DESPITE ECONOMY, CHABAD SAYS NO CUTBACKS IN HOLIDAY OUTREACH
BROOKLYN, N.Y., April 2 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- (lubavitch.com) Some 570 rabbinical students will be leaving Sunday, April 5, to any of 285 locations worldwide where they will conduct communal seders this Passover, April 8 and 9th. New on the list of exotic locations slated for Chabad's seders is Phnom Penh, Cambodia.
At Lubavitch World Headquarters, itineraries for the rabbinical students are being coordinated with regional Chabad representatives, reflecting numbers that surpass last year's.
The comprehensive list of locations means that Jews--even those in remote points of Vietnam, China, Chile, Japan, Ukraine, Russia, Peru and Spain, as well as Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, among many other locations in Africa, South America, Europe and North America--will have the benefit of a traditional Passover seder with Chabad.
Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Vice Chairman of Merkos, the Chabad-Lubavitch educational division, says that despite the dire economic climate, "The Rebbe insisted that every Jew be given the opportunity to participate at a Seder, and we will do everything possible to make sure that happens on the largest scale yet."
Funding for the seders comes from several philanthropists including Mr. George Rohr, a long time supporter of Chabad activities, and a gift of $500,000 from Florida energy magnate, Guma Aguiar. This is the second consecutive year that Aguiar, 31, has been a major sponsor of Chabad's global Passover campaign.
Aguiar became excited about this project last year and contributed towards Chabad's worldwide Passover seders--collectively, the largest seder in the world. As a result, he said, "Chabad leaders and I have realized what a truly sacred honor it is to partner together with each other on this project."
With seders hosting anywhere from 20-2000 (Nepal), accurate figures for the total number of participants at Chabad seders are hard to come by, but upwards of 500,000 people would be a safe estimate, say coordinators.
Conducting seders in some of the backwaters of the Far East and Africa involves often complicated logistics and requires the cooperation of local authorities. Getting vast quantities of matzah, wine, meat and other Passover staples, entails considerable preliminary work to ensure timely deliveries.
These seders are in addition to those hosted by Chabad representatives in their respective communities worldwide.
To search for the Chabad-Lubavitch center closest to you, click here (http://www.lubavitch.com/centers/)
SOURCE Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters
Showing posts with label George Rohr. Show all posts
Showing posts with label George Rohr. Show all posts
Friday, April 03, 2009
Sunday, November 23, 2008
Budgets slashed at Jewish schools in FSU
November 19, 2008
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA)—Across the former Soviet Union, Chabad’s outreach network is facing an acute financial crisis that has slashed budgets across the board and left the region’s largest network of Jewish schools scrambling to stay afloat.
Accounts of the depth of the financial crisis for Chabad in the former Soviet Union vary widely among rabbis and professionals working for the organization. But everyone agrees that the group’s main benefactor, Lev Leviev, racked by the world financial crisis, has been forced to dramatically scale back funding for the Or Avner network of schools, which he founded.
The repercussions of the setback run deep in a community that has relied greatly on Leviev’s largesse to proliferate its operations throughout the Soviet Union.
Leviev’s main holding company, Africa Israel, has lost some 85 percent of its value this year. Israeli news reports suggest a steady sell-off of other assets in recent months.
Forbes estimated Leviev’s wealth at the beginning of 2008 at $4.5 billion. Though local Chabad officials are mum, most estimates put Leviev’s yearly funding of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities and the Or Avner Foundation at $60 million. The Or Avner school system was founded by Leviev in 1992 as a tribute to his father. It serves 13,000 people through its network of 75 day schools and 20 other programs.
Leviev’s woes come as the global financial crisis takes particular hold in the two largest countries of the former Soviet Union—Russia and Ukraine. The crisis has hit the region’s oligarchs the hardest and drastically reduced the pool of capital available for local charitable donations.
Share prices on the Russian stock exchange have fallen 75 percent since May, and the oligarchs have been the hardest hit so far. Their net worth has fallen from $300 billion in May to just over $70 billion today, according to an article in the leading Russian business daily Vedomosti.
The financial crisis has constricted all the usual pipelines through which Jewish money flows into the former Soviet Union to educate the young, feed the infirm and bolster community ties.
The two other networks of schools in the region, the secular ORT system and the Orthodox Shma Yisrael, have suffered from cutbacks undertaken by the Jewish Agency for Israel. Shma Yisrael has lost $200,000 in funding and the ORT schools are struggling through a budget cut of $1.2 million in recent months, according to ORT officials.
