Friendship Circle Announces Second Annual Conference

Friendship Circles across the United States and Canada are now outperforming their past successes and with their exponential growth, the network of Friendship Circles has announced the Second Annual Friendship Circle Conference.

The conference will take place on July 2nd and 3rd. it is being hosted this year by the Friendship Circle of Livingston, N.J.

Cleansing Waters

Boca Raton, FL – Suzanne Goldberg drives to Boca Raton from her home west of Boynton Beach each month to use a mikvah, or ritual bath.

Goldberg’s three-year commute to Boca Raton Synagogue will be over soon. A $400,000 mikvah is expected to be ready by the end of this month at her synagogue, Chabad-Lubavitch of Greater Boynton Beach, at 10655 El Clair Ranch Road.

“The Jewish community in Boynton Beach has been steadily growing over the last decade,” said Goldberg, 31. “In recent years, we have seen a large influx of young families. Having our own mikvah will not only serve the needs of all these new families, but it will help to sustain our growth as a community.”

Settle synagogue suit, commissioner urges

Hollywood, FL – A city commissioner is urging his colleagues to settle a discrimination lawsuit filed by an Orthodox Jewish synagogue after the city yanked its permit.

Commissioner Keith Wasserstrom sent an e-mail Tuesday calling for a special meeting to discuss settling the case with the Hollywood Community Synagogue Chabad Lubavitch and the U.S. Department of Justice.

No meeting had been scheduled as of Friday evening. The trial is scheduled to start June 26.

In the e-mail, Wasserstrom said he fears that a pending ruling by a federal judge will erase city laws that grant special permits to religious groups that operate in residential neighborhoods. The permits are at the center of the Chabad’s lawsuit, which alleges that the city, led by Commissioner Sal Oliveri, discriminated when it took away the synagogue’s’ permit in 2003. City officials argue that they pulled the permit because the synagogue did not adhere to zoning codes.

A new Chabad House, as always, with an open door

West Hills, CA – The welcome mat will be out Sunday for the grand opening of the Chabad of West Hills, the 19th Chabad center in the San Fernando Valley.

The synagogue actually held its first service at sundown June 1 for the Jewish festival of Shavuot.

It was an appropriate holiday on which to launch a Chabad center because Shavuot, Hebrew for “weeks,” is all about making a sincere connection to God.

Shavuot marks the giving of the Torah – God’s instruction and guidebook for living a good life – and its acceptance by the Jewish people.

Chabad synagogues have an open-door mission to all Jews, no matter if they are religious or not, to help them strengthen or discover their link to God and the commandments.

Up on Crime Heights

Crime is on the increase in Crown Heights, a neighborhood of Hasidim and blacks in Brooklyn. Rather than relying on the police to protect them, Jews are turning to their own tough volunteer unit ? the Shomrim

NEW YORK – When about half a dozen police cruisers blocked the corner of Kingston Avenue and Lefferts Street in the Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the street was already flooded with people. Gadi Hershkop, broad-shouldered, bearded and short-tempered, stood under a traffic light and took care of business. He placed several bearded young men in dark pants and blue T-shirts around two men, who looked a bit dazed. He barked orders and updates into a walkie-talkie and two cellular phones. When he was satisfied, he conversed with Shlomi Klein, a bearded red-head who stood beside him.

Twenty minutes earlier, the two men who were surrounded by the tough guys – Nossi Slater and his father – had returned from Saturday night services at the main synagogue of the Chabad movement. When the two Hasidim dressed in black suits, skullcaps and ritual fringes walked past the corner, a black youth called the elder Slater a “stinking Jew” and pushed him. When Nossi, 25, tried to intervene, the youngster punched him hard in the face.

Rabbi seeks tools to spread joy of Judaism

Portland, OR – At the beginning of his career in Jewish leadership, Rabbi Chayim Mishulovin said he feels fortunate to be one of the leaders selected to participate in the Portland Jewish Leadership Institute.

Convened and funded by the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland, the PJLI is designed to strengthen the Jewish community’s leadership base for all agencies, congregations and organizations by teaching participants the personal, leadership and analytic skills needed in the 21st century. Over the next few months, the Jewish Review will profile several participants.

Mishulovin said he hopes “to apply the skills that I have acquired from the professionals and my colleagues to do whatever I can to bring the warmth and joy of Judaism to the 25,000 Jews of greater Portland. In turn, they will strengthen our organizations and help build our community.”

Chief Rabbis secretary found murdered

Uzbek Jewish community believes Karina Rivka Laufer and her mother Svetlana, who were found murdered in their apartment, were killed for nationalistic motives.

Tashkent, Uzbekistan – The 20-year-old secretary of the Chief Rabbi of Central Asia, Karina Rivka Laufer, and her mother Svetlana Laufer were found dead Thursday in their Tashkent apartment.

Laufer had studied at the Jewish school Or Avner in the Uzbek capital. Karina was known as active in the Tashkent Jewish community and in recent months began working as regional Chief Rabbi Abe David Gurevich.

In a conversation with Ynet, spokesperson for the Union of Jewish Communities in the Soviet Union Tal Rabina said, “Last Monday, Karina came to Rabbi Gurevich’s class, and that is actually the last time we had contact with her. The next day and the day following Karina didn’t come to work. The Rabbi’s office attempted to call her but there was no answer. They thought maybe she didn’t feel well.”

