center

2010-05-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

Julia Duin

The first people I saw when I climbed out of the Kingston subway station on Friday were men in long black coats, wide-brimmed black hats and beards. was in Crown Heights, the Brooklyn borough that is the "Jerusalem" of the Chabad Lubavitch movement, in which the black suits are the norm. Founded 250 years ago in what was White Russia, the movement survived under the leadership of inspired rebbes (teachers), the latest being Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994.

The dilapidated brick building I faced as I exited the subway was his movement's headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway. The interior was a rabbit warren of dingy hallways with sheets of paper - tacked onto various doors - identifying various agencies.

I stepped into one room claimed by Jewish Educational Media, where Rabbi Elkanah Shmotkin showed me an array of multimedia archives of talks by the rebbe, plus video of almost every encounter he had had with the thousands of fans who had dropped by to see him on Sundays. He would give each a dollar bill, which they in turn were to contribute to charity.

The rebbe founded an amazing missionary corps of rabbinical couples who established beachheads of Jewish culture worldwide. I met such a couple in South Florida while reporting there in the early 1980s, and I've maintained contact with them to this day. Their synagogue turns 30 years old this month.

Other endings are not so happy. When terrorists attacked Jews in Mumbai in November 2008, it was a Chabad center that was targeted. Nine Jews died there.

I had long wanted to see the nerve center of the Chabad movement. A few hours later, the lower floor of 770, as they call it, overflowed with black-coated men saying prayers in preparation for the Jewish holiday of Purim. Up in the balcony in the women's section, a woman held out a card bearing Rabbi Schneerson's likeness, comparing him to the moshiach, the long-promised Jewish messiah.

A Lubavitch friend and I strolled through the snow up Kingston Avenue, "the Champs Elysees of the Lubavitch world," he told me, with delis, a bakery shop, Judaica stories, flower shops and butchers, all kosher. A glossy tourist brochure at a florist portrays a street map of where 43 shuls, or synagogues, can be found in a 77-square-block area.

Most impressive was the interactive Jewish Children's Museum across Kingston Avenue from the world headquarters. When the little ones enter on the third floor, they go through a walkway portraying the seven days of creation.

There were shofar-shaped microphones in front of an exhibit on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new-year holiday during which the shofar (ram's horn) is blown. There's an olive press to create oil for Hanukkah lamps, a chestful of Purim costumes and a kosher supermarket where children can practice selecting kosher products off the shelves.

Then there is a room devoted to observing the Sabbath, with computers instructing children how to construct a Sabbath menu and a talking wine bottle that describes how to say the kiddush blessing over the wine.

Lots of Christian youth groups visit the museum, I was told, because of its Bible-friendly atmosphere. And certainly, with a surrounding neighborhood and culture geared to making faith attractive, Crown Heights leaves the visitor almost wishing he or she could be Jewish.

Jewish center dedicates new Torah

2010-05-20T21:47:00.000-07:00

CHESTNUT RIDGE — Nicky Zion waited in a line
Monday night to have a single letter written for her
family and, to her, it was entirely worth the wait.

"I just think it's so special because it's not every day
you get to do this," said the 41-year-old Valley
Cottage resident. "I think it's just a very special thing
to happen to you."

Zion was one of about 100 local Jews to take part in
the completion of the Chabad Jewish Enrichment
Center's new Torah scroll.

Rabbi Chaim Zvi Ehrenreich, director of the Chabad
Center, said that each of the 600,000 letters in the
Torah has a connection to a Jewish soul and that
writing a full Torah is actually considered a mitzvah,
a good deed, required by the Jewish text.

"Most people don't ever do that in its entirety," he
said. "And so today, every family that's here is going
to have the opportunity to have one letter inscribed
for them."

The Chabad Center, at 6 Whitefield Road in Chestnut
Ridge, is part of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch
movement to promote Judaism among all Jews and
was opened in 2001, Ehrenreich said. Since its
inception, the group has used older Torah scrolls
on loan from other Jewish organizations during
their observances.

The Torah scroll completed Monday was donated by
the Tseytin family of Saddle River, N.J. The scroll,
written by a trained scribe in feather and ink, took
about a year to complete. Ehrenreich described the
donation of the scroll as "very, very generous" and
estimated its cost to be between $25,000 and
$50,000.

"The religious meaning of it is beyond that," he said.
"This is the Torah that's handed down from
generation to generation to generation from Mount
Sinai until today. We're going forward now. This is
here for the next 50 years, for the next generation.
It's very, very special."

The ceremony couldn't have come at a more fitting
time. Shavuot, which begins tonight, is the Jewish
holiday during which Moses was given the Torah at
Mount Sinai 3,322 years ago by the Jewish calendar.

Monday's simcha, or celebration, included a series
of traditional Jewish observances such as the
picking up and tying of the Torah. Throughout the
entire event, guests ate and drank, and danced to
music.

Ella Tseytin said she is a spiritual person, but not
overly religious. She said one reason, among many,
that she and her husband, Michael, donated the text
was to honor her father, Yakov Shtivelman, who died
two years ago.

Tseytin said the family wanted to remember
Shtivelman, whom she described as an "amazing
person" who "believed in people," and the family h
oped that the people of Chabad would pray for him
as they read from the new Torah scroll.

She also said that, after consulting with another
rabbi, her family decided that it would be a good
idea to help a Jewish group in need.

"The idea was to do something good for someone
and to feel good doing it," she said. "Maybe it was a
little bit selfish, but the idea was to bring something
good to somebody else."

New Sefer Torah in Dnepropetrovsk

2010-05-20T21:42:00.000-07:00

This past Sunday, Dnepropetrovsk was crowded with thousands of people from all over Ukraine at a ceremonial giving of a new Sefer Torah.

The Chief Rabbi of Romania flew in especially for the joyous occasion. Edward Sartan, a member of the board of the trustees, and Martin de Yung from Holland, donated the Sefer Torah.

A beautiful golden Kesser together with a Choshen and a Yad were donated by Uri Laber, a respected member of the local Jewish community. The Sefer Torah was completed by a local Sofer, Zeev Gelfand, in the Kotzubinskovo Shul.

The last few lines were written by the heads of all the local organizations and important members of the community. The procession was through the streets of Dnepropetrovsk to the Golden Rose Shul, the army band of musicians led the procession with joyous Chassidic music. People were dancing in the streets with great happiness of receiving a new Sefer Torah in their city of Dnepropetrovsk.

At the Golden Rose Shul, Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetzky, the Chief Rabbi of Dnepropetrovsk, said the first Atoh Horeisoh with great enthusiasm followed by dancing.

A very festive Seuda, was held thereafter in the courtyard of the Shul with the Dnepropetrovsk's Pirchei Ukraine choir livening up the event with their latest songs.

Jerry Weintraub talks about faith, lessons learned

2010-05-20T20:46:00.000-07:00

The Desert Sun Profile

Bruce Fessier • The Desert Sun • May 16, 2010

Jerry Weintraub doesn't consider himself religious.

But, after making millions of dollars as a concert
promoter for the likes of Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra,
Led Zeppelin and Bob Dylan, and as a producer of
films such as “Diner,” “Oh, God!” and the “Karate
Kid” franchise, Weintraub began paying attention to
what he calls a higher power.

“I've had this turmoil about religion my whole life —
not just Judaism but Catholicism, Islam, Buddhism,”
he says from his walled, two-story estate in Beverly
Hills. “It seems like every war is fought over
religion. That's why I like to say I'm spiritual, not
religious. I believe in a higher power. I don't know
what that higher power is, but I believe in it.”

Weintraub, who also owns a modern marvel in the
Palm Desert foothills, recounts many of his show biz
stories in his new book, “When I Stop Talking, You'll
Know I'm Dead: Useful Stories From A Persuasive
Man.”

But he tells them from the perspective of a man who
has gained a new level of wisdom after 72 years on
this planet. He tries to pass along lessons he's
learned from his mistakes as well as his successes.

“One of those lessons is that, from the age of 20 to
40, I could have been a much better father,”
Weintraub says. “I didn't go to ballet recitals and
Little League games. I was so involved with what I
was doing and the life I was making for my family
and myself that I didn't realize how much I was
missing. I had a lot of trouble for not being there all
the time. On the other hand, I was able to give my
family a lot of things they never would have had. I'm
still learning about this.”

Weintraub said he has had many rather mystical
experiences in his life. Some might seem like
coincidences — like the day before his Desert Sun
interview when a Paramount Pictures executive told
him over lunch that he was seeking a script for a
team of older A-list actors for a project like “Ocean's
Eleven.”

Weintraub said his “Ocean's Eleven” screenwriters
had written just such a film, titled “The Belmont
Boys.” He told the studio head he'd contact them
ASAP. Then he called his secretary to tell her to find
the New York-based writers because a development
deal was on the line.

The next day, he said, he was having breakfast with
another studio head at the Four Seasons Hotel in
Beverly Hills when he looked around and, sitting in
the next booth, were those very “Ocean's Eleven”
writers.

“I cannot tell you how many hundreds and
hundreds of times this has happened to me,”
Weintraub said just hours after telling those writers
of their stroke of luck. “I don't know if it happens to
everybody, but it happens to me. That's not a talent.
That's a situation I'm put into.

“I'm not saying I don't work at it. I do. But somehow,
it's always there for me. It gets there. That's why I
believe there's something else.”

One of his most remarkable mystical experiences
prompted him to post a photograph over his bed in
Beverly Hills of the kind of religious figure he was
always conflicted about.

It isn't accompanied by pictures of his wife or kids
or celebrity friends such as Sinatra, George Clooney

Share Email PrintNew bios of Lubavitcher rebbe dig for the man behind the myth

2010-05-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

SAN FRANCISCO (JTA) -- Sixteen years after the death of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, a flurry of new publications indicates not only how enduring the interest is in his life and legacy, but how potent the minefield is surrounding his mythology.

Writing a biography of a larger-than-life figure is never easy. And when that figure is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, the charismatic leader of the worldwide Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the usual challenges of sifting through sources and evaluating mountains of research material are complicated by internal politics, religious sensibilities, personal loyalties and a lack of reliable first-person information.

Then there’s the Messiah business.

Until now, the only recountings of Schneerson's life have been hagiographies written by Chabad followers. Now there are two new biographies by academics outside Chabad circles, with a third in the works.

New York University Professor Elliot Wolfson came out last fall with “Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson,” an examination of Schneerson’s leadership within the context of Jewish esoteric tradition.

Next month will see the publication of “The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson,” by Samuel Heilman of City University of New York and Menachem Friedman of Bar-Ilan University, an examination of Schneerson’s early life and what the authors describe as his growing Messianic pretensions.

And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of several best-selling books on Jewish life and thought, is in the early stages of a book focusing on the source of Schneerson’s charisma and the influence he continues to exert on people’s lives.

The Heilman-Friedman book is generating the most controversy. Written for a lay audience, it frames Schneerson’s mission, and that of the Chabad movement he led, as motivated by Messianism, here defined as the attempt to hasten the Messianic era through human actions. The Messianic mission was so much at the heart of the late rebbe’s leadership, the authors argue, that one cannot be a follower of the rebbe without full commitment to that goal.

The authors take a psycho-bio approach to Schneerson’s life, trying to get inside the man’s head to uncover his motivation -- always a tricky business.

They focus on Schneerson’s 14 years in Berlin and Paris -- the so-called “lost years” between his 1927 marriage to Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, and 1941, when the couple escaped Nazi Europe and arrived in New York to rejoin the Lubavitch court.

Left to his own devices, they write, Schneerson would have preferred to “settle in Paris, become a French citizen, and live as a Jew of Hasidic background pursuing a career in engineering.”

While not explicitly claiming that Schneerson and his young wife fell away from their Chasidic roots, the authors return again and again to the short beard and secular dress Schneerson favored until his arrival in New York, along with other similar details, as evidence of an Orthodox but not haredi lifestyle.

“There is no question he was an observant Jew, but he lived in places where Chasidim didn’t live, and he did things they wouldn’t do,” Heilman told JTA.

It was, the authors write, a combination of survivor’s guilt -- Schneerson was the only member of his close family to escape the Holocaust -- and the improbability of his becoming an engineer in America that led him by the late 1940s to set his sights on a new career goal: succeeding his father-in-law to become the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe.

“Mendel’s whole world had collapsed,” they write. “Now he was a childless refugee in America nearly forty years old with little or no English facility, with no job prospects in what had been his chosen field … a man who must be feeling desperate in his anxiety, loneliness, confusion, and survivor guilt, whose prospects are unclear, looking for a way out, an answer from God.”

When Schneerson assumed leadership of Chabad, the authors continue, he was able to use this worldly experience to push a hitherto small Chasidic movement onto the world stage, launching the global outreach campaign that was to become its hallmark.

Eventually, they assert, Schneerson believed he was “the prophet of his generation,” the man destined to bring on the Messianic era. And because the rebbe was so alone, with no peers to contradict him, they ask rhetorically: Was he “getting lost in a culture of messianic delusion”?

This version of Schneerson’s life contradicts the official Lubavitch version of an unbroken journey toward the mantle of movement leadership and suggests a more nuanced life whose twists and turns might easily have led to a different outcome.

Even before its publication, the book has engendered considerable objections in Chabad circles. One female emissary said some of her colleagues "have been briefed by headquarters" to steer their people away from it.

Lubavitchers are ripping into it, disputing its details as well as its overall thesis, claiming it shows a lack of familiarity with readily available primary sources. According to these critics, the rebbe never trimmed his beard in Europe, he rolled it, and the rebbe attended synagogue regularly in Berlin -- videotaped interviews with Jews who saw him in shul prove it.

And the suggestion that Schneerson spent his European years divorced from Chabad activities?

Rubbish, they charge.

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, a Lubavitch scholar and dean of Britain’s Machon Mayim Chayin, points to a wealth of correspondence that exists between Schneerson and his father showing the two engaging in deep Talmudic and kabbalistic discourse.

“All this is a far cry from" the claim by Heilman and Friedman "that the father was guiding a son who had but an elementary or, worse still, a cursory interest in a Chasidic lifestyle,” he says.

In response, Heilman said in an e-mail to JTA, "We do not deny and indeed suggest that Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson was a primary religious and Chasidic guide for his son. Indeed, we quote from the letters they exchanged. We particularly note the exchanges around the time of the wedding of the son to the daughter of the Sixth Rebbe."

On the question of the rebbe's beard, Heilman said readers will be able to judge for themselves by looking at photographs of Schneerson, reading comments from his father-in-law and thinking about when those comments were made.

In general, Heilman says, it should come as no surprise that some Chasidim "see things differently from the way we do. But we have presented our viewpoint based on the facts we have gathered."

"Our book documents what we have learned about the years in Europe," Heilman said. "We explain that most of the activities of those years were focused around the primary activity that brought the young Schneersons to Berlin and Paris. That activity was pursuit of education, career, and a life distant from Lubavitcher areas of settlement. When they wanted more of the Lubavitcher life, they either returned to the Sixth Rebbe's court or visited with him when he came to where they were.

"We never question the future Rebbe's knowledge of Chabad or even his interest in it. But as we document, that interest was not always the center of his concerns while he pursued his engineering studies."

Chabad itself, through Jewish Educational Media, is about to release more than 1,200 documents related to Schneerson’s life and work, in English and Hebrew, including his own diaries and important correspondence between him, his father and his father-in-law, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe.

One volume will come out in late June, followed later by others, both in print at online at chabad.org. Chabad sources say this information will “clear up many misunderstandings.”

Wolfson, a philosopher, presents a much different take on Schneerson’s Messianism than sociologists Heilman and Friedman.

The NYU professor portrays Schneerson as having a very deep and radical understanding of Jewish esoterica.

“In his prime, his teaching was very dense, very laden with kabbalistic terminology," Wolfson said. "I don’t know how many really understood him; most were simply mesmerized by his style of presentation.”

Schneerson’s teachings are rife with internal contradictions, Wolfson says, including the subverting of Judaism’s gender hierarchy and the boundaries between the permissible and the non-permissible. But most of this was destined for the realm of theory. Schneerson never intended for them to be actualized -- not in this world.

“What the implications would be sociologically, what a Jewish community would look like if the Torah were superseded by the ‘new Torah’ he spoke about, a kind of law beyond the law, I don’t think he thought that through,” Wolfson said.

Wolfson agrees with Heilman and Friedman that Schneerson’s Messianic vision “was there from the beginning.”

“I feel he is using the rhetoric of a personal Messiah to mark not so much a political change but a change in consciousness that … involves reaching a state of personal perfection that exceeds the need for the Torah as we have it,” he said. “I don’t think he understood the impossibility of his own vision. And he took no steps to remedy that. He took no steps to name a successor. The whole history of Chabad from the Alter Rebbe [18th-century founder of Chabad-Lubavitch] to [Schneerson] is a Messianic line that comes to a close with him.”

Neither book will satisfy Chabad’s strongest critics, nor its closest friends. It remains to be seen whether the deluge of new material about to be published by JEM will cast further light on the most elusive aspects of Schneerson’s life and leadership.

“Like many mythic figures, he was a combination of opposites,” Heilman muses. “But you can’t really be sure what was inside his head. Who was he really?”

How to Find the Bridge? First, Pay Your Respects

2009-12-28T11:01:00.000-08:00

The metal signs are impossible to miss. They are oversize, in a bold blue usually found on signs directing drivers to the nearest hospital. And there are lots of them — 13 in all, according to the city’s count — along a quarter-mile stretch of roadway and its approaches.

In fact, probably no thoroughfare in New York City is better identified than the ramp connecting the southbound Franklin D. Roosevelt Drive to the Brooklyn Bridge. The signs all say the same thing: “Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp.”

Many drivers no doubt have no idea who that is. And that’s precisely why the signs are there.

On March 1, 1994, Ari Halberstam was shot on the ramp as he and other yeshiva students were returning to Brooklyn in a van from a vigil for the ailing Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Ari died five days later. He was 16.

The shooting was considered an act of terrorism. Prosecutors said the gunman, Rashid Baz, a Lebanese immigrant who is serving a 141-year prison sentence for the attack, was retaliating for the massacre several days earlier of Muslim worshippers in the West Bank by a Jewish settler from Brooklyn.

Ari’s mother, Devorah Halberstam, was intent on keeping her son’s legacy alive, even as his killing has receded from memory.

In 1995, the City Council, sympathetic to her loss and to the larger symbolism of the killing and mindful of the political clout of the Hasidic community, formally named the ramp in Ari Halberstam’s memory. But the tribute went far beyond the usual street namings that honor fallen police officers, veterans, victims of 9/11 and others who usually get a green-and-white ceremonial street sign below the one with the original name.

While nobody questions Miss Halberstam’s motivation, the unusual scope of the sign tribute has raised questions from some city officials and, occasionally, the curiosity of passing motorists. When several of the signs were removed a few years ago to make room for warnings that the bridge was under police surveillance, the ensuing outcry prompted City Hall to back down.

Kenneth K. Fisher was one of the councilmen who introduced the name-change bill, which passed, 49 to 0.

“It was real statement by the Council and by the mayor that this was not simply a case of road rage,” he said. Ari’s mother, he said, “was a very effective advocate for the notion that her son’s murder should be recognized, and she happened to come from a particularly politically active sect. Do there need to be quite as many markers indicating where the incident occurred? That was done by the transportation commissioner at the time. The legislation didn’t specify that.”

Christine C. Quinn, the Council speaker, said 13 signs might be excessive, “but at some point you need to get the message out.”

Christopher R. Lynn, the city’s transportation commissioner at the time, said the signs were a compromise.

“You couldn’t rename the bridge,” he said.

The deal was engineered, in part, by Randy M. Mastro, who was Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani’s chief of staff. “The least the city could do is to honor his memory with a few signs where that tragedy occurred so we never forget,” Mr. Mastro said. Mr. Lynn said he made the final decision. “I remember telling Rudy, ‘When you take that curve, you don’t see the sign,’ ” he recalled. “He said, ‘I trust your instinct.’ So I put up around seven.” The seven signs are on the ramp itself, he said; others are on the approaches to the ramp.

