Area adherents trek to Rebbe’s grave

When a tzaddik dies, a part of his soul remains with the body, making his grave a holy place, said Rabbi Ephraim Simon as almost 50 people traveled with the Teaneck Chabad House last week to visit the grave of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson in honor of his yahrtzeit.

Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yonah Metzger addresses a crowd of hundreds gathered near the Lubavitcher rebbe’s grave in honor of his 13th yahrtzeit.

As the bus made its way to the cemetery in Queens, Simon told the visitors what to do when they arrived. Everybody would be able to write a letter to the rebbe, asking him to beseech mercy on his or her behalf from God. They would then carry the letters to the grave and read them quietly before tearing them in half and dropping the pieces by the gravestone.

"That place has a certain level of kedusha," holiness, Simon said. "When we pray at the gravesite of a tzaddik, the tzaddik intervenes and beseeches HaShem on our behalf. It’s a place to ask HaShem for all of our needs."

The trip was a combined effort of almost 40 Chabad houses from across the tri-state area and brought hundreds of people to the rebbe’s grave last Thursday, just days before his 13th yahrtzeit on Tuesday. Rabbi Yona Metzger, Ashkenazic chief rabbi of Israel, spoke about his experiences with the rebbe and the importance of Chabad’s shluchim, the emissaries the organization sends to remote locations all over the planet.

He told the story of a king who was so inspired by the friendship and dedication between two men, one of whom had been sentenced to death, that he suspended the sentence and asked the two if he could be their friend. God acts in the same way, said Metzger, and the rebbe taught his chasidim to love their brothers all over the world.

"‘Let me be your friend,’" he said. "This was the rebbe. This was the education he gave every shaliach; the rebbe educated him to love [others] as himself."

Joe Leffel, who went on the bus trip with his wife, Judy, had been to the gravesite three times before but said this was the most impressive trip.

"I consider him truly one of the holiest men of the 20th century," said Leffel, who is not chasidic but has been going to Chabad for more than 12 years. The trip was "an exhilarating and inspired experience," he said.

Judy Leffel was awed by the diversity she saw in the gathering.

"There were so many different kinds of people there: sheitel-wearing women, women in pants, and everything in the middle," she said. "Black women, white women, Asian women, all different types of people coming together for the same thing.

"I felt like we were all one voice," she said. "It would be hard for HaShem to ignore us because we would be so loud."

Because of the response, Teaneck Chabad plans to organize another trip to the gravesite on its own, Simon said, possibly for this summer. Like Judy Leffel, Simon took note of the diversity at the gathering, especially among those from Teaneck.

"It was a real mix on the bus, people from every level of observance to every level of Chabad," he said. "A lot of regulars, people who are not regulars, and people I never met before."

Linda Storfer is not a regular at Teaneck Chabad but she’s not a stranger to Crown Heights. More than 25 years ago she had worked for UJA in New York, and one of her jobs was to bring prominent people to meet the rebbe.

"He was such a great man," she said. "Everyone who met him was so inspired by him."

Mendel Shemtov, president of the Jewish Community Council of Crown Heights at the time, was Storfer’s contact when she brought new visitors, and dubbed her "the ambassador to Crown Heights."

Last year, almost 30 years later, she was visiting her intensely observant son in Crown Heights when a chasid came up to her and said somebody — who turned out to be Shemtov — wanted to see her. Shortly after their brief reunion, Shemtov died. Storfer’s visit to the gravesite coincided not only with the rebbe’s yahrtzeit but also Shemtov’s first yahrtzeit.

"I was glad I went," she said. "It was very inspirational."

Inspiration was the goal, said Simon "The whole idea behind all of it is for each of us that were there to increase in our own Torah and mitzvahs in the rebbe’s honor," he said. "Everybody there did that."

Shanghai restores historic synagogue

By CHRISTOHER BODEEN

Associated Press Writer

SHANGHAI, China (AP) - Shanghai has started restoration work on one of its two remaining synagogues as part of China's effort to revive Jewish heritage in a city that provided refuge to tens of thousands of Jews during World War II.

In another sign of the new interest, a rabbi ministering to the city's Jewish community said Thursday he believes officials will eventually turn over the other synagogue for regular worship services.

The restoration of the Ohel Moishe synagogue, now a Jewish history museum, is due to take five months. The budget hasn't been revealed, although reports said the government has already spent $1.3 million on fixing up the surrounding area and promoting it as a tourist site.

``Shanghai is a great memory for the Jewish people and it's so much better to have this history in the shape of a building than to simply read about it in a book,'' said Rabbi Shalom Greenberg, who moved to Shanghai in 1998. He is a representative of the Chabad-Lubavitch World Headquarters, an Orthodox Jewish organization based in New York.

Efforts to salvage Shanghai's Jewish history have been driven by both domestic and overseas scholarly interest, as well as by the growing numbers of Jewish expatriates in the booming city.

That trend in turn has been embraced by city leaders, who are eager to cast Shanghai as cosmopolitan and welcoming to foreigners.

China's largest city with a population of 20 million, including more than 100,000 foreigners, Shanghai is also a major industrial and commercial center, home to China's largest stock exchange and other financial markets.

Before World War II, the city boasted a large and influential Jewish community with its own schools, newspapers and at least seven synagogues. Most Jews left after World War II and their synagogues were turned to secular uses or torn down.

After several decades of dormancy, the community is growing again, with about 2,000 Jewish foreign residents in the city. Most worship in private homes due to a lack of access to synagogues. China's communist government, which strictly controls religious activities, does not list Judaism among its five officially recognized religions.

Work began last month on Ohel Moishe, which housed offices and a bookshop before it was converted into a museum of Jewish history in 1996. The project aims to expand its exhibits and restore the brick collonaded building to its original appearance, removing added structures and repainting its white masonry.

While Ohel Moishe will remain a museum, city officials appear to be moving toward allowing regular services at Shanghai's other surviving synagogue, the Ohel Rachel, Greenberg said. Its current owners, the city education bureau, now open it for Jewish services only a few times a year.

``The government understands and I'm sure, hopefully sooner than later, that it will allow it to be used for its original purpose,'' Greenberg said.

Shanghai's Jewish community got its start when the city, one of the world's great seaports, was opened to foreign trade in 1842. Concessions were granted to Britain, the United States and France, leaving the city carved up between Western powers.

The Jewish community, whose leading members were Iraqi immigrants and their descendants, was thriving by the time Jews fleeing the Nazis began arriving a century later. Typical of its success was the real estate tycoon Jacob Elias Sassoon, who built the grander, neoclassical Ohel Rachel in 1920.

Constructed in 1928 by Russian immigrants, Ohel Moishe was the center of a less wealthy but equally cosmopolitan community in the Tilanqiao neighborhood north of the center. The area became even more heavily Jewish during World War II when Shanghai's Japanese overlords, under pressure from their German allies, forced German and Austrian Jews to live there exclusively.

About 30,000 European Jews sought refuge in Shanghai from the Nazi genocide.

The city was restored to China at the end of the war, with Western powers renouncing their claims.

Along with synagogues, Shanghai also boasts scores of Protestant and Catholic churches, most of which were closed for decades after the 1949 communist takeover but have since been reopened. However, while missionaries converted millions of Chinese to Christianity, the Jewish community was almost exclusively foreign.

Officially China is atheistic. Christians, Buddhists, Taoists and Muslims are allowed to worship but only in churches, temples and mosques run by state-monitored groups. Christians who attend underground churches - and most do in China - are often jailed and harassed.