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New Shluchim to Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh, PA – Chabad of Pittsburgh plans to begin a new informal education program for high school students this winter.

Rabbi Shmuly Rothman, who has run Jewish youth programming in Toledo for the last six years, recently returned to Pittsburgh, where he grew up, to run the program.

Chabad Educator Wins National Award

Columbia, SC – Rabbi Meir Muller, a Shaliach of Chabad Lubavitch and director of the Columbia Jewish Day School, has been named as a national early childhood professional of the year, a top national award program recognizing early childhood educators.

Early childhood experts and advisors from Scholastic Publishing selected the five grand-prize winners from over 700 nominees. Judging criteria included the educator’s overall commitment to advocacy, developmentally appropriate curriculum, cultural sensitivity, leadership, and community outreach, as well as their ability to mobilize resources.

In the Trenches, From Illinois to Kiryat Shmona

With putty in his ears to protect them from the roaring report of mortar fire, Morton Friedman of Wilmette, IL, supported Israel during the war from the frontlines.

When the war started, Friedman, a former Chief of the Criminal Division of the Cook County State Attorney’s Office, called Rabbi Dovid Flinkenstein at Chai Center-Chabad of Wilmette. He wanted to volunteer in Israel, and not just volunteer somewhere in Israel, which would have been enough, but in the north. “I had trouble conceptualizing why a Diaspora Jew’s blood is more worthy of protection than an Israeli Jew’s,” said Friedman.

Bochurim and Chazzan Placement In Hebrew

The Shluchim Office is proud to announce the newest addition to its website. Following the major success of Bochurim and Chazzan Placement in English, it was decided to service the Hebrew speakers as well. The entire Bochurim and Chazzan Placement Department has now been translated and launched to be used for Hebrew speaking applicants and Shluchim.

For more information log onto www.shliches.com or email Hebrew@shluchim.org

Woman Mugged on Empire and Albany

At around 9:10pm Shomrim received a call from a man who’s wife had just been mugged. Immediately numerous Shomrim members arrived on scene and began canvassing for what the woman described as two male blacks who got away with her purse.

The woman stated she was attacked by the two perp’s one came up behind her while the other came up in front of her and grabbed her purse and made their way down Albany towards Lefferts. Police were notified by both Shomrim and the victim, but took nearly 30 minutes to respond. When police finally arrived they stated that the reason for the delay was due to the fact that they had only 2 cars out and they had cut their ‘lunch break’ short to take the call.

Police then took the woman for a canvas and when that turned up negative they filed a police report.

Councilwoman Wins Primary for House Seat

A black city councilwoman won the racially charged primary for a Congressional seat in central Brooklyn yesterday, beating back a challenge from a white councilman to win a seat created nearly four decades ago to increase minority representation in Congress.

The councilwoman, Yvette D. Clarke, 41, narrowly beat three opponents to capture the seat, which has been held by blacks since the 1968 victory of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress.

Chabad Synagogue Celebrates Completion of Safer Torah

Praise for heroes, respect for victims

In public events and private thoughts, Centre County residents paid homage Monday to the victims of the attacks on the United States five years ago.

They recalled the Sept. 11, 2001, moment when they first heard that America was under siege, and they were urged to remember the victims without reliving the fear wrought by terrorists.

“They want to rule us by fear,” U.S. Rep. John Peterson, R-Pleasantville, told a small gathering in front of the Old Main administrative building on the Penn State campus. “Islamic radicals want to destroy the freedom of religion that America was founded on.”

The congressman paid tribute to National Guardsmen from Pennsylvania, saying 16,000 of the 19,000 Guardsmen have been deployed abroad and 34 have been killed in Iraq.

Cause for celebration

Nova Scotia, Canada – Old men and young boys danced and sang on Spring Garden Road in Halifax as they celebrated the dedication of a new Torah on Sunday.

The arrival of the scroll containing the Jewish holy book had the atmosphere of a wedding.

The newly completed Torah, which was to join two existing Torahs used by the Chabad Lubavitch community of the Maritimes, was wrapped in velvet and crowned with silver and carried to its new home under a wedding canopy led by bagpipers.

The dedication is a rare and special event, said Mark Ludman, who carried the new Torah during part of the procession.

“They’re painstaking to make,” he said. “Each one is handwritten and there can be no errors in it.”

A Booming Sect Sends Jewish Emissaries Abroad

David Eliezrie is a rabbi — the head of a Yorba Linda synagogue. One of his sons is a rabbi, and two of Eliezrie’s daughters married rabbis.

The three children are schluchim, or members of rabbi-and-wife emissary teams sent around the world under the Chabad-Lubavitch banner, a small, growing and controversial Hasidic branch of Judaism.

In an era where some denominations — Roman Catholicism, for example — have left pulpits empty because of clergy shortages, the offspring of Chabad rabbis are following in their parents’ footsteps in such numbers that a surplus of about 200 new rabbis and their wives are now staged in Brooklyn, awaiting assignments around the world, Lubavitch officials said.

To become an emissary is “like getting into Harvard, only better,” said Naomi Blesofsky, 24, one of David Eliezrie’s daughters. “To live this life gives you purpose and is an honor in our community.”

Congressional Candidates in Dead-Heat Race Look for a Last-Minute Edge in Brooklyn

With the high-profile race to replace Rep. Major Owens in Brooklyn’s 11th congressional district shaping up as too close to call, the four candidates were scrambling to energize their supporters and to raise last-minute funds in the final full day of campaigning.

The Democratic primary is tomorrow, and unlike the campaigns for Senate, governor, and attorney general, there is no clear front-runner in the 11th, an election that has generated widespread attention for its racial dynamic. A City Council member, David Yassky, has run circles around his opponents in fundraising, but he is the lone white candidate in a district that is nearly 60% black. He has faced relentless charges that he moved into the district with the idea of dividing the vote among the three African-American candidates.

Jewish student center to honor 9/11 victims

Iowa City, IA — The Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Student and Community Center will commemorate victims of terror on Monday at The Pentacrest with a Good Deed Mitzvah Marathon Fair, in remembrance of the fifth anniversary of 9/11.

The fair will run from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. and is designed to present members of the campus community with opportunities to do a good deed in memory and in honor of the victims of 9/11.

Tables will be set up on The Pentacrest, at which participants will be able to choose from many opportunities to do a good deed such as to make sandwiches for the homeless, buy a letter in a Torah Scroll, say a prayer, don Tefillin, or give charity to benefit the rebuilding efforts in Israel’s Northern region and the victims of genocide in Darfur. Rain location is in the basement of IMU.