Miss Halberstam said that “the number and where they were placed was decided not by me.”

But since the signs were put in place, she has been quite protective. A few years ago, outraged after she noticed that some signs were missing, apparently replaced by the police surveillance signs, she sent an e-mail message to Deputy Mayor Patricia E. Harris.

“I just crossed the bridge and there are three signs missing on the ramp,” she wrote in the message, a copy of which was obtained through a Freedom of Information request. “Who did this? Who dishonored my son’s memory? What is going on? Who would do this? Who would stab a knife in my heart like this? Patti, please look into this a.s.a.p. because I will not have a second of peace until this is corrected and restored.”

Whether and how Ms. Harris responded is unclear, but soon after Miss Halberstam’s plea, City Hall ordered the signs restored.

“Once the signs are put up,” Miss Halberstam said in an interview, “they should not be taken down.”

From time to time, Miss Halberstam, who was divorced from her husband after their son’s death, said she gets complaints about the signs.

“You hear some negative comments: ‘Why was it done for Ari?’ ” she said. “The reason I wanted this wasn’t just because he was my child. Ari represented an innocent victim of terrorism. He was murdered as an American citizen and because he was clearly identified as a Jew.”

Besides her role in the signs and a Web site, arihalberstam.com, Miss Halberstam works for the Jewish Children’s Museum in Brooklyn, which opened in 2005 and whose focus is tolerance and understanding; it is dedicated in her son’s memory. She has also worked with law enforcement officials on gun control and combating terrorism.

“She has taken a tragedy — the most horrible tragedy a parent can go through,” and turned it into something meaningful, said David M. Pollock, associate executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York.

Councilman Lewis A. Fidler, a Brooklyn Democrat and a friend of Miss Halberstam, said: “Most people under those circumstances retreat into hate, anger, bitterness or loss of faith. This woman has built a children’s museum.”

The signs leading to the bridge will always remain precious to Miss Halberstam, though she realizes that the shooting is largely forgotten, particularly after 9/11.

“The first years everybody remembered,” she said. “We’re up to the second and third generation, and people are saying, ‘Who was Ari Halberstam?’ ” Perhaps, she mused, another sign, with more details about what happened, could be put up on the bridge itself.

In the meantime, work on the ramp is scheduled to begin in a few months. City officials vow that not a single sign will be touched.

Boynton-area eruv gives Orthodox Jews options on the Sabbath

2009-08-03T05:35:00.000-07:00

For the past six Saturdays, Ari Sonneberg has held the hands of his two preschoolers as they walked a mile to their synagogue west of Boynton Beach.

His wife, Erin, stayed home with their 1-year-old, since the little one can't walk and Jewish law prevents her from carrying him on the Sabbath.

But today, the Sonnebergs feel a freedom they had almost forgotten: They can push all three kids in their strollers as they walk to temple because the Jewish community's new, expanded eruv, or symbolic wall, is up and running.

"We were impacted enormously by the closing," said Ari Sonneberg, 34, who moved west of Boynton Beach with the family almost three years ago from Boston. "My wife was stuck at home, and she loves to go to synagogue to pray and see friends. I almost had to bribe my two older children to walk with me."

The Boynton Beach-area eruv -- a series of boundaries that allow observant Jews to push strollers or carry objects on the Sabbath -- is functional after almost six weeks of disrepair. Jewish law prohibits the carrying of objects outside the home on the Sabbath.

The prohibition against carrying comes from the Torah and is also mentioned in the Book of Jeremiah: "Beware for your souls and carry no burden on the Sabbath day." Talmudic scholars explained the law to mean objects may not be carried between thoroughfares.

The eruv is considered an extension of each congregant's home, where families are permitted to carry things during their day of rest.

When the boundaries of the old eruv, which measured about 10 square miles, began to break on a regular basis a few months ago, Rabbi Sholom Ciment of Chabad Lubavitch of Greater Boynton said he consulted with fellow rabbis to create expanded boundaries that would allow even more Jews to walk unimpeded. They surveyed the area and examined every inch of the proposed perimeter to make sure they could maintain an unbroken boundary.

The perimeter must be inviolate for the length of the eruv; natural barriers such as canals and security walls make up most of it, with strings put up by the rabbis filling in the gaps. These strings often break during rainstorms or construction and are inspected each week to make sure they are undisturbed.

The new eruv measures 84 square miles, extending from Florida's Turnpike on the west to Interstate 95 on the east, and the Boynton Canal on the north to the L-30 Canal to the south.

Ciment said he is thrilled that the new eruv is larger, symbolizing, he believes, the expansion of the Boynton Beach area's Jewish community. A 2005 study showed the number of Jewish households in the area grew 63 percent from 1999 to 2005, to about 60,000, although Ciment says the number has since grown to more than 80,000.

About 175 families walk to the Boynton Chabad each weekend, Ciment said.

"It's like we have made one large home or one large tent that will ingather the whole Boynton area," Ciment said.

Once a Place of Hope, Now a Source of Tension

2009-08-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

By KIRK JOHNSON

ASPEN, Colo. — The Silver Lining Ranch has often been a scene of anguish over the years, and also of hope. Since the late 1990s, thousands of children with cancer have come here to experience a few weeks of outdoor life in a beautiful spot through a group co-founded by the former tennis star Andrea Jaeger, who became an Anglican Dominican nun after leaving the professional tennis circuit.

But these days anguish appears to be winning out. The Little Star Foundation, which runs the ranch, is teetering on the brink of collapse, Ms. Jaeger said, through that most earthbound and profane of things: real estate.

The 6.5 acres that the ranch sits on, just outside downtown Aspen, was donated in 1994 and is now immensely valuable in this enclave of superwealth. But a proposed sale of the property, intended to bolster the foundation’s finances and create a long-term endowment, has backfired.

Neighbors of Ms. Jaeger, who is president of the foundation, say the proposed sale, for $13.5 million — to the Chabad Jewish Community Center, a synagogue transplanted to the central Rockies from the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn nine years ago — is illegal, citing covenants of a homeowners’ association that allow the property to be used only as a private home or for treating terminally ill children. Despite the covenants, the Aspen City Council unanimously approved the sale in May.

Most of Little Star’s operations have ceased and many employees have not been paid for months. The loans that were supposed to support the foundation until the sale have come up short.

The result is a stew of recrimination, entrenchment and talk of lawsuits. High-minded goals and spirituality have given way to lawyers and money, which Aspen has in abundance.

Ms. Jaeger, 44, who was briefly the No. 2 women’s tennis player in the world before injuries forced her from the game at age 19, spoke in tones of nostalgia and grief as she recited from memory the odyssey of the children who had come through her care.

In an interview in the silent main building (most of the foundation’s work was transferred in 2006 to a property in Durango, Colo., in preparation for a sale, and to reduce costs), she spoke of the hurdles of illness and life, and — all too often — death, that the children faced. She ran her fingers down the hand-painted tiles left behind on a wall in the recreation room and spoke of their memories and dreams: a relapse and decline, a first experience riding a horse, a hope of living long enough to attend college.

“I don’t think they said, ‘I’m going to wake up today and destroy thousands of kids’ lives because I want to choose my neighbors,’ ” Ms. Jaeger said, referring to members of the homeowners’ association. But the blocked contract is having that effect, she said, as children are turned down for help and programs are cut.

One member of the five-family homeowners’ association agreed that the results of the standoff were lamentable. But the member, Peter Gerson, said Ms. Jaeger was entirely at fault for entering into a contract in violation of property covenants.

“It’s an unfortunate situation, but the Silver Lining Ranch people brought it upon themselves,” said Mr. Gerson, who like all the owners lives far enough away, across a private open space of woods and fields, that the ranch buildings can barely be seen, if at all.

At the City Council hearings, the homeowners’ association also raised concerns about a sale to Chabad on grounds that a new use would increase traffic and noise problems on Ute Avenue, where the Silver Lining Ranch has its driveway — even though no other members of the group other than the ranch even use that road to reach their homes.

As for having Chabad as a neighbor, Mr. Gerson said he would be for it; the rabbi who directs the center, Mendel Mintz, is a friend, he said. But Mr. Gerson added that the covenants allowed only the two approved uses on the property and that Chabad did not fit.

“We’re powerless to do anything,” Mr. Gerson said.

The president of the homeowners’ association, Thomas P. Reagan, said of the land covenant: “It was meant to be extremely restrictive, and the proposed use does simply not fit the allowed use.”

Some people in town, including a former City Council member who supported the sale to Chabad, point out that the homeowners’ association was not powerless and amended the covenants earlier this year after the contract between the foundation and Chabad had been signed but before the Council’s vote to approve the sale.

The conference call to amend the covenants took place in January without Ms. Jaeger’s participation, and the homeowners approved language that would “clarify” the original intent of the covenants — that only terminally ill children or market-based private housing were allowed on Lot 5, the ranch property.

“They probably didn’t like the Silver Lining Ranch use either, but they had to put up with it,” said Jack Johnson, who served on the Council for four years before being defeated in an election in May.

Mr. Johnson said he thought the association’s goal was to get a private homeowner on the land. “If they continue to bully and block,” he said, “there’s no doubt of their intentions.”

Rabbi Mintz said that until the legal cloud was lifted, he could not close on the sale without exposing the community center to liability. He said he had seen no evidence of anti-Semitism, only the expression of wealth.

“It’s part of dealing with very affluent people who are used to having things go their way,” he said in an interview at the group’s downtown Aspen community center.

But as Ms. Jaeger readily admits, she also had a clear financial motive. Some people say she may have undermined support for her cause by having tried to do the same thing a few years ago that it appears the homeowners’ group wants to do now — shifting the property back to a private, higher-value use.

She initially tried to sell the ranch to a family for $24 million, which would have gone a long way to building Little Star’s endowment, she said in the interview. But the City Council denied permission, saying the best use of the land was for nonprofit community use. That reduced the value of the land and buildings almost in half and led to the negotiations with Chabad.

Mayor Mick Ireland of Aspen said he thought the newly restrictive covenants were an effort to “straitjacket” the city into allowing a change back into private use as a solution to everyone’s problems — more money for Ms. Jaeger’s foundation and the dropping of objections from the neighbors. Mr. Ireland said that would not happen.

“As a community, we want to encourage places of worship and kids’ facilities; that’s what communities do,” he said. “It’s not our job to make a property more marketable.”

Chabad on the Plaza now up and running

2009-08-03T04:17:00.000-07:00

Written by Marcia Horn, Community Editor

Friday, 31 July 2009 12:00

He calls his new endeavor Chabad on the Plaza, which is where he and his family live. But Rabbi Yitzchak Itkin has found office space in the Crossroads district.

The rabbi has rented a desk in Shaul Jolles’ OfficePort KC building, 203 W. 19th St. He and his wife, Chanah, and their son, Meir, arrived in Kansas City several months ago to establish the fourth outpost of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the greater Kansas City area. The others are the original Chabad House, the Torah Learning Center in Overland Park and Chabad at the University of Kansas.

Rabbi Mendy Wineberg, program director of Chabad KC, said he had been hoping to establish a downtown presence for the past five years. Rabbi Itkin said OfficePort KC is the perfect location.

“We knew we wanted to be in an area that was between the Plaza and downtown, accessible for everybody,” he said. “… OfficePort (is) a great collaboration of all different people coming together to find a place to work together … and there’s enough space to hold classes.”

OfficePort KC is the latest redevelopment project in the Crossroads district of real estate broker Shaul Jolles, who is a native of Israel. Jolles rents small office spaces to people on a month-to-month basis.

“It makes it more interesting and spirited, it’s a much more public atmosphere because you’re not confined to a regular desk and regular office,” Rabbi Itkin said. “It’s a come-as-you-go and work-as-you-go kind of thing.”

Self-sustaining
Rabbi and Mrs. Itkin get no subsidy from the central Chabad-Lubavitch movement, so they must sustain themselves by raising donations. But Rabbi Itkin isn’t worried. He believes it is only a matter of time before Chabad on the Plaza becomes a highly successful enterprise.

“I don’t think it will be as long as we anticipated until people will actually realize what we’re doing,” he said. “One of the areas where we’re looking to focus now is young people just coming out of college and now working in the mid- to downtown area. We’re looking to open up opportunities for them.”

Rabbi Itkin said he has discovered there is already an identifiable Jewish population in the Crossroads area, so he and Chanah are exploring the idea of holding classes or other events aimed specifically at them.

Then there is the Jewish Learning Institute, of which Rabbi Itkin hopes to be a part. JLI offers professionally designed classes, which are taught by Chabad rabbis all over the country. Each class is taught simultaneously at Chabad centers nationwide, so you can catch the same class in many different cities.

Rabbi Itkin said he might bring Chabad of KC’s Men’s Summer Yeshiva, which takes place Aug. 3-25 (See related story), downtown, as well. It consists of four visiting rabbinical students, supervised by Rabbi Shmuely Wineberg of Chabad House KC, who offer to meet with students to study at whatever venue is most convenient — a student’s home, office, a kosher restaurant or Chabad House Center.

It’s a bit early to discuss his still-developing plans to hold High Holy Day programs and services in the Plaza area, Rabbi Itkin said.
Some people have heard about Chabad on the Plaza through its new Web site, plazachabad.com. But Rabbi Itkin said word of mouth is still the best means of communication.
“That’s been our success since the first day we came here,” Rabbi Itkin said. “Someone sees something good, they tell their friends about it, and that’s how it’s been working. So we appreciate the good feedback … and that’s the way I think we’re going to survive.”

Men’s Summer Yeshiva returns to KC

The Chabad Men’s Summer Yeshiva is an annual program designed to stimulate the study of classic texts by Jewish men and boys.

The local Chabad House has participated in the program for many years. It consists of a group of visiting rabbinic students who offer classes to anyone who wants one (or more) on the Jewish topic of the participant’s choice.

Possible subjects include Kabballah and mysticism, Talmud, prophets, Jewish law and customs, Temple history, Torah commentary with Rashi, Maimonides and more. Students can study the texts in depth or use them as a jumping-off point for a discussion.

Chabad’s Summer 2009 Yeshiva runs Aug. 3-25. Participants choose the topic, time and place they wish to study. Sessions can be set up at one’s office, home or at Chabad. It’s free of charge, although donations are welcomed.

Rabbi encourages positive deeds, attitude

2009-08-03T04:11:00.000-07:00

NEW PORT RICHEY — Rabbi Shabsi Alpern was far from home Monday night, speaking to a room full of people about God and what he wants from us.

"This is the last place I expected to be tonight," said Alpern, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Sao Paulo, Brazil. His 48th anniversary doing Jewish outreach in Brazil fell on that night.

Rabbi Yossi and Dina Eber with Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco invited the esteemed rabbi, who was spending some time in Miami, to speak to their community in Trinity and share his insights.

"He wanted to make the drive because he knows what it's like to move out to a place like this," said Rabbi Eber, who came to Pasco County three years ago from Brooklyn.

"Because of him and people like him, we have others doing it today. He set the example."

With a long white beard, small frame and warm eyes, Alpern spoke through stories and anecdotes, but his main message was about serving others.

"Each one of us has a buried treasure within that he has to reveal," he said. "By doing good for others, that's how you find it."

It's the mission of the Jewish people to use their physical world to elevate and bring out that holiness, he said, with such acts as lighting Shabbat candles, praying and giving food to the homeless.

"Any little thing that you do … you don't know what may be missing here in New Port Richey," Alpern said. "One of you may hit the jackpot. Take advantage of every situation and do something good."

A good deed is eternal, he said, even if someone does a hundred not-so-good deeds.

The Chabad leader, Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994, sent emissaries like Alpern and the Ebers to places like Brazil and Pasco County, and thousands of other locations.

Chabad-Lubavitch is a mystical branch of Judaism that started in Russia 250 years ago. Now based in Brooklyn, the group has 4,000 emissary families around the world reaching out to and teaching nonobservant Jews about Judaism. Two rabbis involved in the organization were killed last November in the terrorist attacks on Mumbai, India.

The mission is to "reach out to every single Jew in every community all over the world," Eber said, "to bring Judaism to them, bring comfort to them, and be there in any way.

"That's really what it's about," he added, "to make this a dwelling place for God, a caring world. It's a ripple effect."

Vicky Benedon of Trinity told the group that what stands out most in her mind is walking through the Auschwitz concentration camp.

"I have never heard so many people saying, 'Oh my God,' " she said. "There's always a God. The people that survived, survived because of God."

A couple of people in the audience spoke about suffering and about doubting God's existence. Alpern responded matter-of-factly that he and his parents survived the Holocaust and came to the United States, while the rest of his family died during the war.

But it still didn't shake his belief in God. When people have questions or doubts, he said, it comes down to two things: Try to get answers, which takes time; and continue being a child of God.

"Misery, violence, the Holocaust, Iraq … he owes us a lot of answers," Alpern said. "We have to have patience."

While some people may call themselves atheists, Rabbi Alpern said that "everyone has a moment when he believes in God."

"God knows everyone has doubts," Keep on doing good things, he said. "Positive doubt, that will bring you to a positive attitude."

Alpern also spoke about the Jewish holiday of Tisha B'av, which was Thursday. The day marks the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem.

"Centuries later, people can still cry like it happened yesterday," he said.

The rabbi said it's an especially good time to think in positive terms.

"What good things can we add to our world and our people … to quicken the coming of the Messiah and the building of the third Temple? May it happen speedily in our times."

The Jewish people have a mission that's not accomplished in just one generation, he said. Each generation builds on each other, he said, and every good deed makes a difference.

"The cup is almost full," he said. "We just need to add a few drops."

Mindy Rubenstein can be reached at Mindy.Rubenstein@me.com.

fast facts

About the Chabad of West Pasco

To learn more about classes and services, visit www.chabadwp.com or call Rabbi Yossi Eber at (727) 376-3366.

Roving Rabbis seek out Jews who are not religiously active

2009-08-03T04:02:00.000-07:00

ARLINGTON — The Roving Rabbis aren’t a band, but they are looking for an audience.

Sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and based in Brooklyn, N.Y., the program aims to bring together Orthodox rabbinical students and Jews who are not active religiously.

"The challenge is . . . people don’t know what we want from them," said rabbi Shaya Lowenstein, 22, who’s half of the visiting two-man Roving Rabbi team that’s spending about three weeks in Arlington this summer. "We’re just looking to give them the opportunity to do something religious."

That opportunity is a matter of some urgency to many: The birthrate and number of American Jews have fallen since 1990, and intermarriage is up. One prominent rabbi recently urged his followers to embark on a "rescue mission" to prevent American Jewry from disappearing.

The Roving Rabbi program, now decades old, has about 4,000 emissaries worldwide working during the summer. The point is not to proselytize non-Jews but to kindle participation among those born into Judaism.

"As a general rule, Tarrant County is not a very Jewish area," said rabbi Levi Gurevitch of Arlington, who is supervising the work of Lowenstein and Shmulik Raices, also a 22-year-old rabbinical graduate. "I applied to bring them to Tarrant County to help me with my outreach. They’re finding quite a few people, which is why I brought them here."

But the goal isn’t simply to bring more people to services.

"We haven’t survived by increasing our numbers but by increasing our faith," said rabbi Dove Mandel of the Fort Worth Chabad, which he and his wife started in their house in 2002. "I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."

Lowenstein and Raices are staying in the Arlington Chabad center near Lake Arlington, which doubles as the home for Gurevitch and his wife as well as being a synagogue. He provides room and board; Roving Rabbis covers transportation to Texas, he said.

"Hopefully, we’ll grow into a full-fledged center," said Gurevitch, who co-directs the center with his wife. "Right now we’re just in the baby stages of that."

Rabbi Menachem Block served in Berlin and Iowa when he was a Roving Rabbi. He now directs the thriving Plano Chabad center.