Two of the largest local funders of Jewish causes in Ukraine, Igor Kolomoysky and Gennady Bogolubov, also have lost billions since the financial crisis hit, according to a report by Dragon Capital published in the Kyiv Post.
Here in Odessa, the southwest limit of Chabad’s reach in the former Soviet Union, the head rabbi has already relegated Leviev’s charity to the past tense, a luxury no longer to be relied upon.
"The help that Mr. Leviev gave, it was unique help. It was stable and every month you knew the foundation was good," Avraham Wolf said, sitting behind the desk of his office in the back corner of a two-story synagogue. "We were very thankful that he opened the schools. He gave us a big help. Now it depends on every city and every rabbi."
The rumblings of a coming crisis appeared in mid-August, Wolf said, and the money from the Or Avner Foundation stopped coming at the beginning of September.
He has closed one section of a school and started bussing children across town for classes. Four school branches are now consolidated into three with 490 students. They have shortened the hours of the schools. School directors across Ukraine described similar situations.
"You can’t tell a child that lives near you that tomorrow morning there won’t be a glass of milk," Wolf said, referring to the kosher breakfasts they serve each morning.
Thirteen Israeli families living and working in Odessa had gone without pay for two months because of budget shortfalls, he said.
Some employees of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities in Moscow also have been working with reduced or no salaries for two months, said one local community member with close ties to Chabad.
Ukraine is one step removed from Leviev’s funds, which are sent to local accounts from the Russian foundation, and that money stopped coming this fall, according to a Jewish community leader in Ukraine.
Russia’s head Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar met with rabbis from across Ukraine in Kiev last week to discuss the financial crisis.
Speaking by phone Wednesday from New York where he was attending an annual gathering of Chabad emissaries, Lazar told JTA that the rabbis were determined to continue in the face of the crisis.
"They are going to places where there are no local sources to fund raise, and they are not giving up," Lazar said. "Our rabbis are standing out there, saying we’re not going to let the rebbe down," referring to the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who inspired Chabad’s emissary missions.
Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, the head rabbi of the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, said that last week the Or Avner schools in Ukraine received their first infusion of cash from the Moscow-based foundation in two months, though it wasn’t as much as the schools usually receive.
Both Chabad officials in Moscow and a spokesman for Leviev say that the funds have not stopped, rather that there has been a cut of 30 percent across the board. Leviev also has asked the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities to cut costs, according to Chabad officials in Moscow.
Lazar said that rabbis had been told not to take out loans to cover the costs of their communities, because of credit rules and cultural norms in Russia that make credit more problematic.
He said the cuts came as no surprise to Chabad leaders in the former Soviet Union.
"Mr. Leviev was one of the first people that said it looks like the crisis is going to hit us and that we have to get ready it for it," Lazar said.
Chabad’s other major funders include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and the New York-based philanthropist George Rohr. British newspapers abound with accounts that, in the wake of the financial crisis, a cash-strapped Abramovich has been forced to cut back the budget for his Chelsea soccer team, but Chabad representatives would not disclose drops in funding from other donors.
In Ukraine, a collapse of the commodities market forced the country to seek a $16.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund this month. There, Ukraine’s oligarchs have born the brunt of the collapse as well.
Kaminetsky said that even the billionaires themselves had no idea how much they had lost and that their commitments had not changed.
Vadim Rabinovich, a Ukrainian media magnate and donor, said during a panel on fundraising in October that he hoped to meet with rabbis to discuss the financial crisis and its impact on Jewish education.
In Ukraine, each Chabad rabbi is more reliant on his own efforts to find local or international sources to fund community projects. There has been no head Chabad rabbi for the country since the post was vacated in September.
Russia has a more centralized model built on the fund-raising contacts of the Moscow-based federation that are then distributed to communities.
Whether the funds have been completely frozen or slashed by a third, the Chabad-run federations of both countries have been forced to tighten their belts and make cuts.
David Mondshine, the head of the Or Avner Foundation, said that schools had been consolidated, hours had been shortened and some programs had been pared down in recent months.
Funds from larger and richer communities have been diverted to smaller schools, he said. But in Ukraine, it’s been more difficult. One school in the town of Khmelnitsky has already shut down, though Chabad officials in Moscow said it was preparing to close anyway for lack of local support, and there may be more closings.
No rabbi wants to be the first to close the doors.
