Daily Archives: April 30, 2008

New Torah Scroll Evidence of Buenos Aires Community’s Growth

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — Hundreds of community members took to the streets in the middle-class Colegiales neighborhood of Buenos Aires to welcome a new Torah scroll given to the local Chabad-Lubavitch center directed by Rabbi Eli and Devorah Leah Levy.

Rabbi’s New Role

A man who created extraordinary connections during his 13 years as the Rabbi at Sydney’s Great Synagogue is now making links of a different kind in Bondi.

When Rabbi Mendel Kastel talks, people listen. He is an imposing presence, but his slightly American-accented-voice doesn’t need to be raised for attention to swing his way. In the time since he moved to Sydney from New York in 1988, Rabbi Kastel has become a familiar figure in both the Jewish and wider community, creating programs that benefit teenagers and others in need.

Accra, Esquel, Pervoo . . . Jews Connect Despite Distance

ACCRA, Ghana — It was a rocky start for two of the hundreds of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students dispatched by Merkos, the Lubavitch educational division (with the support of regional Chabad centers) to create a Passover experience for Jewish people in some 150 locations exotic and obscure. Among them: Esquel, Argentina; Nipawin, Canada; Hong Kong; and Pervoo, Finland.

Young couple brings Jewish life to Krakow

KRAKOW, Poland — In Krakow, Poland, where Jewish life was nearly destroyed by Nazism and communism, Rabbi Eliezer Gurary and his wife Esther are hoping to bring it back, one Shabbat at a time.

Eliezer and Esther, granddaughter of Devorah and Rabbi Leibel Alevsky, who run the Chabad House of Cleveland, recently opened Chabad-Lubavitch of Krakow. The young couple was living in New York and decided they “were ready to go wherever” to open a Chabad center to help Jews, Esther explains. The rabbi at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters offered them the chance to build a Chabad community in Krakow from the ground up.