"The Roving Rabbis are able to get to communities that don’t have an established rabbi," Block said. "When you’re by yourself there’s only so much you can do."

Counting the Arlington center, Gurevitch said, there are six Chabad centers in North Texas. To locate local residents who might be receptive, Gurevitch bought a sales list, from which names that appear to be Jewish are culled.

"We don’t seek converts," Gurevitch said. "It’s very targeted."

The temporary help, even if it’s just for a few weeks in the summer, is valuable in making contacts and establishing relationships, particularly with younger people.

"Unfortunately, in America the younger generation seems to be very, very assimilated," Gurevitch said.

Mandel said: "It’s important, because the majority of Jewish people have little contact with their own synagogue. By having energetic young rabbis show up with a smile on their face, it sort of fans the flames of their Jewish spark."

Working as a Roving Rabbi can be as important to the young participants as to those they’re trying to reach, Block said.

"The experience you have . . . is tremendous," he said, calling it "a great program."

"It’s very inspirational."

Mandel, however, laughed when he talked about the reaction the Roving Rabbis can evoke in some quarters.

"You see two young rabbis wearing black fedoras; they’ve got their fringes at the corners of their garments," Mandel said. " . . . It’s something you see by the thousands in New York City, but not in suburban Texas."

That’s something that struck Lowenstein, who did his rabbinical studies in New York. He hopes to get married and start a family before he settles down with a congregation of his own.

"You never know" where you’ll find the right girl, Lowenstein said. "But the chances may be a little better in Brooklyn. The numbers work out a little better there."

I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."

Rabbi Dove Mandel,
Fort Worth Chabad

3 rabbis in training make a stop in Utah during cross-country trip

2009-08-03T03:51:00.000-07:00

SALT LAKE CITY -- From New York City to San Francisco and back again in a van, the traveling troupe is three young rabbis in training.

These young men came through Salt Lake City because they are members of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, and Rabbi Benny Zippel of Chabad Lubavitch of Utah welcomed them. We found them meeting and greeting downtown.

They say they are spreading a message of unity and doing good deeds. They say they are pleasantly surprised at how receptive and friendly people have been in Salt Lake and all along the way.

They give wristbands which say "I've met the Road Sage, and I've performed a good deed." For those of the Jewish faith, it's called a Mitzvah--the pay it forward concept.

And although they follow ancient principles in their faith, the young soon-to-be rabbis have jumped into the technology age. Dov Barber, the Road Sage, said, "We've set up a website. We've set up a blog. We upload photos, Twitter. You know it's all that social networking nowadays. We Twitter a lot, blog. People come, they follow you, and also the idea, is really, you speak about traveling across America. It's only us three, people wanted to come along, so you have virtual followers."

Inside the van, there is a board for signatures, for people they have met. Most of them are campers along the way, but in Salt Lake, some young people they greeted downtown wanted to add their names. The Road Sage group will be in San Francisco Friday evening to celebrate the Sabbath there.

After arrests, Orthodox groups stress importance of obeying the law

2009-07-30T04:47:00.000-07:00

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- In the wake of last week’s arrests of several prominent rabbis, some Orthodox leaders are working to ensure that their institutions are following the letter of the law.

At a Chabad-Lubavitch regional conference over the weekend in northern Virginia, several of the Chasidic movement’s senior rabbis stressed the importance of obeying the law, according to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch.

The movement's late spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, "clearly instructed all emissaries of Lubavitch that all activities, particularly those undertaken in the name of the movement, must be lawful,” Shemtov said. “The Talmud clearly rules that the law of the land, especially in the case of a government which allows Jews to live freely, takes on the force of Jewish law.”

In New York, a leader of Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group bringing together several Chasidic and non-Chasidic communities, helped organize a meeting to stress the same theme. The meeting was to feature two prominent rabbis and two well-known New York lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and Jacob Laufer.

The meeting was announced in an e-mail sent out by Agudah’s executive vice president, Rabbi David Zweibel, to the organization’s supporters. Titled “An Urgent Gathering,” the e-mail said the meeting would be “focusing on the timeless (but also all too timely) theme of ‘Vi'asisa hayashar vi'hatov,’ or making sure one is doing ‘the good and honest thing.’ "

“In the wake of recent headlines and front-page photographs that made every feeling Jewish heart ache, it is even more timely for us to take a good, hard look at our obligations to our fellows, to our society, to our government,” Zweibel said in the e-mail, adding that “I am confident that you realize how vital it is that we hear words of mussar [taking stock] and chizuk [reinforcement], and that we learn to distinguish between conduct that conforms with dina d'malchusa [the law of the land] and conduct that does not.”

The meeting comes less than a week after five New York and New Jersey rabbis were arrested July 23 on charges of money laundering. Authorities say the rabbis accepted large checks made out to tax-exempt charitable organizations associated with their synagogues, usually keeping 10 percent of the money and returning the rest to the donor in cash.

The charges somewhat echo a case involving the spiritual leader of the Spinka Chasidic sect in December 2007, in which religious leaders in New York and Jewish businessmen in Los Angeles were charged with soliciting “tens of millions of dollars” in contributions to their charities while secretly refunding as much as 95 percent of the donors' money, allowing the contributors to claim improper tax deductions.

The head of the Spinka group, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, agreed to plead guilty to the charges earlier this month.

A criminal defense lawyer familiar with the Jewish community said he doubted that the New Jersey and Spinka cases signaled any kind of targeting or trend among federal prosecutors of Orthodox Jewish groups.

“I think it's a coincidence,” said the lawyer, who did not want to be identified. The cases are “instances of somebody trying to reduce their own sentence” by telling the government what he knew about other possible criminality, he said.

In both scandals, a defendant charged with serious financial crimes unrelated to the Jewish community became a confidential informant for the government, wearing a wire to implicate rabbis.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined comment on both affairs and referred a reporter to the individual U.S. attorneys offices that brought the charges.

The Orthodox Union declined comment on the New Jersey scandal.

One expert said the best ways for charities to avoid getting caught up in any trouble with the law are pretty basic.

First, “stick to what the mission really is” of the charity and don't start freelancing, said Kenneth Ryesky, an attorney who teaches tax and business law at Queens College in New York.

One rabbi who did not wish to be identified said he periodically gets a request from a potential donor similar to what the Spinka rabbis were allegedly doing -- accepting a large check and returning most of the money in cash to the donor -- and always rejects the offer immediately.

That's the best reaction, Ryesky said.

“If it doesn't pass the smell test," he said, "don't have anything to do with it.”

i-visit-chabadorg-on-shabbos

2009-07-30T04:01:00.000-07:00

No, I don’t, but you’ll see what I mean in a few paragraphs.)

“Thou shalt not study Torah,” beginning at midday today, erev Tisha b’Av, as part of our mourning for the Beit haMikdash.

As the gemara (Taanit 30a) explains, “One may not learn Torah, Neviim or Ketuvim, or study mishnah or talmud, midrash, halachot or aggadot.” There are permitted exceptions, principally for sad topics and study related to mourning, but the overall theme is that Torah learning is a joyous experience, so we don’t engage in it on Tisha b’Av.

[I wonder if this law is not also related to the aftermath of the Golden Calf. Per the midrash, when the Jews received the Torah they also received special crowns. After the Golden Calf, HaShem instructed them, “Remove your crown” (Shemot 32:5-6), apparently a reference those crowns. “You have sinned; you don’t deserve to don the glory of Torah.”]

Many of us take this law lightly; how could Gd punish a Jew for studying Torah?

And we have other such limitations on Torah study. We are not to think about Torah in the bathroom, or when inappropriately dressed. We are taught that it is sinful to study Torah without first reciting birchot hatorah, the special blessings for Torah study. And for all of them, there are those who ignore them; how could Gd punish a Jew for studying Torah?

It reminds me of the Jew who studies the parshah every Shabbat by reading divrei torah on torah.org, or ou.org, or chabad.org.

Were this Jew not reading divrei torah on-line, he would likely be engaged in some other activity that I consider desecration of Shabbat – shopping at the mall, driving to a park, talking on the phone, flipping channels on TV. In that sense, it’s better that he read divrei torah, I suppose.

Again: How could Gd punish a Jew for studying Torah?

I suppose it comes down to our sense of ownership of Torah, our feeling that we have a certain right to evaluate and set priorities among its various imperatives. A mitzvah is only a mitzvah when the Torah defines it as a mitzvah.

Perhaps a good Tisha b’Av example of this is in the Kamtza/Bar Kamtza story (Gittin 55b-56a, and see also the version in Eichah Rabbah), when the sages are seated at a feast and Bar Kamtza is embarrassed by the host.

The sages don’t protest, because they think it’s better to be humble (see the Eichah Rabbah version, especially). But the Torah’s priority is to protect Bar Kamtza, who is being attacked.

And perhaps the same thing happened with the rabbis in the Brooklyn/New Jersey scandal of this past week. Maybe they thought they were helping generate tzedakah money, maybe they had some other justification for committing these financial crimes. [I am NOT justifying it; my point is that people who set their own priorities get into trouble.]

When we set our own priorities, we get skewed results and rationalizations. Better to hold off on Torah (other than the permitted parts) during Tisha b’Av, remove the crown, absorb the intense reality of exile, and get started on rebuilding the Beit haMikdash.

[Of course, the big problem is when skewed-view human beings try to define the Torah’s objective priorities… implementation is harder than theory…]

Chabad Tries Court to Get Rabbis' Books Back From Russia

2009-07-30T03:58:00.000-07:00

The bell rang on June 26 to mark the end of the latest round, but no one can say when the fight between the Chabad-Lubavitch sect and the Russian Federation will end. When one side is trying to recover its religious legacy and the other is defining its national heritage, throwing in the towel is not an option.

At issue is an irreplaceable library of some 12,000 rare books, 381 manuscripts and 25,000 pages of handwritten rabbinical teachings that were once held by the Chabad-Lubavitch head rabbis but were left behind when the rabbis fled for safety during the world wars. The collection now sits in the Russian State Library and the Russian State Military Archive. Chabad is suing in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to get it back. Last month, after nearly five years of litigation, Russia said it would no longer participate in the case.

"They have decided that, after they lost the first couple rounds, they're taking their marbles and going home," said Nathan Lewin, one of the lawyers representing Chabad.

But Lewin suggests his client isn't likely to give up so quickly. What's four years when -- to quote Rabbi Boruch Shlomo Cunin, who has led Chabad's efforts to recover the library -- you're engaged in a "spiritual quest"?

STEEPED IN TEARS

Today, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement is one of ultra-orthodox Judaism's most influential sects and is based in New York. As for the library, Cunin, who is head of Chabad-Lubavitch on the West Coast, called it "the essence, the soul [of Chabad]. These books are steeped with the tears of the rebbes who wrote them."

A century ago, the Lubavitchers were based in Russia. During the Communist Revolution, Bolsheviks seized the library of their leader, the fifth rabbi, who had left it in a Moscow warehouse while escaping World War I. Two decades later, the sixth rabbi was forced to flee Nazi-occupied Poland, leaving behind his own library. By the war's end, that library had been looted by Hitler's troops, then taken again by Soviet soldiers, who carted it back to Moscow, there to join the fifth rabbi's collection.

Like so many things that disappeared behind the Iron Curtain, the fate of the library was not clear. At one point, Soviet authorities said it had burned in an accidental fire. But the library resurfaced in 1988, and Chabad began negotiations to try to have it returned. Over time, it enlisted political figures such as then-Secretary of State James Baker III and then-Vice President Al Gore in its efforts to cajole Russia's political leaders. Despite several promises and the return of eight token books, the library has stayed put.

In court documents, Russia has said it considers the library a part of its cultural heritage -- after all, the Chabad-Lubavitch movement began there, and the sect is alive in Russia today. This dispute parallels an ongoing debate about Russia's World War II legacy. The country has been notoriously slow, and often outright unwilling, to return the millions of cultural treasures it seized from Germany and other territories it occupied. These so-called "trophies" the Russian government sees as compensation for the horrors Russia suffered at the hands of the Nazis. It has promised to review its collections for art that originally belonged Jewish families, but has yet to do so.

"I really don't think that they're intent on keeping the Jewish looted art, but I don't think there's any political will to move it along or the resources to do it," said Stuart Eizenstat, a partner at Washington's Covington & Burling who has been deeply involved in Holocaust restitution efforts.

On the same day Russia officially abandoned the Chabad case, it sent a delegation to Prague, Czech Republic, to join 48 other countries discussing issues of World War II restitution. Each country committed itself to a set of standards for returning artifacts belonging to Holocaust victims. According to Eizenstat, who led the U.S. delegation, Russia lobbied for language that would have let it argue against handing back much of its wartime loot. (Eventually, Eizenstat said, the conference allowed a more "harmless" version of the clause.)

THE COURT ROUTE

Chabad launched its U.S. litigation to retrieve the rabbis' library in November 2004, suing Russia in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California, where it was represented byBingham McCutchen partners Seth Gerber and Marshall Grossman. The case hinged on a section of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act that permits individuals to sue foreign countries over property seized in violation of international law. Under the statute, the FSIA suit was removed to Washington, where Nathan and Alyza Lewin of Lewin & Lewin joined the case, along with Howrey partner William Bradford Reynolds. The case is before Chief Judge Royce Lamberth.

Initially, Russia sought to dismiss the suit on grounds that it had never violated any international conventions. But the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit sided with Chabad in June 2008.

In January of this year, Russia's lawyers at Squire, Sanders & Dempsey -- including James Murphy, Alan Briggs and Jeremy Dutra in the Washington office, who declined comment -- asked to be removed from the case. They had lost contact with their client, they told the court, and weren't being paid. In March, they withdrew the request, explaining only that they had "reached an accommodation" with their client.

Meanwhile, Chabad discovered that pages of the handwritten teachings were turning up on the Israeli black market, where they were selling for $10,000 to $20,000 per page, according to Nathan Lewin. Russia denied that the pages had come from the military archive, but Lamberth issued an injunction on Jan. 27 ordering Russia to step up its efforts to protect the contents of the library.

The case seemed to be moving slowly toward discovery until this month, when Russia finally stepped out.

"The Russian Federation views any continued defense before this Court and, indeed, any participation in this litigation as fundamentally incompatible with its rights as a sovereign nation," its filing stated, adding that Chabad was free to press its case in the Russian courts. However, if the U.S. government chose to intervene again, Russia wrote, the United States should stick to "diplomatic channels."

"If they had wanted to take that position, they should have taken it without trying to test their legal arguments in the courts," responded Lewin.

TACTICS VS. TACTICS

Ordinarily, when countries are sued under the FSIA, they decide at the start whether to defend themselves or simply default and let the plaintiff try to collect a judgment. But Russia's move is not unprecedented, said Steven Perles of the Perles Law Firm in Washington. In politically charged suits, countries sometimes attempt a legal defense through a motion to dismiss and then bail out of the litigation before the case can go to discovery or be tried on the merits, said Perles, a specialist in FSIA cases. He pointed to suits over terrorist attacks involving Libya and Sudan as examples.

"It's just smart litigation tactics on their part," Perles said. If Russia had managed to persuade the court to dismiss Chabad's case, he noted, it could have used the ruling as a buffer against diplomatic pressure down the line.

With Russia gone, Chabad will still be free to pursue a judgment in U.S. district court. But Russia might not have much to worry about, said Crowell & Moring partner Stuart Newberger, who co-chairs the Washington firm's international dispute resolution practice. Even if Chabad were to win an award in federal court here, he said, it could collect only by petitioning a Russian court.

"If they want to enforce the judgment, they're going to have to go to Moscow, and that may be why the Russians decided to pull from the case," Newberger said.

Nathan Lewin disagrees with that interpretation of the FSIA. He said he believes that Chabad could enforce a judgment by attaching Russian assets in the United States.

Not that Chabad wants those assets. "The reason we went to the courts was that we saw from the diplomatic efforts that we were running up against a stone wall," Lewin said. Any assets his client claimed, he said, would serve as leverage to pressure Russia to, at long last, release the library.

Jewish Group Seeks Default Judgment Against Russia

2009-07-30T03:49:00.000-07:00

A Jewish organization asked a federal judge for a default judgment against Russia today, following the country's exit from a long-running lawsuit over a priceless religious library.

Lawyers for Chabad-Lubavitch, one of the world’s largest sects of ultra-orthodox Hasidic Jews, filed a motion today at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia accusing Russia of flaunting U.S. law by ducking out of the suit. On June 26, Russia filed a notice informing the court that it would no longer participate in the litigation, which it called “incompatible with its rights as a sovereign nation.”

Russia, represented by a team from Squire, Sanders & Dempsey, had already litigated the case through a motion to dismiss and an appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, which ruled that all of Chabad’s claims could go forward.

“[Russia’s] refusal to accept the decision of the Court of Appeals and their disobedience of this Court’s orders and contempt for this Court’s processes warrant the entry of a default,” Chabad’s filing states.

Chabad’s lawyers — Nathan Lewin and Alyza Lewin of Lewin & Lewin, Marshall Grossman and Seth Gerber of Bingham McCutchen, and William Bradford Reynolds of Howrey — said they would seek a default shortly after Russia abandoned the suit. Even, if they convince Judge Royce Lamberth to rule in their favor, collecting on the judgment could be difficult. It unclear they will be able to seek Russian assets in the U.S., or if they will have to seek compensation in a Russian court.

See the National Law Journal’s last story on the suit.

RELIGION - Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis visiting Guam

2009-07-30T03:19:00.000-07:00

Two young Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis are visiting Guam from July 28 to Aug. 17 as part of a community outreach program.

Rabbis Chesky Klein and David Loksen will be distributing videos, brochures, books, Shabbat candles, mezuzahs (a religious scroll placed on doorways) and will be working closely with the local Jewish community, according to a news release. The pair will teach classes, including one on Kabbalah, and host Shabbat dinners.

The two rabbis are part of a worldwide program sometimes referred to as “the Lubavitch Summer Peace Corps,” in which some 400 young rabbis and senior rabbinical students visit thousands of locations worldwide, including countries like Bolivia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia, Fiji, Guadeloupe, Ireland, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Uruguay.

Chabad rabbi gives Senate invocation

2009-07-03T08:53:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Shea Harlig, director of Chabad of Southern Nevada, opened up Senate proceedings on June 25th with an invocation to honor the 15th anniversary of the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The invitation came from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.
After saying that he came in the spirit of the seven Noahide laws, Harlig said, "I beseech you, Almighty G-d, to grant renewed strength and fortitude to all who protect, preserve and help further these ideals so essential to the dignity of the human spirit. Please grant that our beloved Rebbe's vision of a world of peace and tranquility -- free of war, hatred and strife -- be realized speedily in our days.
A transcript of Harlig's prayer can be read here, and below is the video of his appearance in the Senate.

Transcript from Chabad.org
"Almighty G-d, the members of this prestigious body, the United States Senate, convene here in the spirit of one of the seven Noahide Laws which were set forth by You as an eternal universal code of ethics for all of mankind.
"These seven laws are: To worship You alone; never to blaspheme Your Holy Name; not to murder; not to commit adultery or any such aberration; not to steal or be deceitful; not to be cruel to any living creature; and that every society be governed by just laws which are based in the recognition of You, O G-d, as the Sovereign Ruler of all people and all nations.

"On this twenty-fifth day of June, 2009, which corresponds to the Third Day of the Hebrew month of Tammuz, we are 15 years - to the day - from the physical passing of our esteemed spiritual leader, The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of blessed memory, who consistently extolled the virtues of this great land as a "Nation of Kindness".
"I beseech you, Almighty G-d, to grant renewed strength and fortitude to all who protect, preserve and help further these ideals so essential to the dignity of the human spirit. Please grant that our beloved Rebbe's vision of a world of peace and tranquility - free of war, hatred and strife - be realized speedily in our days.
"G-d Bless this hallowed body. G-d Bless our troops who stand in defense of this great land. G-d Bless the United States of America."
"We, the citizens of this blessed country proudly proclaim this recognition and our commitment to justice in our Pledge of Allegiance "One Nation - Under G-d - with Liberty and Justice for All." "Grant us Almighty G-d that those assembled here be aware of Your presence and conduct their deliberations accordingly. Bless them with good health, wisdom, compassion, and good fellowship.