ODESSA, Ukraine (JTA)—Across the former Soviet Union, Chabad’s outreach network is facing an acute financial crisis that has slashed budgets across the board and left the region’s largest network of Jewish schools scrambling to stay afloat.
Accounts of the depth of the financial crisis for Chabad in the former Soviet Union vary widely among rabbis and professionals working for the organization. But everyone agrees that the group’s main benefactor, Lev Leviev, racked by the world financial crisis, has been forced to dramatically scale back funding for the Or Avner network of schools, which he founded.
The repercussions of the setback run deep in a community that has relied greatly on Leviev’s largesse to proliferate its operations throughout the Soviet Union.
Leviev’s main holding company, Africa Israel, has lost some 85 percent of its value this year. Israeli news reports suggest a steady sell-off of other assets in recent months.
Forbes estimated Leviev’s wealth at the beginning of 2008 at $4.5 billion. Though local Chabad officials are mum, most estimates put Leviev’s yearly funding of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities and the Or Avner Foundation at $60 million. The Or Avner school system was founded by Leviev in 1992 as a tribute to his father. It serves 13,000 people through its network of 75 day schools and 20 other programs.
Leviev’s woes come as the global financial crisis takes particular hold in the two largest countries of the former Soviet Union—Russia and Ukraine. The crisis has hit the region’s oligarchs the hardest and drastically reduced the pool of capital available for local charitable donations.
Share prices on the Russian stock exchange have fallen 75 percent since May, and the oligarchs have been the hardest hit so far. Their net worth has fallen from $300 billion in May to just over $70 billion today, according to an article in the leading Russian business daily Vedomosti.
The financial crisis has constricted all the usual pipelines through which Jewish money flows into the former Soviet Union to educate the young, feed the infirm and bolster community ties.
The two other networks of schools in the region, the secular ORT system and the Orthodox Shma Yisrael, have suffered from cutbacks undertaken by the Jewish Agency for Israel. Shma Yisrael has lost $200,000 in funding and the ORT schools are struggling through a budget cut of $1.2 million in recent months, according to ORT officials.
Two of the largest local funders of Jewish causes in Ukraine, Igor Kolomoysky and Gennady Bogolubov, also have lost billions since the financial crisis hit, according to a report by Dragon Capital published in the Kyiv Post.
Here in Odessa, the southwest limit of Chabad’s reach in the former Soviet Union, the head rabbi has already relegated Leviev’s charity to the past tense, a luxury no longer to be relied upon.
"The help that Mr. Leviev gave, it was unique help. It was stable and every month you knew the foundation was good," Avraham Wolf said, sitting behind the desk of his office in the back corner of a two-story synagogue. "We were very thankful that he opened the schools. He gave us a big help. Now it depends on every city and every rabbi."
The rumblings of a coming crisis appeared in mid-August, Wolf said, and the money from the Or Avner Foundation stopped coming at the beginning of September.
He has closed one section of a school and started bussing children across town for classes. Four school branches are now consolidated into three with 490 students. They have shortened the hours of the schools. School directors across Ukraine described similar situations.
"You can’t tell a child that lives near you that tomorrow morning there won’t be a glass of milk," Wolf said, referring to the kosher breakfasts they serve each morning.
Thirteen Israeli families living and working in Odessa had gone without pay for two months because of budget shortfalls, he said.
Some employees of the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities in Moscow also have been working with reduced or no salaries for two months, said one local community member with close ties to Chabad.
Ukraine is one step removed from Leviev’s funds, which are sent to local accounts from the Russian foundation, and that money stopped coming this fall, according to a Jewish community leader in Ukraine.
Russia’s head Chabad Rabbi Berel Lazar met with rabbis from across Ukraine in Kiev last week to discuss the financial crisis.
Speaking by phone Wednesday from New York where he was attending an annual gathering of Chabad emissaries, Lazar told JTA that the rabbis were determined to continue in the face of the crisis.
"They are going to places where there are no local sources to fund raise, and they are not giving up," Lazar said. "Our rabbis are standing out there, saying we’re not going to let the rebbe down," referring to the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who inspired Chabad’s emissary missions.
Rabbi Shmuel Kaminetsky, the head rabbi of the Ukrainian city of Dnepropetrovsk, said that last week the Or Avner schools in Ukraine received their first infusion of cash from the Moscow-based foundation in two months, though it wasn’t as much as the schools usually receive.