From A JNet Chavruta Student: The Stranger On The Plane

I have not seen him in a month, and in that time, the cancer that is chasing my son’s body has paralyzed his entire left side and he is rapidly losing mobility. In a mere four weeks, Ryan has gone from dancing at his wedding to being confined to a wheelchair, unable to perform the most basic of functions unassisted. Our phone conversations have grown very short, very terse as he loses the ability to speak in complete sentences. He is despondent, he is angry, he is frightened. I am on my way to be with him.

On the crowded plane I sit, by chance, behind a man wearing a skullcap. I barely register his presence. I am absorbed in my own thoughts and my own sadness, trying to read a book but not seeing very much. An hour into the flight, annoyed I must put my book aside and move into the aisle to let my window seat mate pass. By chance, I glance down and see the man wearing the skullcap is furiously writing on his computer. He is surrounded by several books in Hebrew.

Crown Heights riot fact, fiction, and plenty of blame

We thought we knew what happened in Crown Heights and who did it. Turns out we were wrong.

We had the major players right but we were foggy onaction and motivation, even though we had watched scenes from the riot on the nightly news; heard commentary from religious leaders, politicians, and community leaders; and lived through the aftermath listening to everyone’s take on what happened.

Certain facts are not in dispute: In August 1991, seven-year-old Gavin Cato, an African-American, was run over by a van driven by a hasidic Jew in a section of Brooklyn known as Crown Heights, a neighborhood where blacks and hasidim lived side by side but did not interact. Several hours later, Yankel Rosenbaum, an Orthodox Jew from Australia, was assaulted by a band of young African Americans and stabbed several times by at least one of them, Lemrick Nelson. These names are part of our collective memory. The rest of the story, however, takes different shapes depending upon the teller.

Miami land tracts being sold

Miami, FL – Developer Leviev Boymelgreen, one of the biggest private landowners in Miami, is shedding what amounts to almost half of its South Florida landholdings.

The proposed sale of about 7 acres of downtown Miami land for $89 million was announced by Africa Israel, a publicly traded Tel Aviv conglomerate that owns a majority stake in Leviev Boymelgreen. The release did not name the buyer, but said the transaction should close within the next three months.

The deal raises new questions about the plans of a company that made a splashy entrance into Miami and Miami Beach two years ago, but has struggled to get its projects off the ground since. The company has been beset by construction delays, management turnover and a constant reshuffling of brokerage companies that sell its condo units.

Torah Study Gains Popularity With New Program

With a long days practicing law as a government attorney, Jill Gerstenfield of Rockville, MD, could not envision waking up at six a.m. for the rabbi’s daily Talmud class. But the tractate of Sotah fascinated Gerstenfield, who attended a Georgetown University class on Jewish and American Law. “I started to read about Sotah,” the Temple-era response to a woman suspected of adultery, “and several cases involving U.S. law and establishing paternity and found the area fascinating.”

Simi’s Jews revel in spacious new place

Revamped residence gives Chabad room to continue growing

Simi Valley, CA – When Morris Huberman spotted the vaguely Spanish-style house on Alamo Street in Simi Valley more than a year ago, he knew it would be perfect.

Jokingly, but also in seriousness, Huberman told Rabbi Noson Gurary that the house, with its red-tiled roof, swimming pool and tennis court, would be a fantastic new home for Chabad of Simi Valley.

“The timing wasn’t right,” Huberman’s wife, Janis, said. “Then it went back on the market. It was just meant to be.”

A building campaign was launched to purchase the $1.4 million facility that sits on roughly an acre of land. Members of the congregation spent the winter, working long into the night, preparing the 5,000-square-foot building for its new life as Chabad’s home. They moved in just in time for Passover this year.

Building bonds: Program teams teens with special needs children

Westport, CT – When Shira Burstein befriended 8-year-old Tal four years ago, she wasn’t sure how long the friendship would last.

A volunteer with the Friendship Circle, Burstein had been assigned to be Tal’s buddy. The nonprofit program matches teen mentors with children who have special needs.

Burstein, then a junior at Westhill High School, had worked with children with developmental disabilities at the school. But playing with young Tal, who is autistic, was a greater challenge, she said.

She was intimidated by Tal’s silence and her screams.

“The first day I came home from visiting (with Tal), I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it,” said Burstein, 21, now a senior at Clark University in Massachusetts. “I didn’t think I was cut out for this.”

Chabad still feuds over who’s boss

And the “feuds” continue, for all the world to see!!

Upstate New York – The touchy question of which Chabad family – the Borensteins or the Burstons – is authorized to run Jewish outreach programs in Orange County on behalf of their Hasidic movement seemed to be settled.

Pesach and Chana Burston are the valid representatives, a spokesman for the worldwide organization declared in a story about the Monroe couple in the Sunday Record on May 28.

But that statement has incurred the wrath of the Rabbi Yakov Borenstein and his wife, Hindy – installed as Chabad emissaries in Poughkeepsie 20 years ago – and reopened an ugly internal spat between them and their organization leaders.