The search for Jews in Ireland

2009-07-01T21:55:00.000-07:00

Many New Yorkers buy airline tickets to Ireland to find long lost relatives and connect with their heritage on the Emerald Island. But for two young men Baruch Davidson and Pinny Raitman the goal was not to find family in the strict sense, but to connect with people in the faith.

Davidson and Raitman, both in their mid-twenties, are rabbinical students in a large Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism: Chabad. Over the past 60 years, Chabad has been sending pairs of young rabbis to far-flung points of the globe. The Roving Rabbis program aims to provide hands-on experience to rabbis in-the-making whose assignment is to “spread the light of the Torah,” seeking out unaffiliated Jews and helping them find a way back to their faith, a mission that is not a priority for most mainstream Jews.

But finding Jews in Ireland was not an easy task. Of Ireland’s 4.4 million people, only 2,000 are Jewish. Once on the island Davidson and Raitman walked off the beaten paths. They rented a car and instead of large cities, where the large communites are to be found, they opted for small towns and tiny villages in their search for Jews. “We would go to any local stores or pharmacies and asked ‘Do you know any Jews here?” said Raitman. “They would get all excited,” he remembers, “yes we know this lady, they said, lets call her. So they went to the phonebook and started to calling up people. We found people who were off the radar,” maps were of no help, “we had to ask them for their exact directions.” Here are some of the Jews they met:

Rebecca Grinblat is an Australian native who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and married to a Catholic Irishman. It was not until she moved to Limerick that shelearned to make hamentashen – triangular poppy and prune filled pastries – a special holiday treat. In Melbourne there was no need to worry about holiday pastries, which could be conveniently purchased in one of the many local kosher bakeries. In Limerick, however, she has to bake it herself as the nearest kosher bakery is 2.5 hours away by train to Dublin.

Gerard Hunt, a Dublin-born businessman said it was not a long ago that he began wearing his kippah in Wexford, where he is one of the four Jews of 10,000 people. He said he feels isolated from other Jews and that the only way to learn about his religion was to take a-year-long web course.

Eva Coombes grew up in a Jewish community in France but today drives an hour from Castleroy, a leafy suburb of Limerick, to the synagogue in Cork, the closest point to celebrate and pray together with fellow Jews.

Grinblat, Hunt and Coombes were just the kind of people the young rabbinical students were hoping to meet. The Irish, famous for their friendliness towards strangers, gave the Americans a warm welcome. “They were open and helpful,” said Davidson. Some families had even kept guest books in which they found the signature of Chabad rabbis who had come before them stretching back 50 years. At some places all they had was a chat. “We are not going to impose religion in a cunning way, to get people more religious,” said Raitman “either you are Jewish or your are not. We are not making anyone Jewish. We are there to raise the Jewish spark.”

At other places, like in the Limerick region, they managed to bring a small company of nine Jews together. “They put me in contact with another woman Eva and a man called Eric who also lives nearby,” said Grinblat who became friends with Coombes through the Chabad mission. “People in our group all have non-Jewish partners but we celebrate the holidays together, which is a nice way to maintain traditions in a small community.”

The rabbis of the local synagogues share the outreach mission of the roving rabbis but their congregations do not have the resources to engage congregants in the outside areas. “The only way is to send out a team to the field,” said Rabbi Zalman Shimon Lent of the Orthodox synagogue in Dublin. “If somebody integrates new people into the community, it remains strong,” Davidson said, who, together with Raitman, collected contact information from everyone they visited during the trip. Despite the low population figures, Rabbi Lent is optimistic though realistic about the future of Judaism on the island. “A lot depends on the economic situation of the country - which at the present is in a difficult state,” he said. As for now both roving and rooted rabbis work hard not to lose a single soul from their flock.

Grinblat, who hosted a dinner for the rabbis at her Limerick home attended also by Eva Coombes, said she looked forward to the annual visits. “No matter what else is going on, once a year Chabad is going to come and chat and should you need something they would get it for you and you do not feel you lost connection.” Though the rabbis did not accept the food from her “half-kosher kitchen” they neither attempted to convince her to change her life.

Hunt had the rabbis over in his Wexford shop, where he experienced what he called a spiritual awakening. “Their effort had an effect on me,” he said, “now I am celebrating Purim and Hanukkah and taking online study classes on Judaism.”

Coombes enjoyed discussing points of religion that “I could not discuss with the people among whom I live at the present,” she said adding, “I think outreach is the best thing since handmade Matza.”

The rabbis brought a suitcase of Jewish books and religious objects like mezuzahs, but what turned out to be the most useful thing was ping-pong knowledge. The rabbis recalled meeting Richard, a secular Jew they met in West Cork who initially avoided them and only for his friend’s insistence did he finally agree to join a table tennis game. Raitman, who is originally from Australia where he would participate in table tennis competitions, was happy to play.

“We drove down to a little community center in the middle of nowhere, because Richard was part of a local team,” Raitman said. “We played for hours, which was a great occasion to connect with someone non-religious. We spoke about Jewish things, experiences that he had had as a child that came up in the conversation, which in itself was something special to him. I realized that any talent a person has can always be used to create bridges with another person.”

The Top Rabbis: An Overview

2009-06-22T00:50:00.000-07:00

In a first-ever comprehensive study of its kind, the movement that has taken the world by storm through its rock solid management, ceaseless innovation and ever-expanding scope of operations, now has a global ranking it can call its own.

Three of them in fact:

1. Top 15 Global Rabbis
2. Top 10 Global Rising Stars
3. Top 5 Global Educators & Intellectuals

Ranking Criteria:

This one-year independent report assessed the impact of more than 3,500 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis in close to a 1,000 cities worldwide. The selection was based on the following five equally weighted criteria:

1. Grassroots Achievements
2. Depth of Knowledge
3. Mainstream Political Influence
4. Leadership & Peer Support
5. Financial Backing

The timing of the study's release was deemed highly relevant and newsworthy as it coincides with the commemoration of the 15th anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Mendel Schneerson, the 7th and final spiritual leader or "Rebbe" of Chabad.

Top 15 Global Rabbis

#1 Avrohom Shemtov, Washington D.C. / Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Shemtov is chairman of the New York-based Agudas Chasidei Chabad (Association of Chabad Chassidim, also known as “Aguch”), the umbrella organization of Lubavitch. Appointed by the Rebbe as his personal emissary to the nation’s capital, he is the movement’s indisputable dominant policy setter and driving political force. Shemtov has maintained relationships with congressional figures and presidents alike, from Nixon to Reagan, Clinton to Bush. Although he still stands as head representative to both Washington and Pennsylvania (he resides in Philadelphia), Shemtov has since passed the day-to-day mantle in D.C. to his son, Levi. His chairmanship of the organization’s largest school, Beth Rivkah, and primary boys’ camp, Gan Israel, enables him to impact future generations of Chabad leaders. Our list’s #1 has further entrenched his power through long-standing relationships with prominent entrepreneurs and philanthropists including Revlon boss, Ronald O. Perleman.

#2 Moshe J. Kotlarsky, Brooklyn, New York

If you ever wondered how the Chabad movement expanded by 200% since the Rebbe’s passing in 1994 to its present colossal size of more than 4,000 emissaries serving 200,000 members spanning 75 countries in more than 900 cities, look no further than Kotlarsky. Vice chairman of the educational arm of the organization, Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch (Merkos), he has spearheaded one of the great success stories in grassroots Jewish outreach. He instructs all newly minted emissaries as to their ultimate destination, whether that be to a small campus in North Dakota or to a major city in India. A passionate and emotional communicator, he is closely backed by philanthropist George Rohr, Chabad’s largest independent donor.

#3 Chaim Yehuda Krinsky, Brooklyn, New York

Born in 1933 and educated at the elite Boston Latin School, he entered the Central Lubavitch Yeshiva in Brooklyn at the age of 13. Krinsky served as chief spokesman and chauffer for the Rebbe and was the sole executor of his will. He is chairman of Merkos, the educational arm of Chabad, and a substantial host of the movement’s other branches including the social services division, Machne Israel. Krinsky was recently thrust before the global media following the November 2008 terrorist attack and murder of Chabad emissaries Rabbi Gabriel and Rivka Holtzberg in Mumbai, India.

#4 Boruch Shlomo Cunin, Los Angeles, California

With nearly 10% of the 3,500 emissaries worldwide reporting to Cunin, his operations in California, Nevada and Oregon are arguably the most self-sufficient and independent. Cunin’s annual telethon broadcast is a showcase of the personal power he wields with celebrities and business personalities of renown. At the outset of his 45 years as head emissary on the West Coast he personally coined the term “Chabad House” upon opening the country’s first in the 1960s on the campus of UCLA. Noted for his vast success in building non-sectarian drug-rehabilitation programs (his most prominent is based in Los Angeles), educational facilities, and homeless programs, he brings with him a zero tolerance management style. And for good reasons as the stakes are high: In the past 10 years his fund-raising has generated an estimated $100 – $150 million for Chabad of the West Coast. It is worth noting that Cunin's accumulation of private wealth, derived principally from real estate holdings, lends commanding credibility to his deal-making overtures in the not-for-profit arena.

#5 Sholom Duchman, Brooklyn, New York / Jerusalem, Israel

Duchman is the director of Colel Chabad the oldest institution in the organization’s history, established in Russia over 200 years ago by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi the first Chabad Rebbe. He manages a $10 million budget –privately fund-raised– which is allocated to maintaining soup kitchens and other provisions. Duchman and his minions have become the largest charitable food donors in Israel providing over 7,500 tons each year, a figure representing an unprecedented 30% of the nation’s total annual provision. His ties also run deep in the business community serving as personal rabbi to Yossel (Joe) Gutnik, the Australian natural resource magnate and brother of this list’s #15, Mordechai Gutnick. He divides his time between New York and Jerusalem.

#6 Shmuel Kaminetsky, Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine

When the Iron Curtain began to disintegrate in the early 1990s the energy was focused on finally getting Jews out of the former Soviet Empire. For Chabad the emphasis was on making inroads to accommodate those who would choose to remain within. Kaminetsky had no hesitation and soon became the head shliach to the Ukraine. He is a dynamic power broker among the more than 400 communities that compromise the umbrella group of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS. Playing a vital role in the establishment and management of The Bogolubov Fund– dedicated by businessman and philanthropist Gennady Bogolubov– he is flush with cash controlling the purse strings to a hefty $10-$20 million annual budget which is allocated to support fellow Chabad emissaries with their own personal family needs. An added level of support: his uncle happens to be Shalom Ber Drizin who weighs in among the wealthiest Lubavitch businessman in the world.

#7 Menachem Mendel Gluckowsky, Rechovot, Israel

Chief Rabbi of Rechovot and director of the Chabad Rabbinial Court, Gluchowsky is a dynamic figure whose star continues to rise within the intricate world of religion and politics in the Jewish State. The court is the senior decision-making body for Chabad Hassidim in Israel. Recognized for his oratory excellence, balanced judicial mind, and unswerving commitment to extend the reaches of Chabad to every corridor of Israeli society, he lectures the internationally and has been one of the most influential voices among the more than 230 emissaries based in the Holy Land.

#8 Berel Lazar, Moscow, Russia

At the political level of the game it doesn’t get much more full contact than within Chabad of Russia and the countries of the former USSR. Lazar has demonstrated a strategic brilliance and cutting edge talent at navigating the dicey waters of Russia’s complex landscape. He is the chairman of the Federation of Jewish Communities and chief rabbi of Russia. There are no less than 150 emissaries who report to him directly. His close relationships with Prime Minister Vladimir Putinand President Dmitry Medvedev have brought him both respect and influence (and occasional controversy). His appointment by Putin in 2005 to the 126-member Public Chamber of Russiawas sited for his “distinguished merit for the state and society.” Many were surprised by the former KGB head’s willingness to impart such prestige upon a Chabad emissary. Lazar’s long-term personal relationships with London-based tycoons Lev Leviev (diamonds) and Roman Abramovich (oil) have contributed to the expansion of new synagogues and educational facilities. And for the record Lazar’s high personal net worth enables him to further leverage his scope of power throughout the region.

#9 Shea Hecht, Brooklyn, New York

A Commissioner of Human Rights of New York City for 7 years, Hecht serves as chairman of the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE), an umbrella organization with over 30 active divisions and decades of pedigree. It is Chabad’s oldest outreach institution in the United States and its coveted “Release Time Program” is a must attend service for virtually all aspiring emissaries. He assumed the mantle to the family dynasty in 1990 following the passing of his father Rabbi JJ Hecht, one of the Rebbe’s closest confidants. A life strategist, marriage counselor, radio show host, and published author (Confessions of a Jewish Cult Buster), Hecht is also among Chabad’s foremost experts in conflict management and was point man during the tumultuous Crown Heights riots in 1991. Street smart and politically savvy, he has carte blanche access to councilmen and governors alike.

#10 Shalom Dovber Lipsker, Bal Harbour, Florida

Founder and spiritual leader of The Shul in Bal Harbor, Florida, Lipsker is nothing less than a tour de force of innovation and charisma. With its 1,000+ service attendance of highly affluent congregants, The Shul is on par with Manhattan's Park East Synagogue as one of the must visit stops for politicians of all stripes. In 1981 Lipsker also founded the non-profit Aleph Institute that provides broad services for Jewish men and woman in the armed forces as well as prisoners throughout the United States. He concurrently founded the Educational Academy for the Elderly, which develops programs to assist members of the elderly population to raise their self-esteem. His brother Mendel, a respected influence within Chabad globally, is the head emissary in South Africa based in Johannesburg.

#11 Moshe Herson, Morrison, New Jersey

Herson is a true heavyweight in the Chabad movement. Having amassed an army of 50 emissaries dispersed throughout every corridor of the state, as regional director of New Jersey his power base is entrenched and loyal. He is the dean of the prestigious Rabbinical College of America, which ordains students from 24 states and 18 countries. It is supported by a who’s who of financial backers including Ronald Lauder of Estée Lauder and the World Jewish Congress fame (of which he is president), and the mega wealthy Hartford, Connecticut-based David Chase, whose self-made fortune in diversified investments has fared well for Chabad. Herson’s annual menorah lighting at the State House in Trenton (27 years and running) routinely features New Jersey’s elite politicos. He also serves on the distinguished board of Agudas Chasidei Chabad (Association of Chabad Chasidim), the umbrella organization for the Lubavitch movement.

#12 Shmuel Lew, London, England

An executive board member of Lubavitch United Kingdom, he scores highly on the credibility index for his extensive learning and role as humble mentor. Lew oversees 30 Chabad Houses and is perhaps among the more profound communicators regarding Chabad Chasidic thought. His webinars and keynote speeches are well-attended and a testament to his dedication. One of the Rebbe’s primary translators, he continues to faithfully transmit the philosophy, writings and discourses of Menachem Mendel Schneerson to this day. In fact the Rebbe served as the officiator (Mesader Kiddushin) at Lew’s wedding. He maintains meaningful relationships with Chabad’s executive leadership and members of the younger generation.

#13 Tzvi Grunblatt, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Recognized by his peers for his scholarship and uncompromising principled commitment to Chabad’s vision, Greenblatt is among the few emissaries hand-picked by the Rebbe. He serves as the institution’s head in Argentina based out of the country’s capital Buenos Aires. His strong ties to the government bode well for Argentina’s 180,000 Jews who represent over 50% of South America’s total Jewish population. Social services programs and general outreach have been his crowning accomplishments. He also played a vital role in providing extensive relief to victims of the bombing of the Jewish Community Center and Israeli Embassy in 1992 and 1994 respectively.

#14 Mordechai Avtzon, Hong Kong, China

As the first emissary to Greater China - that’s Hong Kong, Mainland China, and Taiwan - Avtzon has fostered the explosive growth of Chabad throughout the Asian region over his 20 years. His headquarters in Hong Kong is located in the commercial capital of East Asia. It has been an oasis for the most affluent Jewish community per capita in the world and equally to visiting businessmen. He founded L.I.F.E. – Lubavitch in the Far East – to provide for the needs of Jewish communities in countries spanning Japan to Vietnam, Laos to Nepal. Wife Goldie, daughter of this list’s paramount influence, #1 Avrohom Shemtov, has contributed tirelessly to her husband’s accomplishments. That success has led to the establishment of more than 20 Chabad Houses in 8 countries and growing.

#15 Mordechai Gutnick, Melbourne, Australia

When research began on this project Rabbi Dovid Groner was the unanimous endearing influence within Chabad Australia. His passing in July of 2008 opened up the gates for a host of new leaders to fill the void. Gutnick is filling a segment of that gaping hole. His scope of control can be observed in three realms: (1) He directs kosher supervision for the entire continent under his “Kosher Australia” umbrella organization, the premier authority for the entire Australasia region; (2) He is acting head of the Melbourne Beth Din (Jewish Court) and is spiritual leader of the Elwood Hebrew Congregation, a position previously occupied by his late father the venerable Rabbi Chaim Gutnick; and (3) The name “Gutnick” travels far and wide: one of his 3 brothers is business mogul (gold and diamonds) and prominent philanthropist Yossel Gutnick.

Top 10 Global Rising Stars

#1 Chaim Kaplan, Tzfat, Israel

Kaplan is the head emissary to Tzfat –one of the Jewish faith's four holiest cities –and is the influential director of Yeshivas Tzeirei Hashluchim (Young Emissaries Yeshiva). The yeshiva is one of the primary training grounds for children the world over. Kaplan also made headline news in 2006 when he was injured in a Hezbollah rocket attack.

#2 Moshe Garelick, Brussels, Belgium

If ever in need of a lesson in entrepreneurship, international relations or power politics just dial Garelick’s number. He is a founder of the Rabbinical Center of Europe (RCE) and serves as its executive director out of its Brussels headquarters. His father is Chabad’s chief representative to Milan and heads up the RCE’s Executive Committee. If no one slows Garelick down he might find himself all too soon chairing the European Union.

#3 Yitzchak Schochet, London, England

Schochet is an impassioned communicator, a staunch defender of religious freedom and is routinely sought after by the British media. His appearance on the BBC’s “The Big Questions” - a television program which focuses on issues concerning morality and ethics - have now become a matter of routine. Schochet is the rabbi of the Mill Hill Synagogue in North London and is also the son of Rabbi J. Immanuel Schochet (Leading Educators & Intellectuals #2)

#4 Ari Raskin, Brooklyn, New York

Raskin founded Chabad of Brooklyn Heights and became the head of B’nai Avraham Synagogue both at the ripe age of 21. Ambitious and intelligent, he’s a prolific writer who has penned two books to date - Letters of Light and The Rabbi and the CEO – with another soon going to print. And let’s not forget that he also earned the distinction of being the first Chabad rabbi to ever appear on the cover of National Geographic in 2006.

#5 Chaim Shaul Brook, Brooklyn, New York

Brook received an invitation in 2004 to become the youngest member of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch (Merkos), the movement’s educational arm. He declined and continues to serve in his role as director of Lahak, an organization which reviews and publishes in Hebrew all of the Rebbe’s talks. He continues to receive extensive guidance from Rabbi Yoel Kahn (Leading Educators & Intellectuals #1).

#6 Chaim Nochum Cunin, Los Angeles, California

Cunin is another Chabad emissary who stands to inherit an impressive dynastic thrown, and deservedly so. He is the executive producer of the Chabad Telethon, directs public relations for West Coast Chabad Lubavitch , is board member of popular website AskMoses.com, and is an editor of Chabad’s flagship magazine, Farbrengen. These and his other achievements must make his father (Top Global Rabbis #4) sleep well at night.