Both Chabad officials in Moscow and a spokesman for Leviev say that the funds have not stopped, rather that there has been a cut of 30 percent across the board. Leviev also has asked the Chabad-run Federation of Jewish Communities to cut costs, according to Chabad officials in Moscow.
Lazar said that rabbis had been told not to take out loans to cover the costs of their communities, because of credit rules and cultural norms in Russia that make credit more problematic.
He said the cuts came as no surprise to Chabad leaders in the former Soviet Union.
"Mr. Leviev was one of the first people that said it looks like the crisis is going to hit us and that we have to get ready it for it," Lazar said.
Chabad’s other major funders include Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich and the New York-based philanthropist George Rohr. British newspapers abound with accounts that, in the wake of the financial crisis, a cash-strapped Abramovich has been forced to cut back the budget for his Chelsea soccer team, but Chabad representatives would not disclose drops in funding from other donors.
In Ukraine, a collapse of the commodities market forced the country to seek a $16.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund this month. There, Ukraine’s oligarchs have born the brunt of the collapse as well.
Kaminetsky said that even the billionaires themselves had no idea how much they had lost and that their commitments had not changed.
Vadim Rabinovich, a Ukrainian media magnate and donor, said during a panel on fundraising in October that he hoped to meet with rabbis to discuss the financial crisis and its impact on Jewish education.
In Ukraine, each Chabad rabbi is more reliant on his own efforts to find local or international sources to fund community projects. There has been no head Chabad rabbi for the country since the post was vacated in September.
Russia has a more centralized model built on the fund-raising contacts of the Moscow-based federation that are then distributed to communities.
Whether the funds have been completely frozen or slashed by a third, the Chabad-run federations of both countries have been forced to tighten their belts and make cuts.
David Mondshine, the head of the Or Avner Foundation, said that schools had been consolidated, hours had been shortened and some programs had been pared down in recent months.
Funds from larger and richer communities have been diverted to smaller schools, he said. But in Ukraine, it’s been more difficult. One school in the town of Khmelnitsky has already shut down, though Chabad officials in Moscow said it was preparing to close anyway for lack of local support, and there may be more closings.
No rabbi wants to be the first to close the doors.
Monday, April 07, 2008
Rebuilding Jewish Life In Germany
Overcoming financial difficulties and personal fears, twenty-five Jewish college students took part in a historic trip to Berlin during spring break. According to organizers, the city’s Jewish community is better off for it.
"This trip demonstrated that, yes, there is a future for Jewish life in Germany," proclaimed Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, the delegation’s coordinator and co-director of the Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The university-based rabbi derived the idea for the trip after returning from last year’s dedication ceremony of the new Rohr Chabad Center, which serves as the headquarters for Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin – co-directed by Tiechtel’s brother and sister-in-law, Rabbi Yehuda and Leah Tiechtel.
During their weeklong trip the students cleaned up a Jewish cemetery, visited with residents of a Jewish home for the elderly, celebrated the dedication of a Torah scroll in Frankfurt, helped with Purim preparations, and toured the remains of the Saschenhausen concentration camp. They also met with local political leaders, including Berlin’s Senator of Interior Erhart Koerting and Monika Thiemen, mayor of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.
Harrison Leibow, a student, said that spending Shabbat in a capital that once was the seat of Nazi power was a forceful experience. The Americans’ German counterparts turned out for the occasion, and the two student delegations stayed at the Rohr Chabad Center’s central synagogue for hours after the conclusion of Friday night services.
"Going into the trip, no one really could anticipate the impact that we were going to make on the Jewish community in Germany," said Leibow. "But every day we were in Germany, we saw another man smile in pride.
"The weird thing is, none of us realized how big of an impact the trip would make on us either," he continued. "It was a great trip, and I wouldn’t trade it for any other."
Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel stressed that the students not only gave up travel opportunities to such spring break resorts as Acapulco, but that they themselves fund-raised for the Germany mission.
"The financial undertaking was daunting," he explained, "and the parents of the students, as well as many of the students themselves, were apprehensive about a trip to the birthplace of Nazism.
Ryan Scott does some Purim face painting.
"Nevertheless, beginning in September," added the rabbi, "the students took up the project, planned fundraisers and helped set the itinerary."
Funding for part of the trip was made possible by philanthropist George Rohr and his family. Additional support came from Michael and Janet LeRoy and their family. The Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation also awarded a grant to the project.
