An American-born Chabad rabbi who has served the Jewish community of Sochi in southwestern Russia since 2002 was ordered to leave the country within three days under a provision dealing with threats to national security.
Over 300 hundred students attended the first ever “Mega Shabbat” dinner at Penn State’s Alumni Hall this past Friday night. The dinner was arranged by the Chabad Student Board, in honor of Yossi Gourarie, OBM, late father of Chabad of the Undergrads Co-Director, Rabbi Hershy Gourarie, who passed away in April of last year after a prolonged battle with brain cancer.
For the fifteenth time, Noach Adventures organized an amazing camp in the middle of the Brazilian summer to spend two weeks of fun filled trips in Canada and New York. At this once in a lifetime trip, 45 teens went to experience winter sports and chassidishe warmth. For many it was the first time to see snow, or keep a real Shabbos.
With perfect weather year round and a Jewish quarter dating back to the first century, Rhodes is one of Greece’s most popular tourist destinations. Last year, the island saw more than 150,000 visiting Israelis, and come March 2017, they and the island’s small Jewish community will have a Chabad center all their own.
A local newspaper profiled the dedicated work of Rabbi Aryeh Laufer and his wife, Mushka, who have opened the only Chabad House in Northern Rhode Island, in the town of Lincoln.
An exciting extra-curricular academic challenge was launched in Jewish schools across the Former Soviet Union – the first round of Darkeinu “Olympics” 2017, an annual contest determining the champions of Jewish studies in the region. The contest, which includes three rounds and participation prizes, aims to stimulate interest in the subject and raise its prestige in countries traditionally bent on academic excellence. 2,000 pupils entered the first stage.
Rabbi Zalman Bluming is a man on a mission. For the past 15 years, the energetic rabbi and his wife Yehudis have welcomed students to the Rohr Chabad at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and Duke University. They have housed and fed hundreds of patients and their families at Beit Chanoch, the House of Healing at Duke Medical Center. In between semesters filled with classes and rousing Shabbat meals, the rabbi leads Israelinks trips for an international roster of college students. The two also direct a thriving community for the families and researchers who call this small North Carolina city home.
Hundreds of Jewish college students from across Canada gathered for a one-of-a-kind Shabbat experience in Niagara on the weekend of January 27th-29th. The Chabad on Campus Canada Shabbaton provided a fully immersive Shabbat that featured world-renowned teachers and speakers, educational and entertaining workshops, a mega Shabbat dinner, and a musical, candle-lit Havdalah service at Niagara Falls.
This winter, 5,000 needy Jewish children across Russia and Ukraine were once again the recipients of clothing gift certificates, a joint initiative of Chabad’s Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS (FJC), the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) headed by Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein and the Gloria Jeans clothing franchise.
Chabad of Delray Beach, Florida, has launched a new outreach program called Smiles on Seniors (SOS), which is a unique volunteer program created to enhance the lives of local seniors.
On Friday, Jewish Communities communities across the former Soviet Union (FSU) came together to commemorate the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with memorial events taking place in almost every one of the Federation’s (FJC) 100 larger communities. The region’s youth programs also actively participated in the commemorations.
Over 100 students and community members joined a musical procession Sunday in Gainesville, Florida, to celebrate the completion of a brand-new Sefer Torah for Chabad at the University of Florida, led by Rabbi Berl Goldman.
The Federation of Jewish Communities of Ukraine opened two new synagogues in Ukrainian penitentiaries last month, one in Kharkov and one in Vinnitsa. The facilities will also serve as Jewish centers allowing inmates to come in contact with their heritage and learn more.
On the eve of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Russia’s Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev visited Moscow’s Largest Jewish Museum.
Joseph Volfman never believed he’d have the opportunity to experience the thrill and freedom of riding a bike. Born with cerebral palsy, cycling was just one more physical activity out of many he was unable to do. But in 2011, when he was 12 years old, he received a custom bike.
“It was most apparent in the first impression what kind of mensch this young man was,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, director of Chabad at Harvard, said of former student Jared Kushner. One night during his freshman year, after spending a few hours with him studying Tanya, Kushner saw it had snowed outside, asked for a shovel and cleared the sidewalk in front of the house, Zarchi related to the JTA.
The Rebbes of Pupa and Vien, both Chasidic communities based in Williamsburg, visited the near-complete Chabad Center of Palm Springs, California, while vacationing there.
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