#7 Levi Shemtov, Washington, D.C.

Shemtov has done an admirable job of carving out his own sizable niche considering that he is the son of Top Global Rabbi’s #1, Avrohom Shemtov. He has assumed virtually all daily responsibilities as head emissary to the nation’s capital and director of American Friends of Lubavitch. In short, he is at the epicenter of political affairs for the movement in Washington. Perhaps a future seat awaits him on the Agudas Chasidei Chabad? You can bank on it!

#8 Mendel Kaplan, Toronto, Canada

The quintessential rising star who possesses strong inter-personal skills, savvy media relations and high intellect, Kaplan might soon find himself on the list of the Top 15 most influential Chabad rabbis. And to think that he hasn’t even reached his 39th birthday! He is the head emissary and founder of Chabad@Flamingo in Toronto, Canada, which houses a 22,000 square foot religious and cultural center with another 20,000+ square feet on the way. He is also the chaplain of the York Regional Police and a member of Toronto’s Vaad HaRabbanim (Rabbinical Committee).

#9 Levi Wolff, Sydney, Australia

Wolff is a refined and charismatic emissary who arrived in 2001 to serve as rabbi of the city’s highly aristocratic Central Synagogue. He has become a recognizable face throughout Australia and was recently in the national spotlight in April 2009 when he presided over the funeral of billionaire Richard Pratt, the country’s fourth wealthiest man.

#10 Hirschy Zarchi, Boston, Massachusetts

Approachable, amiable and able, such are just a few of the traits of Chabad’s lead emissary to Harvard. Zarchi is adept as well at sustaining relationships with the brilliant and beneficent: His Chabad House faculty advisor is the legendary professor Alan Dershowitz and a portion of his financial support comes from the über-generous Rohr family.

Top 5 Global Educators & Intellectuals

#1 Yoel Kahn, Brooklyn, New York

Well-respected for his erudition and authenticity, Kahn was at the side of the Rebbe from the day he assumed the position in 1950. He not only transcribed the Rebbe’s talks but explained often hidden mystical concepts to the masses. Through Kahn’s methodology of documenting the Rebbe’s remarks, he was instrumental in the publishing of the first 9 volumes of Likkutei Sichot (Anthology of Talks). He is also the author of multiple books on Chasidus and retains a commanding spiritual influence among Chabad Chasidim. Kahn is now endeavoring to publish a Chassidic encyclopedia.

#2 Jacob Immanuel Schochet, Toronto, Canada

He brings brains – lots of them – to the table and is considered one of the big guns when intellectual demarcations need to be articulated both within and without the movement. A mainstay on the Chabad lecture circuit, Schochet thrives on provocative and scintillating debate. He is professor emeritus of medical ethics, well-read author, an expert in debunking cults, Messianism and addressing all aspects of Jewish identity.

#3 Manis Friedman, Twin Cities, Minnesota

Dean of Bais Chana Institute of Jewish Studies, an institution specifically catering to the needs of women of all ages. Friedman is touted for his practical yet probing insights into the complexities facing the modern day Jew and is master of the human psyche. An accomplished author and public speaker, his name is synonymous with scholarship and reason.

#4 Simon Jacobson, Manhattan, New York

Founder of the Meaningful Life Center in New York City, Jacobson is a no-nonsense, straight-shooting scholarly thinker and educator. He is the author of the blockbuster best-selling book Toward a Meaningful Life which has sold over 300,000 copies. One of Judaism's most in-demand speakers, Jacobson likely has chalked up more frequent flyer miles than any other headline name in the organization.

#5 Zalman Shmotkin, Brooklyn, New York

Chabad-Lubavitch in Cyberspace (Chabad.org) has one of the zippiest slogans on Internet: Spreading Judaism at the Speed of Light. The initiative was the brainchild of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, one of the Web’s early adopters and visionaries back in 1994. Good Morning America went so far as to dub him the “Cyber Rabbi” prior to his passing at the tender age of 44 in 1998 The site that has since reached millions worldwide under the able stewardship of Shmotkin. He directs an innovative and expert team of professionals. Shmotkin also serves in the dual role as director and spokesperson of the Chabad Lubavitch Media Center.

Orthodox Jews asked to consider Jacksonville

2009-06-22T00:28:00.000-07:00

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Jacksonville is known for its beaches, military installations and the slogan hailing it as "the bold new city of the South."

But it isn't known as a major center for Judaism, with the local Jewish community estimated at 13,000, compared to about 2 million in New York and about 550,000 in South Florida.

So Rabbi Yoseph Kahanov said he was puzzled to learn the Orthodox Union listed Jacksonville among 22 "emerging communities" Orthodox Jews should consider if seeking to leave Jewish mega-centers such as New York City.

"Jacksonville really lacks, at this point, the basic necessities for Orthodox Jewry," said Kahanov, spiritual leader of Chabad of Northeast Florida.

The city has no kosher restaurants or grocery stores, so meats and other supplies have to be shipped in from Atlanta, Miami and other cities. The educational system — two day schools, one of them Orthodox, and no high school — for Orthodox youths "is still in its infant stages," he said.

"To be put on a list like this, to me, is surprising."

So how did northeast Florida make the list?

The answer is partly to be found in the nation's ongoing economic slump, but also in decades of Jewish migration from large urban centers in the Northeast, especially the greater New York City area, denominational leaders and scholars said. Others active in the city's Jewish community say its location, climate and welcoming reputation overcome difficulties in obtaining the foods, religious education and other services plentiful in major Jewish centers along the Eastern Seaboard.

Amy Lipper concedes northeast Florida presents a "challenge" to those adhering to the strictest dietary and religious standards in Judaism.

But Lipper said she and her husband, Jay, enthusiastically represented her city and Orthodox synagogue in New York at the Orthodox Union's "Emerging Communities Fair" featuring 21 other communities touted on the list.

Lipper was an ideal delegate for the task: Born and raised in New Jersey, her family moved to Jacksonville in 2004 after her husband lost his job earlier in the decade.

Her family struggled at first without those amenities, but has since thrived with the food co-ops, lower tuition costs and the Jewish community's friendly, welcoming nature. Area grocery chains also are adding a growing number of kosher products.

"You just gotta think out of the box," said Lipper, a member and staffer at Etz Chaim Synagogue in Mandarin.

The Orthodox Union began its list of emerging communities last year, partly as a response to the economic downturn that hit the New York-area economy especially hard, organization President Stephen Savitsky said.

Cities on the list are selected in part based on their "Jewish infrastructure" — a combination of availability of kosher food and religious and educational institutions.

But cost of living, housing prices and the availability of jobs also are considered, Savitsky said.

Jacksonville was added to the list this year because it has an Orthodox Union synagogue, hosts the Torah Academy school and has a ceremonial bath known as a mikvah. The city's diverse economy, lower home prices and a Jewish community known for its social service network and outreach were other reasons, he said.

"It's an atmosphere in which you can raise an Orthodox family," he said.

According to the National Realtors Association, the median sales price of single-family homes in the greater Jacksonville area was running about $154,000 during the first quarter of 2009. Single-family homes were selling from $321,000 to $430,000 in various New York-area markets.

Jobs are another story.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the region's unemployment rate at 9.2 percent, compared to 7.8 percent in and around New York City.

But job seekers from larger metropolitan areas such as New York City "may have a leg up" in experience and reputation when competing for jobs as they start becoming available in Jacksonville, said Candace Moody, vice president of communications for WorkSource, a nonprofit that promotes employment in Northeast Florida.

The Orthodox Union effort comes at a time when some Jewish communities are competing for members.

The Jewish community in Dothan is offering $50,000 to households that relocate to the Alabama city. The community in Tulsa, Okla., is touting its city's job market and lifestyle at JewishTulsa.org, on Twitter and Facebook.

Jacksonville's Jewish population has remained steady around 13,000 since it was last counted in 2002, suggesting that new members are born or move to the city near the same rate they leave, said Joanne Cohen, assistant executive director of the Jacksonville Jewish Federation.

"As opposed to other communities, which are losing members, this is a thriving community where lots of things are possible," she said.

Kahanov said he would be cautious touting Jacksonville as a place for the Orthodox, but added the city has much to offer those "with a pioneering spirit."

But Lipper noted that many Orthodox and other Jews may be willing to overlook their concerns if they are facing economic hardship.

"Up there when you have no job, you have high mortgages and high (Jewish school) tuitions, you really have to go elsewhere," Lipper said. And it might as well be Jacksonville, "where you stand a chance to get back on your feet."

Interest-free loans steeped in tradition

2009-06-21T22:01:00.001-07:00

Interest-free loans steeped in tradition

By Kristin E. Holmes

The Philadelphia Inquirer

June 10, 2009

In tough economic times, a centuries-old financial lifeline might be one of the best-kept secrets in the Jewish community.

It is a secret whose roots go back to the Torah, where it is called an act of "lovingkindness."

When rent is due or tuition is short, there are loans available for thousands of dollars -- interest free.

The programs are part of a tradition in the Jewish community of offering loans without interest to people in need. The money has helped families adopt babies, a woman buy a pacemaker, and immigrants start a new life.

"I was going to Israel, and I just needed some extra money," said Yaron Gola of Northeast Philadelphia. "It was a tremendous blessing. It makes you feel a part of a community."

About 50 groups in the United States and abroad lend millions in interest-free loans each year, said Mark Meltzer, past president and cofounder of the International Association of Hebrew Free Loans.

In the region, the Hebrew Free Loan Society of Greater Philadelphia in Elkins Park and the Chaya Mushka Lubavitcher G'Milus Chesed in Northeast Philadelphia are two of the independent organizations that carry on the tradition.

Jewish nonprofit groups also offer small interest-free loans, often for educational pursuits.

It is viewed as a mitzvah, a good deed, said Rabbi Zalman Lipsker, director of the Lubavitcher fund. In fact, G'Milus Chesed translates to "deed of lovingkindness" in Hebrew.

The underlying principle goes back to biblical instruction, said Rabbi Aaron Landes, founding rabbi of the Hebrew Free Loan Society of Greater Philadelphia and rabbi emeritus of Beth Sholom Congregation, the society's headquarters.

Exodus 22:25 says, "If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not be like a moneylender; charge him no interest." Similar instructions are in Deuteronomy and Leviticus.

"When immigrants came over from Eastern Europe between 1880 and 1914, they brought these associations with them," said Shelly Tenenbaum, author of A Credit to Their Community: Jewish Loan Societies in the United States.

Other ethnic and religious groups have their own loan programs. Interest is prohibited in Islamic law and references to the law appear in the Quran and in statements of the prophet Muhammad, said Masood Ghaznavi, professor emeritus at Rosemont College.

Among the Hebrew loan societies, organization assets range from $100,000 to more than $20 million. Groups vary with respect to professional staffing, business partnerships, and annual lending, Meltzer said.

The first Jewish immigrants to the United States "got $25 to get their pushcart," said Tamar Granor, who with her husband, Marshall, runs the Hebrew Free Loan Society of Greater Philadelphia.

A bond of mutual trust linked the society, the borrower, and his or her cosigner. Each borrower usually must have at least one.

"It's one thing to default on an impersonal institution," Tenenbaum said. "It's another to default on someone you're close to."

The process is designed to be dignified and devoid of embarrassment, so applications can be brief. The Lubavitcher group, which typically lends up to $1,000, doesn't ask a reason for the loan. The Hebrew Free Loan Society requires a credit check of the cosigner, but not the applicant. The group lends a maximum of $5,000. Terms for payback vary.

Default rates were typically lower than those of banks, Tenenbaum said. Some borrowers have failed to pay the Lubavitcher group, Lipsker said. Fewer than 1 percent at the Hebrew Free Loan Society of Greater Philadelphia have defaulted. Court action is extremely rare, Tamar Granor said.

The Northeast Philadelphia program, with rolling assets of $150,000, has been in operation since the early 1970s. In Elkins Park, the Free Loan Society celebrates its 25th anniversary this year. The group has assets of $350,000.

Both organizations rely on contributions and fund-raising to replenish the money.

As the economy has worsened, loan inquiries have started to increase. But Marshall Granor, whose parents, Bernard and Marie, helped start the fund, is surprised that more applicants haven't turned to the society. He has money to lend but no takers.

"It's been hard to connect with people," he said.

With only a volunteer staff, public relations isn't often a priority. The group's members hope to hire a part-time worker who can help spread the word.

Said Granor: "It's a tremendous feeling when a parent calls and says, 'My son graduated from Drexel, and I couldn't have done it without you.' "

Copyright © 2009, South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Interest-free loans steeped in tradition

2009-06-21T22:01:00.000-07:00

A Spooky Story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe

2009-06-21T21:48:00.000-07:00

David Klinghoffer

I'm thinking of the night the Lubavitcher Rebbe died, which was exactly 15 year ago this coming Friday, June 12, 1994. I'm not Chabad -- a fellow traveler at best, and that only pretty recently -- but I have a vivid memory of being in Amagansett, New York, on a weekend beach trip with a friend. That night, which was a Saturday, we were both sticking our heads out of a skylight to catch the sound of the surf and the smell of the wind. Very strangely, we both suddenly had a feeling of being "spooked." Did you ever have an experience like that? It was a strong intuition of loss, as we mutually confirmed before we knew anything about what might have called it up. Returning to Manhattan on Monday morning, we learned that the Rebbe had died the previous day.

Of all the Jewish movements going at the movement, I consider Chabad the most successful and on balance the most admirable and appealing. My wife asked me the other day, half jokingly, why we don't put a picture of the Rebbe up somewhere in our house, as many Chabad admirers who are not Chabad themselves will do. Many, for example, is the Israeli taxi with a yarmulke-less driver and a picture of the Rebbe dangling from the rearview mirror.

Sorry. As I explained, that's not for me. I'm not a joiner and never feel quite comfortable with groups of any kind. Maybe that's why I'm a Jew. The word for Hebrew, in Hebrew, Ivri, has as one of its meanings being on the other side from something. A Hebrew is always in contrast and conflict with his surroundings. Abraham, the first Hebrew, is called that (Genesis 14:13) because he came from the "other side" of the Euphrates River. A Jew should always feel on the outs with the wider culture. When my spiritual and intellectual affiliations seem, superficially, at odds with each, that's my comfort zone. Maybe that's why the thing that initially turned me off liberalism, on arriving as a freshman at Brown, was the smug feeling shared by so many of my fellow students that only we, smarty-pants liberals, had it all figured out and three cheers for us.

But that's all an aside. Going back to my wife's question, I thought, why not put a picture of the Rebbe up on this blog? That I can handle. So here it is.

Chabad Of Hunterdon County Celebrates Its 6th With Banquet And Awards

2009-06-21T21:43:00.000-07:00

Chabad of Hunterdon County celebrated its sixth anniversary with a banquet at the Grand Colonial in Perryville.

More than 230 attended, including many business, civic and political leaders.

The event featured Joe Piscopo from Saturday Night Live as its emcee and entertainer as well as Yoel Sharabi, a world renowned Jewish singer and performer.

Honorees included Stanley and June Goldstein with a Lifetime Achievement Award, Miles and Zak Griffin with a Hebrew School Children of the Year, and Michael Camerino with a Community Leadership Award.
Rabbi Eli Kornfeld, executive director of Chabad of Hunterdon County, remarked, "The event was a tribute to the community and its willingness to support and partner with Chabad in ensuring its continued growth and success."
Proceeds from the dinner will fund Chabad of Hunterdon's growing number of programs.
Following the cocktail hour, everyone was treated to a special video presentation highlighting the achievements of Chabad during its first six years as well as its vision for the future.
The event featured many who shared their personal experiences with Chabad, including Richard Kaplan of Novartis and Sharon Gonnen of Thomson Reuters who spoke about the recent passing of her mother Renay Salamon A'H who was a chairwoman for the event and a prominent supporter of Chabad of Hunterdon.
The event concluded with the annual raffle drawings. Ilene Kaplan won a fur coat, William Fiore won a Breitling watch and Dave Ryback won the 50/50

Jews, God, and Videotape

2009-06-21T21:38:00.000-07:00

How media have molded modern Jewish religion

Jews, God, and Videotape
Religion and Media in America
By Jeffrey Shandler

New York University Press.

340 pp. $23

Reviewed by Glenn C. Altschuler

Videotaping bar and bat mitzvahs, many observant Jews maintain, violates Talmudic prohibitions against work on the Sabbath, distracts the worshiper from worship, and transforms tranquil and dignified ceremonies into spectacles.

And yet, as Jeffrey Shandler reminds us, more and more parents - and teenagers - insist on documenting their families' coming-of-age rituals.

In Jews, God, and Videotape, Shandler, a professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University, provides a fresh and fascinating account of the impact of technology on the religious life of American Jews during the last one hundred years.

The "new media," he argues, have helped shape a popular Jewish religion, more concerned with consumerism, celebrity, and community than with theology or rabbinical authority. Reorganizing emotion and experience, this "religion in the making" is struggling to identify strategies through which "the People of the Book" can accommodate and/or confront how Jews can (or should) fit in and stand out.

In a richly detailed chapter on The Eternal Light, a long-running radio broadcast, created in the 1940s by the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, Shandler shows how the medium can affect the message.

Aimed primarily at a non-Jewish audience, the overarching goal of the show, which reached about five million Americans by the end of the decade, was to combat anti-Semitism by demonstrating (through historical dramas and literary adaptations) that Jewish "particularism" was incidental to its "fundamental universalism" and that Jews were anything but anti-American radicals or communist sympathizers.

Populated by actors whose voices were ethnically "unmarked," The Eternal Light, Shandler speculates, allowed Jews, sight unseen, to invite themselves into the homes of their non-Jewish neighbors, confident that they were subjects of "respectful attention."

More often than not, Shandler implies, modern media have marked - but have not made - changes in Jewish attitudes and behavior. The themes of The Eternal Light, for example, reflected the "powerful integrationist impact" of the post-World War II suburban migration of American Jewish culture. When, in the 1960s, concern about anti-Semitism gave way to fears of the "erosion" of a distinctly Jewish culture, the ecumenical, assimilationist Eternal Light dimmed.

Frequently, according to Shandler, modern media provide an arena for contests over appropriate conduct. E-cards, he points out, reflect a range of responses to the "December dilemma" of Jews. Some postulate parity between Christmas and Hanukkah, pairing Santa Claus with Tevye. Others, however, are more hostile to "interfaith" sentiments.

In 1989, Shandler writes, the American Jewish Committee, in conjunction with the National Conference of Christians and Jews, denounced greeting cards that combined the religious and cultural symbols of the two holidays as "an affront to the integrity of distinct faiths."

With respect to religion, Shandler writes, provocatively and persuasively, the notion of "separate but equal" lives on.

Recently, Shandler reveals, ultra-orthodox Jews have overcome an aversion to technology as a corrupting distraction - and begun to use television, video, and the Internet to spread their messianic vision. Under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who almost never left his neighborhood in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, the Lubavitcher hasidim have raised millions of dollars through telethons, even as they make sure that the arms, legs, and breasts of the female celebrities who appear on the small screen are covered.

DVDs and Chabad.org allow Schneerson to communicate with his disciples long after his death.

Technology, Shandler concludes, hasn't changed everything. It can - and does - facilitate traditional communal rites, including synagogue worship, as well as more secular practices.

For many, it may be less helpful in forging new links than in renewing, in the virtual world, a sense of belonging to links already established in the "real" one.

Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.

Lubavitch Shul Expanding

2009-06-05T17:29:00.000-07:00

Chabad Lubavitch of Baltimore, at 6701 Old Pimlico Road, has received Baltimore County’s approval to build a 3,600-square-foot addition on the site of an existing playground.

But the synagogue’s Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan said there are no immediate plans to activate the plan. “It’s too early to know if we will build,” he said. “We have to do fund raising first.”

Don Rascoe, of the county’s Department of Permits and Development, said the congregation came to the county several times with versions of the addition proposal. “We agreed to a refinement of a previously approved plan,” he said.