Following Shabbat in Berlin the students went to Frankfurt Oder, a city on the German-Poland border, where they participated in the dedication of a Torah scroll donated by Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin in honor of the Americans’ visit. The city was once home to one of Germany’s largest Jewish communities before the Holocaust. After many years of neglect, it is currently experiencing a Jewish revival.
"This was the first Torah dedicated to this community since the Holocaust," said Goldie Tiechtel, the rabbi’s wife and fellow co-director of the Chabad Jewish Student Center. "Even more powerful, three of the students who had never had a bar mitzvah decided to use the opportunity to celebrate that milestone in their lives."
The next day, they went to a Jewish section of the oldest cemetery in Europe to clear overgrown weeds and return headstones – some from the 19th century – to their places. Later, they arranged a Purim event for a Jewish day school in Berlin.
At Berlin’s Jewish home for the elderly they sang songs with the residents, many of whom are Holocaust survivors.
"I went to Germany not knowing what I was going to get out of it," said university student Sabrina Snowsky. "When the trip came to an end, I realized how much I learned about Judaism, Germany, Berlin and the Holocaust. But most important, I learned about myself. I took so much back from every activity, and I think this trip changed me for the best."
Boruch Wolf contributed to this article.
"This trip demonstrated that, yes, there is a future for Jewish life in Germany," proclaimed Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel, the delegation’s coordinator and co-director of the Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The university-based rabbi derived the idea for the trip after returning from last year’s dedication ceremony of the new Rohr Chabad Center, which serves as the headquarters for Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin – co-directed by Tiechtel’s brother and sister-in-law, Rabbi Yehuda and Leah Tiechtel.
During their weeklong trip the students cleaned up a Jewish cemetery, visited with residents of a Jewish home for the elderly, celebrated the dedication of a Torah scroll in Frankfurt, helped with Purim preparations, and toured the remains of the Saschenhausen concentration camp. They also met with local political leaders, including Berlin’s Senator of Interior Erhart Koerting and Monika Thiemen, mayor of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.
Harrison Leibow, a student, said that spending Shabbat in a capital that once was the seat of Nazi power was a forceful experience. The Americans’ German counterparts turned out for the occasion, and the two student delegations stayed at the Rohr Chabad Center’s central synagogue for hours after the conclusion of Friday night services.
"Going into the trip, no one really could anticipate the impact that we were going to make on the Jewish community in Germany," said Leibow. "But every day we were in Germany, we saw another man smile in pride.
"The weird thing is, none of us realized how big of an impact the trip would make on us either," he continued. "It was a great trip, and I wouldn’t trade it for any other."
Rabbi Dovid Tiechtel stressed that the students not only gave up travel opportunities to such spring break resorts as Acapulco, but that they themselves fund-raised for the Germany mission.
"The financial undertaking was daunting," he explained, "and the parents of the students, as well as many of the students themselves, were apprehensive about a trip to the birthplace of Nazism.
Ryan Scott does some Purim face painting.
"Nevertheless, beginning in September," added the rabbi, "the students took up the project, planned fundraisers and helped set the itinerary."
Funding for part of the trip was made possible by philanthropist George Rohr and his family. Additional support came from Michael and Janet LeRoy and their family. The Champaign-Urbana Jewish Federation also awarded a grant to the project.
Following Shabbat in Berlin the students went to Frankfurt Oder, a city on the German-Poland border, where they participated in the dedication of a Torah scroll donated by Chabad-Lubavitch of Berlin in honor of the Americans’ visit. The city was once home to one of Germany’s largest Jewish communities before the Holocaust. After many years of neglect, it is currently experiencing a Jewish revival.
"This was the first Torah dedicated to this community since the Holocaust," said Goldie Tiechtel, the rabbi’s wife and fellow co-director of the Chabad Jewish Student Center. "Even more powerful, three of the students who had never had a bar mitzvah decided to use the opportunity to celebrate that milestone in their lives."
The next day, they went to a Jewish section of the oldest cemetery in Europe to clear overgrown weeds and return headstones – some from the 19th century – to their places. Later, they arranged a Purim event for a Jewish day school in Berlin.
At Berlin’s Jewish home for the elderly they sang songs with the residents, many of whom are Holocaust survivors.
"I went to Germany not knowing what I was going to get out of it," said university student Sabrina Snowsky. "When the trip came to an end, I realized how much I learned about Judaism, Germany, Berlin and the Holocaust. But most important, I learned about myself. I took so much back from every activity, and I think this trip changed me for the best."
Boruch Wolf contributed to this article.
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