The initial plan was submitted in October 2008. Paul Abrams, a neighbor, said he received a letter from the county informing him of a hearing. Mr. Abrams said he and about eight other neighbors raised questions about the plan and met with Rabbi Kaplan and his wife, Rochelle.

Mr. Abrams said his neighbors were satisfied with the Kaplans’ plan, but he was not.

Another hearing was held last January. County Deputy Zoning Commissioner Thomas Bostwick heard testimony about the plan for a 11⁄2-story addition that would be connected to the main building via a covered hallway. The plan required an amendment to the existing zoning, which Mr. Bostwick subsequently approved.

Mr. Abrams said he attended this hearing and protested the plan, which in his opinion would disrupt the neighborhood. He also brought up the issue of parking, saying the synagogue has a small parking lot that would not accommodate additional activities. No appeals were filed regarding Mr. Bostwick’s decision within the required 30 days.

Mrs. Kaplan said the addition is 11⁄2 stories because of the topography of the land. On the lower level, she said, there would be a social hall and on the main level an adult ed center.

Topol leads cast of 'Fiddler' revival

2009-06-05T17:26:00.000-07:00

There are few shows that deal with faith, love, and Jewish suffering as dramatically and melodically as "Fiddler on the Roof," one of Broadway's most emotional musicals.

Based on the timeless stories of Sholom Aleichem, "Fiddler" features many of Broadway's most heartfelt hits, including "Sunrise, Sunset," "If I Were a Rich Man," "Tradition," and "Matchmaker, Matchmaker."

"Fiddler" tells the story of Tevye, a poor milkman, and his hardships while the Czar systematically persecutes Jewish families -- sometimes invading weddings, other times driving people from their homes.

Forty years after it landed on Broadway, hit the London stage, and became a popular movie with Chaim Topol, a revival of "Fiddler" (starring Topol) begins Wednesday at Chicago's Ford Center for the Performing Arts/Oriental Theatre.

Director Sammy Dallas Bayes recreates this classic show exactly as it was performed on Broadway, using many of Jerome Robbins' original production numbers. The show will feature Topol in his final tour as Tevye. Topol appeared in the movie and in 2,500 stage productions all over the world.

Jewish spiritual leaders from Northwest Indiana applaud the strong themes of Jewish faith and solidarity that are reflected in Tevye's poignant journey.

"Fiddler is both Jewish, and at the same time it's very universal," said Congregation Beth Israel's Rabbi Benjamin Kramer. "While it talks about Jewish people, at a particular time in a particular community, people still connect to it in a very universal way."

Kramer said people relate to Tevye's simple desire -- to protect and make his daughters happy. Tevye fiercely safeguards his Old World traditions from the frightening forces that threaten to eliminate his faith and his people.

"Tevye's a father, and he's trying to provide for his family, and those issues transcend a particular time," Kramer said. "That's the thing I like about the story. You can relate to the story of some outside force threatening your family and your home. The idea you worked your whole life, and everything can be taken away is a universal fear."

Kramer said the music and setting are nostalgic for American Jews, who never had to endure the hardships Tevye did.

"There's something we like about a world where people were connected to family and religion, where people worked hard while they sang and danced," Kramer said. "The music is great, without a doubt. For American Jews, the music and setting will conjure a world that we'd like to think existed but might not have existed. There's a certain element of nostalgia in it." "Fiddler" does not glaze over the story of Jewish persecution, but as a musical, it celebrates the indomitable spirit of the Jewish people to survive horrible hardships.

In Tevye's conversations with God, he comes up with pointed answers to life's perplexing struggles. Often Tevye strikes out at life's injustices with his salt-of the-earth wisdom and his edgy sense of humor.

"What appeals to me is he has a very Jewish sense of humor," Kramer said. "Tevye combines self-deprecation with optimism when he's put through some very trying situations. The fact Tevye isn't broken by his adversities is a sign of his faith."

Rabbi Eliezer Zalmanov, from Chabad of Northwest Indiana, said even if "Fiddler" is a fictional story, the story of Jewish struggle it represents is repeated over and over in history books.

"This story is all about traditions, and that's what kept Jewish people surviving throughout history," Zalmanov said. "By staying true to our Jewish laws and the Torah, that's what kept us together. It's not such a happy ending, but that's the story of the Jewish people."

Zalmanov believes Tevye made some mistakes when his daughters began to rebel, but he still respects Tevye's unshakable devotion to his faith.

"In our faith, we believe that God is ultimately in control of everything, but for things to work, we have to do our part," Zalmanov revealed.

"What we can learn from Tevye is when we're able to connect traditional values with modern times and make it palatable to the next generation, then we've done our job," Zalmanov added.

'We believe even a person that is simple or ordinary can have a great faith and a close relationship with God.' --Rabbi Eliezer Zalmanov, Chabad of NW Indiana.

For Chabad, for Families

2009-06-05T17:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing to connect with people is a mission of Rabbi Joseph Eisenbach and his wife, Mina, as they celebrate the 13th anniversary of the Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest Connecticut, which has headquarters in Litchfield.

"As we reach 13 years, there is no limit to acts of goodness and kindness that we are able to do in a community, but I think we have some huge programs that we hope to implement," said Rabbi Eisenbach, speaking of the array of programs planned by his group for this summer.
The Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest Connecticut is part of the largest Jewish organization in the world with more than 5,000 branches world-wide. The Chabad is against proselytizing, said Rabbi Eisenbach.
The word Chabad is a Hebrew acronym for the words wisdom, understanding and knowledge, with a big emphasis on educating people. Lubavitch is the name of the town in Russia where the movement began in the mid-18th century and means the "city of brotherly love."
"The whole concept of Chabad is people helping people," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
Rabbi Eisenbach explained that the beauty and uniqueness of Chabad is that when a rabbi and his family move out to a community, they traditionally arrive without knowing anyone and ultimately build a community within that host community.
The couple left their families behind in Montreal, Canada, and West Hartford. Both of their parents are emissaries and Rabbi Eisenbach is the fifth generation in his family to become one.
As emissaries, the rabbi and Mrs. Eisenbach evaluated their community. They established programs to suit their surroundings, while following the teachings of the seven dynastic leaders of the Chabad-Lubavitch Dynasty, known as rebbes.
"The whole concept of the rebbe is that you've just got to continue to do the right thing, you've just got to continue to try to change the world one mitzvah at a time," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
"We were blessed to be sent here to Northwest Connecticut, and the unique and the beautiful part is the fact that over the last 13 years we have seen tremendous growth in all areas," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
For more than a decade, the Chabad in Litchfield has seen an influx of families and children. Many of the older Chabads that have been around have taken care of three or four generations, he said.
"Every single Jewish community [has] what we call reform, conservative, [and] orthodox," said Rabbi Eisenbach. "At Chabad, we say labels are for food packages not for our brothers and sisters. It's amazing, the turnout that you get."
According to Rabbi Eisenbach, the theology of Chabad is to embrace everyone, and that has been why Chabad is the world's largest Jewish outreach organization.
Since its 10th anniversary, Rabbi Eisenbach has seen a tremendous growth in the summer children's camp program, Camp Gan Isreal located in Washington Depot, which attracts between 50 to 80 campers weekly. Mrs. Eisenbach is the director.
Weekenders are involved in assisting with the camp program, which offers sports and arts and crafts, according to Rabbi Eisenbach. The camp focuses on education in a fun and interactive way and the Chabad buses children from inner cities, similar to the Fresh Air Fund.
"Our camp has seen super growth in the sense that it's been amazing for this size community that we have," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
The Chabad also runs a network of Hebrew schools that has grown steadily, according to Rabbi Eisenbach. In the last three years, the Chabad started the Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), created in the tradition of teachers reaching out to students pursuing intellectual and spiritual growth in their adult years. The courses are designed for students ranging from first-time learners to those with years of prior study.
"The JLI has really attracted people from every single part of the region, Jewish, Catholic, Episcopalian ... we have seen such a grand blessing since our 10th anniversary," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
According to Mrs. Eisenbach, knowledge of the Jewish religion and Jewish history and of the Torah is something of a rite for every Jewish person. But, unfortunately, not everyone is aware of his or her cultural past. The Eisenbachs have helped to institute new programs, including monthly themed Shabbat dinners called T.G.I.S. (Thank G-d It's Shabbat), to attract more participation.
"We make it fun and exciting; it's a family program where people come and celebrate the Shabbat with us, hear stories and learn," said Mrs. Eisenbach. "It's all about educating people, because unfortunately today we have assimilation reaching such new levels where Jewish people don't know the basics of their own religion."
"Judaism is alive, it's vibrant, it's not just something to study, it's a way of life," said Mrs. Eisenbach.
She added the Chabad holds a monthly Jewish Kids Club, where members gather for fun interactive activities that promote Jewish values and friendship. Each meeting has craft projects and games with a special emphasis on Jewish customs and culture.
Communication is important and Rabbi Eisenbach said one of the greatest developments over the last three years is the Chabad's online magazine. The Internet presence has allowed people to study their religion and interact with the rabbi.
The online magazine has allowed everyone from celebrities who are weekenders in Northwest Connecticut to the average person to log in. The online magazine can be found on the Chabad's Web site at www.chabadnw.org. There is also a bi-monthly publication known as the Jewish News.
"We do a feedback which is 24/6, except the Shabbat," said Rabbi Eisenbach. "It's like a whole community on its own."
Vital to any religious organization is the building it occupies. In 2007, Litchfield's Historic District Commission denied an application to relocate the Chabad's headquarters from Village Green Drive to Litchfield center in a building that would have been renovated and significantly expanded.
The commission based its denial on the scale of the proposed expansion and restoration of the 135-year-old building but said it would be willing to consider a revised plan, including a downsized version.
The envisioned expansion totals 21,000 square-feet, and would involve a four-story addition off the back of the structure. It would include a synagogue, a community center, classrooms, several kosher kitchens, offices, a swimming pool and ceremonial pool. The facility would also have residential quarters for Rabbi Eisenbach and his family, as well as housing for visitors and staff. The historic building was purchased by the organization in 2006.
"We're hoping to have our new home in the center of town, and we're hoping to be able to reach out to as many more people as possible," said Rabbi Eisenbach.
Without offering specifics, he said the Chabad is currently in the midst of making the synagogue happen within the town of Litchfield.
But Mrs. Eisenbach said that most of her husband's work is not with the synagogue. Rabbi Eisenbach can be found visiting hospitals and nursing homes every week.
Chabads, she said, are not run by a rabbi, but rather the partnership of the rabbi and his wife. And the Eisenbachs' partnership is blessed with eight children.
According to Rabbi Eisenbach, most of his time is involved with Chabad. However, he said, he enjoys taking his children for hikes at White Memorial and he shared that he is a big skier.
He said he has connected with people in many different ways during his travels both locally and beyond.
"It's not just that the people who come to synagogue only come here for their religious needs, we become friends in every manner, in every way," said Mrs. Eisenbach. "We become very close."
Rabbi Eisenbach said he and his wife look forward to bringing in more Chabad couples to help them with their programs and hope to open satellite offices throughout Northwest Connecticut to reach out and care for, and be a helping hand to, everyone.
For more information on Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest Connecticut, visit the Web site at www.chabadnw.org. For more information about Camp Gan Israel, call 800-979-CAMP, or visit www.cginw.org.

Come to Chabad — near the pub

2009-06-05T17:16:00.000-07:00

A £250,000 Chabad centre has opened in Manchester’s Whitefield area. A one-year refurbishment has transformed the former off-licence into a facility housing a Jewish resource library, Judaica store, lounge and a multimedia lecture hall.

However, director Rabbi Shmuli Jaffe says the centre’s greatest asset is its location. “It is opposite the Parkfield Inn pub, which is full of Jews on Thursday evenings, and its street corner is where the kids are on motzei Shabbos, being the only stretch of Jewish shops in the neighbourhood.”

Funding has come from local individuals and some small lottery grants. Rabbi Jaffe hopes the building will become a mini-community centre.

“We officially opened on Lag b’Omer with a community barbecue for 400 people.

“The idea is to cater for the 90 per cent of the community who only go to shul twice a year, according to a survey.” Chabad was offering “a place where people can drop in”.

Mother and baby sessions, adult education and kosher takeaway nights are some of the activities planned.

Chabad center brings together Jews in Doral

2009-05-30T21:00:00.000-07:00

When Rabbi Avrohom Brashevitzky established the Chabad Jewish Center of Doral, he only knew one Jew in Doral and hosted services in private homes.

Three years later, the congregation has grown to about 40 active members and occupies a two-floor space in a shopping center at 9725 NW 41st St.

Brashevitzky said that does not include several hundred Jews who are mostly of South American descent he has met -- who live or work in Doral -- but don't attend services.

''And there are Jews who live here that I don't know yet,'' said Brashevitzky, formerly a pulpit rabbi at Shalom Congregation at the Casablanca Hotel in Miami Beach.

Doral has a number of Catholic and Lutheran churches within city limits, but the Chabad Center is the only place of worship for the city's Jewish families.

Because Doral is home to a large South American population, most of the center's Jews, Brashevitzky said, hail from countries such as Uruguay, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Colombia, places where Jews are a religious minority -- though a distinct one.

Most Jews arrived in South America after fleeing anti-Semitic forces in Germany, eastern Europe and Russia.

A significant portion of the South American population also consists of Sephardic Jews, who are descendants of Jews from Spain and Portugal.

Jorge Ghitis, a Colombian Jew who attends services at Chabad Center of Doral, said his Jewish parents met in Colombia after his mother fled Germany and father fled Romania.

Although he practiced his Jewish faith growing up, Ghitis said he had abandoned it until Brashevitzky called him one day about three years ago and asked to meet.

''Before meeting the rabbi, my spiritual base was very low,'' said Ghitis, who stopped practicing after his Bar Mitzvah.

Now Ghitis spends much of his spare time at the Chabad center and doesn't miss Shabbat morning services at 9:30 a.m. on Saturdays.

''I have achieved a balance between the material, mental and spiritual,'' Ghitis said. ``All Jews have a spark that unites us inside of them. They just need to be reminded.''

Ghitis moved to Doral about 15 years ago because it was a convenient location for his wife, who worked at Miami International Airport. Ghitis now works near the airport, too, as a Miami-Dade police officer.

''I find people who moved to Doral and didn't put the Jewish faith at the top of their list,'' said Brashevitzky, noting that the closest synagogues are in Kendall.

Brashevitzky said that is the vision behind the Chabad movement, which aims to provide outreach services and activities through community centers, synagogues and schools to Jews in communities that lack a significant Jewish population.

''Our goal is to make sure Jews don't go a year without having contact with the faith,'' he said.

Chabad Lubavitch is one of the largest Hasidic movements in Orthodox Judaism with about 4,000 centers in more than 50 countries. According to www.Chabad.org, there are more than 60 Chabad centers in Florida. Most are in Miami-Dade and Broward counties.

Brashevitzky said the Chabad movement is not about building a temple and increasing membership but awakening the dormant faith in some Jewish people.

''It's nice to have a big center, but the idea is to reach each and every individual,'' he said. ``The idea is to rekindle that spark of Judaism faith. That sense of belonging.''

Brashevitzky, who is planting seeds to someday build a synagogue, likens himself to a farmer overseeing barren soil with hope the land will produce beautiful crops.

''Doral keeps growing and there's a growth -- though a slow one -- of the Jewish population here,'' he said.

Rabbi: Traveling Jewish RV 'an unbelievable miracle'

2009-05-30T20:51:00.000-07:00

By MARK HARPER
Education writer

"And behold, the Lord . . . said, 'I am the Lord, the God of Abraham, your father and the God of Isaac. The land on which you lie I will give to you, and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth; and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves.' "

-- Genesis 28:13-14

ORMOND BEACH -- During Volusia County pilgrimages to auto races, bike rallies and beach retreats, most everyone, it seems, checks out everyone else's wheels.

If they haven't noticed already, they'll soon start seeing something resembling a new city bus, bathed in bright blues, purple and orange, with slick slogans and images that could just as easily be advertising a law firm or pest-control service.

But telltale sayings -- such as "We Want Moshiach (the messiah) Now!" -- reveal this 34-foot-long Coachmen Mirada 310ds Class A motor home as something completely different. The RV is a Mitzvah Tank, an outreach to Jews.

This is the way Rabbi Pinchas Ezagui rolls.

The 43-year-old head of Esfmores Chabad Lubavitch Jewish Center of Greater Daytona Beach, an orthodox Ormond Beach synagogue, said the Mitzvah Tank is a way to reconnect with the flock. If Ezagui runs into a man, he might offer a chance to pray while wearing tefillin, an arm wrap. Or he might offer a woman a candle. In essence, it provides him a mobile living room to welcome people to the faith a couple of times a week.

"We give people the feeling they are a part of the community," he said. "Regardless of whether they live in Edgewater or Palm Coast or DeLand or DeBary or Deltona, they are at home. . . . There's no such thing as a lost Jew. You're always part of the family."

Mitzvah in Hebrew essentially means good deeds in God's name.

Ezagui, who arrived in Daytona Beach 17 years ago, had long talked of his camper calling. Last year, one of his synagogue members, Yehuda Morali, an Israeli immigrant, brought him to an RV dealership and instructed Ezagui to pick something out. Something new. Something big.

Morali and his business partner, Nissim Shoaff, shared in the expenses, Ezagui said.

Ezagui is only aware of one other Chabad in Florida with a Mitzvah Tank. And he doubts there's another in the country that can compare to his -- which includes a $15,000 graphics job.

"To have this luxury, to have a traveling Jewish Center, to us this is an unbelievable miracle," he said.

It's understandable that Ezagui -- who built the Ormond Chabad from scratch -- might wish to kvell a bit about the Mitzvah Tank, but to author and journalist Lisa Alcalay Klug, a trend has emerged in this age of multicultural America.

She calls it Hebesterism. Other examples: In San Francisco, the Chabad temple has a Mitzvah Cable Car and the rabbi rides a Mitzvah Bike. People are wearing T-shirts celebrating their Jewishness with phrases such as "Grateful Yid" and "Drink He'Brew: The Chosen Beer." And Hollywood is producing films like "Don't Mess With the Zohan," in which an Israeli counterterrorism hero fakes his own death to pursue a career as a New York hairstylist.

In her recent book "Cool Jew: The Ultimate Guide for Every Member of the Tribe," Klug -- the daughter of a Holocaust survivor -- describes a wider expression of Jewish identity, an embrace of kitsch and what she terms a "reverent irreverence."

"It's a freer way of celebrating (Judaism), based on a love of Jewish community and culture," she said. "Jewish people around the world are enjoying that in a way that is unprecedented."

Even in the land of NASCAR, Bike Week and Spring Break.

Jewish community celebrates Lag B’Omer

2009-05-17T10:44:00.000-07:00

The Bay state’s Jewish community on Tuesday celebrated the holiday of Lag B’Omer, a lifting of restrictions during the Omer, or period between Passover and Shavu’ot.

The days are counted from the second day of Passover -- which commemorates the freeing of the Israelite - to the night before the Shavu’ot - the giving of the Torah. Lag B’Omer falls on the 33rd day.

During the first 32 days of the Omer, weddings, parties, dancing and even haircuts are forbidden. This mourning period commemorates a plague, and Lag B’Omer celebrates a break in the plague.

A celebration hosted by the Chabad Center of Sharon at Borderland State Park on Tuesday drew about 100 people and included music, a softball game, barbeque and a petting zoo.

Rabbi explains ancient custom at opening of Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco

2009-05-17T10:25:00.000-07:00

Rabbi Yossi Eber and his wife, Dina, with Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco hosted their official grand opening and mezuza affixing ceremony this week.

A mezuza is a small, sacred parchment inscribed by hand with two Hebrew prayers. The tradition of hanging a mezuza (Hebrew for "doorpost") has its roots in the Bible. The last plague visited upon the Egyptians was the death of the firstborn; God told the Jews to sprinkle the blood of a sacrificial lamb on their doorposts so the angel of death would pass over their homes.

About 60 people attended the ceremony Tuesday as Eber affixed the mezuza to Chabad Jewish Center of West Pasco, at 9945 Trinity Blvd., Suite 5.

As a free service, Eber visits people's homes and offices in Trinity, Holiday, New Port Richey and surrounding areas to help them properly affix their mezuzas. There should be one on the front door, as well as any other doorways in the home or office, he said.

On another level, the mezuza provides protection and good spiritual energy and keeps the bad energy out, Eber said.

Every time you go out or come in, it's customary to touch the mezuza and kiss your hand. On the outside of the case are the Hebrew letters Shin, Dalet, Yud, an acronym meaning "The Guardian of the doors of Israel."

There is some misconception about mezuzas, even among Jewish people. The case can't be empty or contain a photo copy of the prayers, which is how most local synagogue gift shops and Web sites sell them. An original piece of mezuza parchment can cost between $30 and $150 or more.

"The important part is not the case, it's the original piece of parchment written by a scribe," Eber said.

Otherwise, "it's like a body without a soul."

Gutnick In takeover Bid for North Australian Diamonds

2009-05-17T10:22:00.000-07:00

According to the Australian newspaper The Age, Australian millionaire Joseph Gutnick is currently involved in a takeover bid for North Australia Diamonds valued at $24 million.

Twenty-one years ago, the Lubavitcher Rebbe told Gutnick that he would make discoveries of gold and diamonds within five years.

The Rebbe’s prediction of gold discoveries came true, but the late Rebbe's prophecy regarding diamonds failed to materialize despite exploration work by Gutnick's companies.

Last week Gutnick made a bid to acquire all of North Australian Diamonds. The company's main asset is the Merlin diamond project, situated in Australia’s Northern Territory.

The formerly listed Ashton Mining discovered the diamonds at the site and Rio Tinto sold it to North Australian Diamonds in 2004 after the latter took over Ashton.

Previous mining operations at Merlin produced 507,000 carats of diamonds including Australia's biggest diamond, weighing 104.73 carats and valued at over $500,000 in 2002.

Gutnick's cash bid for the diamond project is being made through Legend International Holdings, a Delaware-domiciled company that is listed in the US.

Gutnick's interests already control North Australian Diamonds with about 34% of the capital, held by Legend and another Gutnick entity, Yahalom International Resources Corporation.

Source: Steven Silverstein

Graffiti on Jewish sign troubles community

2009-05-14T19:34:00.000-07:00

The rabbi of a Chandler Jewish center tagged with anti-Semitic graffiti this week said community members are troubled by the incident, which he hopes was only a lone teenager acting out.

Members of the Chabad of the East Valley learning center, southeast of Ray Road and McClintock Drive, are planning to build and move into a larger facility on a dirt lot to the west. Someone took a black marker Tuesday to a sign advertising the future Chabad House, leaving a couple of swastikas, the letters "WWWP," and a vulgar comment about Jews, according to Chandler police.

Mendy Deitsch, a rabbi at the Chandler Chabad, said the center has been in the area for about 10 years and has had no similar problems. In the wake of the graffiti, some of the center's non-Jewish neighbors called to express concern, he said.

"It's a very nice neighborhood," Deitsch said. "People were very bothered by seeing it, that people could do something like that in this day and age."

Detective Dave Ramer, a Chandler Police Department spokesman, said the incident took place Monday or Tuesday. The person left behind no evidence, and video surveillance from nearby businesses turned up nothing, he said.

Ramer said he's never seen an incident like it in Chandler before.

"Typically, what you do is look at trends. This is the only one that we know of in Chandler," he said.

Bill Straus, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, a nonprofit watchdog that tracks hate crimes, said the letters WWWP probably refer to "white power," which is associated with neo-Nazism. There has been an increase in the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents in the Valley in the last several months, he said.

"We see tagging with swastikas on a fairly common basis," Straus said.

Chandler doesn't stand out in the number of such incidents, and police responded admirably, he said. Several motorists had called the Anti-Defamation League after seeing the graffiti.

"Damage was minimal and nobody was hurt. Those are the top priorities," Straus said. "That doesn't mean it isn't serious."

In December, a suspicious package was mailed to the Chabad of Scottsdale that made reference to a terrorist attack in India that left more than 170 dead. A law enforcement bomb squad opened the package to find it contained only harmless papers.

Sgt. Mark Clark, Scottsdale Police Department spokesman, said the mailer turned out to be a former student of the Scottsdale center who had mental problems. No charges were filed.

"They determined relatively quickly after that, that there was no threat to it," Clark said. "He was just venting."

Chabad is Amazing

2009-05-11T16:45:00.000-07:00

The JTA reports -- a mikveh in Montana of all places, can you imagine? Kosher Jewish marriage is impossible without one. Chabad is sniped at a lot in Jewish life, quite unfairly. Yet who else would accomplish such a thing? No one.

First mikveh in Montana opens
May 7, 2009

(JTA) -- The state of Montana has its first mikveh.

The newly built ritual bath is serving Jewish residents from Wyoming, Idaho, North and South Dakota, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and Saskatchewan, in addition to the 2,500-strong Jewish population of Montana, according to Chabad.org.

The mikveh, in the backyard of the Chabad House in Bozeman, took two years to build. One ritual pool adjoins an elaborate bathroom with a custom vanity, Jacuzzi tub, chandeliers and Venetian mosaic tiles.

"This is a milestone to Jewish life in Montana and is totally beyond our expectations," said Chavie Bruk, co-director with her husband of Chabad-Lubavitch of Montana.

36 Under 36 2009: Malkie Schwartz, 27

2009-04-29T10:26:00.000-07:00

by Sharon Udasin

When Malkie Schwartz first decided to leave behind her native Chabad-Lubavitch community in 2000, she had a strong network of support in secular New York — something that she realized most formers chasidim have difficulties finding. Three years later, she decided to change that by founding Footsteps, a comfortable learning and social environment where people can adjust to their new lives and discuss their decisions. "Unlike a lot of the people who leave, I had a support system and I obviously experienced challenges of my own," she says.
As a teen, Schwartz was able to move in with her secular grandmother, who introduced her to elements of mainstream culture frowned upon in Crown Heights – like television and movies – and encouraged her to enroll in Hunter College in 2001.

At school, Schwartz gradually began to meet other students who had just joined the mainstream community and left behind their ultra-Orthodox families and friends. But there was no comfortable setting where she could introduce all these lone people, who often felt shameful for leaving the fold, and therefore kept their identities secret, according to Schwartz. "It dawned on me that here were amazing people who could be helpful to me and to one another," she says.

So Schwartz decided to bring these people together, by starting a student group that began with five or six people. "The next thing I knew word spread like wildfire," she says. "I’ll never forget the energy in the room," at the early meetings.

Once the group was large enough, Schwartz decided to transform her small group to a citywide support organization called Footsteps, where formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews can socialize and take computerized GED, reading and writing skills courses donated by Instructional Systems Inc. Since founding the program, Schwartz has garnered financial support from the Charles and Lynn Shusterman Foundation, Bikkurim, and another anonymous source. Footsteps is what Schwartz calls a "safe place," where people can watch their first movie and learn with social worker Michael Jenkins how to create a basic resume.

"We have seen people go from a fourth grade reading level to enrolling in graduate school programs and people who, facing a slew of potential consequences, reveal to their friends and families who they are and what they are seeking from life."

Still tethered to the law:

Schwartz will soon be leaving her executive position at Footsteps to focus on her studies at Cardozo Law School, where she is a second year student. Favorite authors: Phillip Roth and Walter Mosley.

'They helped Israel,' says father of Mumbai Chabad victims

2009-04-29T10:21:00.000-07:00

By Haaretz Service

The father of Rifka Holtzberg, who was murdered alongside her husband Rabbi Gabriel Holtzberg during the attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai last year, said he was fortunate that his children had been sent to India as emissaries "to help the people of Israel."

Addressing a memorial ceremony at the Mount Herzl military cemetery in Jerusalem, Shmuel Rosenberg spoke of "a pain and longing that does not heal" but also of his pride for the Holtzberg couple.

"I was fortunate that my children Rivka and Gabi, were sent as emissaries of the Rebbe Lubavitch to Mumbai to help the people of Israel. To help any Jew in the Diaspora get in touch with their roots, with the people of Israel and the Land of Israel," he said.

The Holtzbergs were killed together when terrorists opened fire on the Mumbai headquarters of Chabad, but their toddler son Moshe was rescued by his Indian nanny Sandra who spirited him away from the beseiged building.

"God has given us a miracle, and has left us a piece of the family, little Moishe, who all of Israel has embraced," Rosenberg said. "Little Moishe is the son of all of the people of Israel and he symbolizes our perseverance."

Rosenberg praised Moshe's nanny Sandra, who rescued him during the attack. "Moshe was saved by a righteous gentile, Sandra, who is living with us now in our house and is a part of our family. We don't have the words to thank her, and we embrace her and have adopted her into our hearts."

The bereaved father vowed that he and his family would continue the work of his children, "in doing good deeds for others."

Nine people altogether were killed in the attack on the Chabad House in Mumbai, some dual citizens but all of them Jews.

173 people were killed in the attacks on India's financial center, and hundreds were wounded.

Jewish Community Center sees silver lining in ranch

2009-04-26T09:00:00.000-07:00

Aspen City Council is set to decide an application on Monday that would see the Jewish Resource Center Chabad of Aspen make its new home at the Silver Lining Ranch in east Aspen.

The application would add a 700-square-foot accessory dwelling unit residence, improve driveway and circulation access and add 10 parking spaces to the property at the end of Ute Avenue, which from 1999 through 2007 served as a getaway for children with cancer and other serious illness.

The existing 15,000-square-foot building would not be changed, save for the relocation of some interior walls to convert some of the downstairs space into preschool classrooms that would serve between 35 and 45 children each day.

In 2006, Aspen Chabad had received land-use approval, and had began the permit process, to build a new Jewish community center on Main Street. The 35,000-square-foot facility would have taken over the block where the L’Auberge D’Aspen rental cabins now sit.

Rabbi Mendel Mintz said he changed course when the ranch became available, because its gorgeous, wide-open setting seemed more fitting for a spiritual institution where a children’s day care center would be a major component. The congregation, one of two major Jewish organizations in Aspen, serves about 100 local families, Mintz said.

“Look at this,” Mintz said, motioning to the dramatic Independence Pass view. “Why should we be on Main Street?”

Not everyone thinks the relocation is a great idea, as the city has been fielding letters from neighbors, some of whom live across the Roaring Fork River in the Stillwater subdivision, who oppose the change in use plan.

One letter from an across-the-river homeowner states the homeowner’s belief that the Jewish community center would bring a high-intensity use to the ranch and would degrade the natural setting. Others who live along Ute Avenue have voiced concerns about traffic impacts the center would add to the street.

Mintz said he sees the traffic concerns as legitimate, and that Monday’s presentation to the council will include details on how the center will use vans and carpooling to reduce traffic to the center, which will have just 20 parking spaces. As far as neighbors across the river who are complaining, the rabbi said he was perplexed as to how some homeowners, the closest of whom is 700 feet away, could be troubled by the thought of more children running around the ranch’s 6-acre property.

Where we Worship: Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest CT

2009-04-12T21:58:00.000-07:00

Chabad Lubavitch of Northwest Connecticut is one of 5,000 centers worldwide where Jews of all backgrounds, who are not members of the syna gogue, can stop in anytime for worship.
“We come together and build communities.
That’s what Chabad is,” Rabbi Joseph Eisenbach said. He and his wife, Mina, came to Litchfield to start the community center in 1996. “Since then it’s grown in leaps and numbers,” he said. “I’ve seen it grow from one person to standing room only on Jewish holidays.”
Services are Fridays at 6 p.m. and Saturdays at 9 a.m. The Saturday service is followed with an 11:30 a.m. lunch each week. The Friday night service is also followed with a traditional meal.
Services are held in Litchfield at 7 Village Green Drive, behind the Blockbuster.
“We’re the alternative entertainment,” Eisenbach joked.
Since membership is not required, he said worship attendance varies from 15 up to 120, de pending on the time of year. “We’re the only temple in the northwest where no membership is required. Chabad is the biggest mix of everyone together because there are no labels, we have people from all walks of life,” Eisenbach said. “The warmth and family spirit here is very unique.” The synagogue also hosts two Hebrew schools for children. One is held in Litchfield and one is held in Waterbury.
Eisenbach said he hopes next year to launch one in Southbury.
Currently, through Chabad’s Jewish Learning Institute, adults can participate in a course called “Biblical Reflections.” “It’s fabulous because you find yourself in the main stories in the Bible,” he said, noting that chabads throughout the world are teaching the same course.
Eisenbach added that Chabad’s Internet ministry is an important aspect of the synagogue.
“Years ago you had to travel to a house of worship to learn and study, today you can be any where and everywhere and connect, study and learn. That’s the beauty of our web program, everything is right in your living room,” Eisenbach said.
For information on Chabad Lubavitch visit www.chabadnw.org

God’s Work - New York Times Magazine

2009-04-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

Little Moshe has passed through the time of danger. He is healthy and clever, and if he’s sometimes clingy, that’s fine with Rivki. Staying busy with him, with all her work, keeps difficult thoughts at bay. Such as: Why are she and Gabi here, amid the stench and chaos and otherness of Mumbai? They could have been in Brooklyn or Israel instead, with family and comforts nearby to ease their sadness.

But why think about what can’t be helped? They are here because that’s what the Rebbe inspired them to do. And look at the blessings their sacrifice has brought them, just as he said it would: Moshe, their miracle, and now another child on the way. God willing, the family will grow and bring honor to their mission.

Sixth of eleven,the middlest of middle children, Rivka Rosenberg, born in 1980, grows up in Afula, Israel, in a Lubavitcher home: a smiler, a laugher, knowing how to fit in yet managing to be heard. Everyone calls her Rivki. “Not meek,” a friend says. “Not recessive. Full of life. Always looking to connect. That’s the secret.” The friend pauses. “And that’s the problem.”

The peninsula of Mumbai juts into the Arabian Sea, a beckoning finger. It is the Western face of India: a short flight from any trouble spot you can name, yet not particularly troubled itself, except by extremes of poverty and wealth. It is where others, including filmmakers, come to make a point. They find Bollywood stars and goats in the street, luxury retail and beggars like flies, and, if they are Jewish, a Chabad House for kosher food and a sense of identity in a city where it is easy to get lost. Located almost invisibly in the last crook of the last joint of the beckoning finger, on a narrow, congested alley in a neighborhood called Colaba, the house waits for those who know about it and can find their way from their hostel or five-star hotel near the Gateway of India monument, welcoming all from the sea.

Gavriel Noach Holtzberg shows up mid-fall at Oholei Torah, a Lubavitcher yeshiva in Crown Heights. He is 9, not as well off as some of the boys, already a scholar in Yiddish and Hebrew but—having just moved from Israel with his parents and six siblings—almost completely lacking in English. Nevertheless, within a year, he has emerged at the top of his class, in not just scholarship but influence. If he can’t afford the right sneakers, plays no sports, he still commands respect from the boys; in the schoolyard they speak Yiddish with him, even after he learns to speak English with them.

His family knows from the start that something is different about Gabi. At 3, he is already punctilious in his observance of Jewish law, washing his hands the second he gets up, making sure everyone says the central prayer of Judaism, the Shema. His brothers and sisters are astounded by this, but his father, Nachman, a rabbi and ritual slaughterer, or shochet, is not. Rabbi Holtzberg’s family lived for eight generations in Safed, Israel, a center of mystical Judaism as far back as the sixteenth century. His own father “davened like he eats”—prayed naturally, as a form of sustenance. Gabi, too, has the quality of relentless piety. At 17, he walks to Teaneck, New Jersey, and back, six hours, to share a Torah thought at a synagogue there. His feet are covered with blisters.

Even earlier, he has a mission. “He told me, at maybe 10 or 11, ‘I want to sharpen the knives,’ ” says Nachman. A shochet’s knives are prized tools, requiring perfect care to prevent animals from feeling pain. “I said he was too young: He didn’t know how. He said, ‘I don’t care,’ and took a knife and sharpened it. He did a good job. But good wasn’t enough for him. It had to be ‘beautiful good.’ ”

Rebbe is the Yiddish for rabbi—in the Orthodox tradition, a learned male who receives a smicha, or certification, upon finishing his religious studies, regardless of whether he goes on to lead a congregation or live a relatively ordinary life. There are thousands of rabbis, many without portfolio. Those affiliated with Lubavitcher Judaism—so named because from 1813 until 1940 the movement was centered in the Russian town of Lubavitch—are easily met in Crown Heights, often wearing black hats and bushy beards, with their wives in wigs and their boys sporting side-locks like unwound ribbons.

But the Rebbe (or “the Grand Rebbe” or “the Lubavitcher Rebbe”) has in recent history meant only one man: Menachem Schneerson. Descended from the founders of Hasidism in the 1600s, he led the Lubavitchers from 1950 until his death, in 1994. During his tenure, he turned the movement, never a monkish sect, further outward, emphasizing practical acts of spirituality and engagement with the world, as befits a man who studied at the Sorbonne and, upon escaping from Europe, became an electrical engineer in the U.S. Navy.

Next: The couple's first date.

In particular, Schneerson expanded the Lubavitcher concept of Chabad (a Hebrew acronym for the words wisdom, understanding, and knowledge) to include outreach to all Jews anywhere. The network of Mitzvah Mobiles, roving rabbis, Chabad Houses, and married emissaries called shluchim that he fostered has, since his death, grown even bigger, so that Chabad-Lubavitch, as it is sometimes called, is now the fastest-growing—and most visible—Jewish movement in the world.

The chance to meet Schneerson as a prize for memorizing lengthy rabbinical tracts leaves some boys frozen in terror. Most shuffle quickly by the awesome personage, receiving a dollar from a stack of bills to give to charity, barely lifting their faces. But Gabi stops the line dead to ask a question, and even when the Rebbe answers (“You should have a blessing in everything you need”), he keeps talking. Is the Rebbe amused, surprised beneath his whiskers? In any case, Gabi gets what he came for: a blessing on his family.

The Rebbe speaks in Crown Heights: “Don’t convince yourself that you can live off the fat of the land and reside in these few blocks. Here you have radio and television, fresh milk every day, you can shower twice a day; there is no shortage of kosher milk and kosher bread, and you can serve God here and remain here. Listen! There is a ‘desolate land,’ which is thus far undeveloped spiritually. There are Jews there who don’t even know that they lack anything. You had the unearned privilege to be brought up with Torah and mitzvahs: ‘How lucky we are, how good is our lot.’ Be there for a day, a week, a month, a year, ten years. You won’t have nice clothes and a comfortable home? The Jews in the places you are going also manage without them. Why should you be better? Perhaps they’re better than you. If you have not used your treasures for this, it must bother you. And if you are not pained, then you are lacking in your love of God.”

Rivki Rosenberg’s yeshiva life, like that of most girls, is less about standing out as a scholar or analyzing the brilliant debates of the sages than about candles and purity and making a Jewish home. She is naturally inclined to do good: She helps girls who fall behind in their studies. But she is looking for a challenge. Every summer she can she travels, always within the context of Jewish works. When she attends a wedding—and there are many weddings—she loves to dance, as if to shake off the desire for something she can’t name. At one of these weddings, in 2001, when a cousin of hers marries one of the sons of Nachman Holtzberg, Nachman has a thought. “I see this girl, a very special girl. Maybe now Gabi”—who is in Israel to complete his rabbinical training—“will take the cousin?”

They are each other’s first date. Gabi is not as handsome as Rivki is pretty, but Chabad valorizes the nerd. The boy who in secular society would be the outcast—the most studious, least athletic, shyest around girls—is here the star. It’s he who is asked to go furthest into the world to represent Jewish values. Gabi immediately explains to Rivki the crazy kind of life he is seeking as an emissary. He says, “I want to tell you I’m a special meshuggener. What I need to do, I will do. Are you ready to do?” And she says, “I’m the same way,” as if relieved.

They marry in 2002. She is 22, he 23. In wedding pictures she is ethereal, wisplike, shining; with his sketchy fluff of reddish beard and pink cheeks, he looks boyish, surprised by his good fortune. For the first time, she dons the sheitel—the wig Hasidic women wear in public as a sign of modesty. Friends will soon notice that she always adorns it with a clip of some kind and that she is always fiddling with the clip.

To be an emissary, a man must first have his smicha and his wife. Though he must also be spiritual, that isn’t enough. “You need a certain resourcefulness,” says Yosef Kantor, head of a Chabad House in Bangkok and regional director for the area. “Your head not up in the heavens, but able to function on Earth.”

Gabi is one of the best he’s seen: a brilliant scholar and also, like his father, a shochet and (not unrelatedly) a mohel. But where to place him? Chabad outposts in Boise and Bondi Beach and the suburbs of Paris are not what Gabi is looking for. It is, in a way, a shittach, a matchmaking job. “There’s a certain element of providence,” Kantor says. “You think you can know everything about a prospective partner and hope you’ll find out pleasant things, but the opposite sometimes happens.” Nevertheless, the cleaving of shluchim to their posts, like spouses to a marriage, is taken seriously; it’s not like opening a foreign bank branch. No couple is forced to accept a posting, but once they do, they are expected to hold it for life.

Next: Why Gabi's mother doubted the world’s hospitality.

Lubavitchers do not proselytize, certainly not to Gentiles; they model a form of Jewish spirituality—through scholarship, prayer, and good deeds—that they hope will challenge other Jews to do the same. But in order to reach Jews, they must first find Jews to reach. The Chabad leadership continually studies patterns of Jewish settlement and travel for places to expand. As a result, the movement now has a presence in 72 countries, with more than 4,000 couples or families serving as shluchim worldwide.

But until recently Chabad had sent only the occasional roving rabbi to India, where about 5,000 Jews remained, mostly around Mumbai, after waves of settlement going back 2,000 years. Faith was burning out, with leaderless synagogues forced to pay poor Jews in order to corral the required minyan. Addressing these local needs was enough of a reason to consider sending shluchim. But Chabad also had its eyes on foreign Jews, who, since the Indian financial “miracle” of the nineties, were visiting in greater numbers. Some were businessmen. Some were Israelis freshly liberated from army service, on their way to nonmilitary pleasures in Goa. Others were young Americans on the first leg of spiritual journeys, often pursued by worried parents.

Rabbi Kantor and his superiors decide they have found the right couple to serve such people. They know it will be a difficult job—which, in a way, for Gabi if not for Rivki, makes it even more attractive.

Still, Frieda Holtzberg is worried. Her family escaped the Nazis in Hungary—she named Gabi for a neighbor’s child killed in the Holocaust—so she has good cause to doubt the world’s hospitality. She tells her husband to change their son’s mind. It’s the Third World: Think how uncomfortable it will be for them. Think of the children, so far away. For by now Rivki has given birth to a son, Menachem Mendel, named after the Rebbe.

But Nachman doesn’t want to intervene. “I loved the idea he could be the big guy in India,” he says. Anyway, Gabi hasn’t asked their permission.

Just before Hanukkah 2003, Gabi and Rivki arrive in Mumbai with little in tow but his knives and her wigs and Menachem Mendel, not yet 1. They set up shop in a rented room at the three-star Shelley’s Hotel on the water in the main tourist area: not an ideal situation, with no kitchen, little space, and a highly disagreeable owner. Still, they get to work, offering Torah study, officiating at bar mitzvahs and weddings, serving meals, and, because there is no kosher meat to be had—and no beef, of course; it’s India—slaughtering hundreds of chickens a week.

Life isn’t easy, and visitors, whether they come for dinner or a three-night stay, are not the same as friends. But together the Holtzbergs form a defense against the world, even as they throw themselves into it. They are each other’s lifeboats. “There is no Gabi without Rivki and no Rivki without Gabi” is how her mother puts it—and even though they behave modestly in public, as Orthodox standards require, it’s apparent to everyone who meets them that they are in love. “To say they are enamored,” Rabbi Kantor says, “would be an understatement.” Indeed, Rivki looks forward to teaching women visitors about the beauty of marital intimacy in Judaism, suggesting the zeal of one who experiences it. Like many new husbands, Gabi has a small smile playing on his face all the time, though maybe that’s also because he is finally getting to be what he always meant to be. He especially enjoys lighting a 25-foot Hanukkah menorah at the Gateway of India, where the whole world, it seems, can see it.

Rivki flies frequently to Israel. On one trip back, in 2004, she meets Chani Lifshitz in the airport. A Chabad emissary in Kathmandu, Chani, along with her husband, is famous for making the largest Seder in the world, serving 2,000 people in the heights of Nepal. In the airport, she and Rivki recognize each other as fellow shluchim “by the face,” Chani says. They become friends “like that.”

Every six months or so, they meet in Bangkok for three days of shopping. Rivki dresses “simple but classic”: T-shirts, slim skirts, cute, trendy glasses, a “big, big smile and a small, small necklace.” When you give her a compliment, “she doesn’t say no—she doesn’t fight with herself.” In between, they communicate electronically. Chani often leaves her Instant Messenger open, waiting for a ping. They discuss the decoration of their premises, share ideas for new programs and recipes. (Rivki is teaching herself to make soy milk from scratch.) They commiserate about the difficulty of their work, but not too much. Chani, with three children and another on the way, talks of their progress. Rivki doesn’t.

Chani knows why, but few others do. Menachem Mendel is dying in a hospital in Israel.

Next: The Chabad House opens in Mumbai.

Babies with Tay-Sachs, a genetic disease found among Eastern European Jews, seem normal at birth. Only after several months do symptoms appear: motor weakness, sensitivity to noise, and a telltale cherry-red spot on the retina. By 10 months, seizures have usually begun; soon after that come blindness, deafness, and brain atrophy. The disease is without exception fatal, usually by age 4.

Gabi and Rivki probably knew they were carriers, and certainly do by the time a second son, Dov Ber, is born with Tay-Sachs in 2004. He too is sent, after a while, to an Israeli hospital. This is why Rivki sometimes excuses herself from guests who wonder at the sight of an apparently childless young Lubavitcher woman: She goes to another room to cry. (“Why should I make them feel badly?”) It’s also why she flies home so often. After much painful discussion and rabbinic consultation—Rabbi Kantor says that Chabad made the decision that the Holtzbergs would not be easily replaced—they choose to stay in Mumbai and visit Israel as often as necessary. In any case, the visits are more for Rivki than the babies: Eventually, they do not seem to sense her presence even when she’s there. If she feels the same about God, she doesn’t let on.

Even after they move to a bigger space within Shelley’s Hotel, the situation is untenable. More and more people are seeking their services. Meals are difficult. Also, Shelley’s is being turned into a Planet Hollywood.

With the help of a large donation from investment banker George Rohr, Gabi is able to procure, for $1.5 million, a rundown five-story concrete office building on an alley called Hormusji Street. He has big plans for it: a kitchen, dining room, and restaurant on the first floor; a library, a synagogue, and an Internet lounge on the second; guest rooms on the third and fourth; their own apartment on the fifth. On the ground level, which has a wide blue gate but no walls, a guard will sit at a table in front of the elevator and stairs. On the roof, they will hold parties and special events on a terrace designed to catch the breeze and the view of the sea.

By the time the building is dedicated as India’s first permanent Chabad House, in 2006, Menachem Mendel has died at age 2 and Dov Ber is dying. Streams of pain wash over Rivki daily, Chani says. And—both terror and joy—she is pregnant again.

Thanks to the Chabad website and Google, there are now 20 to 30 businessmen, backpackers, and students arriving for 8 p.m. dinner each night; as many as 70 come on Shabbat. Rivki doesn’t attend to them alone: She has hired a fortyish Mumbaikar named Sandra Samuel to help clean and a young man from Assam named Zakir Hussain to help cook. Visitors who stay overnight notice that the guest rooms are outfitted with new toothbrushes, bottles of shampoo, Israeli hand soap: amenities of a nice hotel. But the Holtzbergs’ apartment is dilapidated and bare, little more than a bed and bookshelf. Paint is peeling from the walls. Only the empty blue child’s room is decorated, with the aleph-bet, pictures of ducks, and a portrait of the Rebbe.

To a Chabad crew filming them, Rivki hoarsely says of the work, “It’s fun.” Certainly it is for Gabi, who is ambitious for his faith and, like ambitious men everywhere, seeks success where it will stand out best. Besides running the Chabad, he is serving all of Mumbai’s synagogues and supervising kashruth for the region. He is “impressed by his own genius,” one guest observes. He leads each new roomful of Jews in loud renditions of all the old songs, even though he can’t carry a tune. “Adon Olam,” again? another guest thinks. When his sermons go on, or when people do not pay adequate attention to a video of the Rebbe he sometimes shows, he is peremptory. “If the girls don’t want to watch this, they can leave the room,” he says. The boy who insisted on sharpening knives until they are “beautiful good” is not deterred by trivialities. When terrorists attack Ahmedabad, some 300 miles north, and a visitor asks if Gabi is worried, he says, “I don’t care, they can come, be my guest, I’m not leaving.”

The talk one night turns to meditation. Gabi insists there is something parallel in Judaism: It’s called self-control. “If there are two apples in a bowl, personally I would always take the bad apple,” he says. “That’s my way of submitting.”

Next: Moshe, the “miracle” child, is born.

“What are you saying?” Rivki interrupts—she is not afraid of contradicting her husband, even in public, and he seems to enjoy it. “I would never take the bad apple, that’s crazy!”

Like believers in any faith that promises a joyful reward when the Messiah comes, Hasidim have well-developed mechanisms for ignoring, or even relishing, personal discomfort in deference to a greater mission. Perhaps it is a good feature of good works that they are exhausting, but to make a home in a Mumbai alley after growing up in Israel and Brooklyn is something more: a form of self-abnegation. Your stipend covers a respectable standard of living—but you have to raise the money yourself. You will not get rich being shluchim.

The issue of submission to fate is rendered moot that November, their first in the new Chabad House, when their third son is born. They name him Moshe. Perhaps they have him tested; in any case, by the time he is 6 months old, they know he does not have Tay-Sachs. He is their “miracle” child, their malach, or angel; when someone later says that he and Rivki seem like best friends, Rivki says Yes, my only friend.

Sandra is promoted to nanny. It is not just because she is low caste and poor that she is grateful for the job. The Holtzbergs are kind, and Moshe is an adorable baby, “very precious to me.” Her own two boys are, at 16 and 23, too old for mothering, but Sandra sleeps in Moshe’s room, itself a privilege. Hussain, whom everyone calls Jackie, sleeps on a mat under the stairwell and at one point must be gently told by Rivki to take down the pictures of naked women taped to the low ceiling above him.

The day breaks hot and humid, as usual, but Rivki is looking forward to it anyway. The air-conditioner works; there are no special events. Only a few visitors are expected that evening. Two rabbis—Bentzion Chorman and Leibish Teitelbaum—are in town to supervise Kosher certification for a mushroom-packing plant. Chorman likes breaded chicken, so Rivki will prepare it for dinner. Yocheved Orpaz, from Israel, is visiting her daughter and grandchildren; Olga Daniella Bakayeva—Daniella, they call her, a volunteer from Seattle—said she’d come back after enjoying her Shabbat meal last week. (Even now her Facebook page is bragging about the best cholent she’s eaten in ages.) And Norma Schwartzblatt-Rabinowitz, from Mexico, will be here on the way to making aliyah: immigrating to Israel. Rivki will bake her an apple cake.

But Rivki’s mind drifts from immediate matters. It’s Wednesday, November 26, 2008: Moshe’s 2nd birthday is on Saturday. Could two years have passed so quickly? He is thriving and, now that Sandra is with him, can finally sleep through the night without his ema—Hebrew for “mother”—at his side. Otherwise, how could Rivki be pregnant with his little brother or sister? She is five months along, expecting in April.

Taking a quick break from dinner preparations around 7:30, Rivki e-mails her friend Chani. With the baby coming, what color should they paint the upstairs?

Four days earlier—at 8 a.m. on Saturday, November 22—ten men leave Karachi in a small boat. Soon they meet up with a larger ship, which takes them on another leg of their journey. Their leader is a 25-year-old Pakistani named Ismail Khan. Khan receives orders by satellite phone from handlers in Lashkar-e-Taiba, a Lahore-based terrorist group that seeks to establish Muslim rule throughout South Asia. In Urdu, the group’s name means Army of the Pure.

On Sunday, the men hijack an Indian fishing trawler, killing four crew members and eventually its captain. Another 550 nautical miles’ sail on the Arabian Sea brings them within sight of Mumbai. By now, it’s Wednesday afternoon. They wait for darkness. At about 8:30 p.m., they board a dinghy and head for land, leaving behind their shaving cream, laundry detergent, and a bottle of Mountain Dew. They disembark just south of the Gateway of India. Telling anyone who asks that they are students, they divide up into five teams and disperse into the night: to the central railway station, to the Taj Mahal and Oberoi hotels, to the touristy Leopold Café, and to the house on Hormusji Street.

Chani, in Kathmandu, has an idea for what color Rivki should paint. She opens her Internet Messenger and waits for the ping.

Dinner is over, but the two rabbis and Gabi are still on the second floor, probably discussing Torah, as Gabi is wont to do late into the night. It has been a quiet evening. A few visitors dropped by but left. Norma and Yocheved are already upstairs. Sandra and Jackie are in the first-floor kitchen; perhaps Rivki is with them, helping to clean up. Or perhaps Rivki is with the men. It will be hard, in retrospect, to piece this information together. But Moshe is asleep in his blue fifth-floor bedroom.

Next: Attackers arrive at the Chabad House.

At 9:30, the two men assigned to attack the Chabad House arrive at the gate with their Kalashnikovs, pistols, hand grenades, and bombs. The guard, mysteriously, is gone. A taxi, waiting to take the rabbis to the airport after dinner, speeds away as the shooting begins. It sounds to Sandra like hundreds of explosions; she and Jackie lock themselves into the pantry among the meat freezers and jars of olives and pickles. “Like cowards,” she says later. Gabi, on the phone with the Israeli consulate, says, in Hebrew, “The situation is not good,” and the line goes dead.

Sandra and Jackie spend the night in the pantry. They do not know what is happening in the rest of the house. On Thursday morning around eleven, they hear Moshe crying: Ema! Ema! Not knowing whether the gunmen are still in the building (they are), Sandra dashes upstairs, as Jackie escapes down. She finds the boy standing next to the bodies of his parents—dead or dying, she doesn’t know. She grabs him without thinking and runs as fast as she can into the street. His clothes are spattered with his parents’ blood.

By the time Indian commandos, airdropped into the building, get control of the situation, as Shabbat begins on Friday evening, Gabi, Rivki, Norma, Yocheved, Chorman, and Teitelbaum all are dead. (Daniella Bakayeva decided not to come for dinner after all but took a walk instead.) The timing of the killings, and possible torture, is unclear. According to some reports, someone was still alive as late as Friday morning to wave a prayer shawl from a window. But who was waving, and what did it mean? Was it a gunman, trying to surrender? In transcripts of intercepted phone calls, handlers back in Lahore instruct one of the terrorists to kill the hostages in order to “spoil relations” between India and Israel. “Brother, you have to fight,” they say, as if he were wavering. “This is a matter of the prestige of Islam.”

“I waited for you to connect to the Messenger,” says Chani.

Addressing a conference of 2,000 women emissaries at the New York Hilton in February, she is speaking as if it were still November and she could still talk directly to Rivki. “I waited for you to connect to the Messenger so that we could have coffee and a croissant together in front of the screen, as we’ve done for the last four years. A sort of private virtual joke. You prepare the morning pastry on a plate, with a detailed description of taste and texture. And always something different: one day apple pie, one day jelly cookies with cream. I prepare the drinks. In the summer, I would offer you fruit juices, and in the winter, I would roll tea leaves from Dodover Square and Geiyah Bazaar market. I’m waiting for you with the tea, Rivki. Waiting for your cake … But you’re not coming, Rivki, and your tea is getting cold.”

Instant messenger, Facebook, cell phones: The technology that made the Holtzbergs’ life in Mumbai less lonely also helped to explain its end. It is largely because Ismail Khan made the mistake of leaving his satellite phone in the dinghy that we know what we do about the terrorists’ movements; Khan and eight of the others were killed in the fighting. The sole survivor, Muhammad Ajmal Kasab, went on trial last month in Mumbai. His interrogation suggests that the attacks were part of a far broader scheme, some of which fizzled.

As it was, more than 170 people were killed in Mumbai. Many were tourists, enjoying a bite at the Leopold or settling in for an evening at the Oberoi. Others were locals, including doctors in a hospital that was, it seems, attacked as an afterthought.

The Holtzbergs were neither tourists nor locals. They were emissaries from one world to the other. Perhaps it’s more relevant to say they were Jews. In any case, to those who believe they died with the words of the Shema on their lips, their death is but another moment in their lives. What they endured in those last hours—did they know that Moshe escaped alive?—does not invalidate what they enjoyed of life beforehand, and suffered of it, too. Many in the community are therefore torn about discussing “the tragedy.” Some speak anyway, in thousands of posts to Chabad’s website. Others have commemorated the family by naming babies for them; Nachman Holtzberg has reports of 70 new Gabis and 60 new Rivkis—one of them Chani’s daughter, born this month. And others have contributed to the Chabad Mumbai Relief Fund, which will eventually continue the Holtzbergs’ mission.

For Chabad has made it clear that it is not retrenching. In December, the Holtzbergs’ parents flew to Mumbai to light the 25-foot Hanukkah menorah at the Gateway of India and another in front of the ruined house on Hormusji Street. Though no decision has yet been made about the building itself, teams of young rabbis have spent time in the city, teaching and officiating and offering meals at locations that are no longer Googleable. (Security measures have been upgraded at Chabad Houses worldwide.) Rabbi Kantor, in Bangkok, says he has even begun interviewing couples who, unsolicited, have sought to be the next shluchim in Mumbai.

Next: How Moshe is doing now.

Nachman Holtzberg has retrieved Gabi’s knives—the only personal items not held as evidence. Back in Brooklyn, he says he’d be proud if his other children became shluchim too. “I would be happy, absolutely.”

And his wife?

He sighs. “Not everyone can be the same.”

A few weeks after the attacks, in late December, Dov Ber dies at age 4. (It is later learned that the baby Rivki was carrying had tested negative for Tay-Sachs.) Nachman Holtzberg does not want to discuss it: “It’s not important,” he says. He means we must focus on what is ongoing, which means Moshe. Now he, too, is an emissary; the only Jew to survive, he accompanied the bodies of the six victims on an Israeli Air Force flight from Mumbai. His parents are buried next to his brothers on the Mount of Olives.

Many have noted that Moshe, like his biblical namesake, was rescued by a non-Jew; Sandra, now taking care of him at Rivki’s parents’ home in Afula, has been mentioned as a possible recipient of Israel’s “righteous Gentile” designation. That would allow her to remain with him, she hopes, at least until he is “fully normal.”

But what will that mean? For months, Moshe has been “very nervous,” Nachman Holtzberg says. “Nobody knows what he knows.” Things that remind him of India—a toy, a visitor—seem to bring it all back, and he wails. But Sandra, in a recent phone conversation, says Moshe has forgotten what Urdu he knew and has not asked for his parents in fourteen days.

“It’s a good thing,” she adds. And maybe it is. The world is a painful place to get to know.

At which point Moshe, who has been giggling in the background, grabs the phone. “Shalom?” he inquires.