Daily Archives: December 15, 2005

Chabad Plans to Light 11,000 Public Menorahs

The Chabad Lubavitch organization plans to light more than 11,000 public menorahs throughout the world during the festival of Chanukah, which starts Sunday night, December 25.

Chabad leaders said funding for its activities have come from all sectors of the Jewish community over the past decade as they have begun to accept Chabad as important to Jewry, the New York Jewish Week reported.

Non-orthodox Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz recently said at a Chabad dinner that he once was skeptical of its abilities. “My idea was: Chabad at Harvard? Impossible. How could that ever happen? Kids come to Harvard to rebel against their parents, to rebel against religion, to look for other ways, to look for more liberal attitudes.” He said that Chabad has been extremely successful in becoming a meeting center for Jews at Harvard.

1928: Marriage

In December of 1928, the Rebbe’s marriage to Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, daughter of the then Lubavitcher Rebbe Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, was held in Warsaw, Poland.

By then, word of Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak’s heroic struggle on behalf of Soviet Jewry was world renowned, and the high regard in which he was held was evidenced by the numerous rabbis, Rebbes and lay leaders of European Jewry, and the thousands of people from all walks of life, who honored him with their presence at his daughter’s wedding.

At the beginning of the wedding, the Rebbetzin’s father announced:

The Rebbes Wedding Invitation

In honor of Yud Daled Kislev, the anniversary of the Rebbe’s wedding, CrownHeights.info is proud to present to all our readers a unique and rare find, an invitation to the Rebbe’s wedding. This particular one is inviting the Bochurim of Yeshivas Toras Emes, Yerushalayim.

Maplewood expected to approve proposal for Shabbat boundary

The Maplewood Township Committee will vote on a proposal Dec. 20 on whether to allow a group representing two Orthodox synagogues to erect an eruv in the community.

There has been no opposition to the proposal to erect the eruv, a largely symbolic Shabbat boundary, and all involved expect the proposal to pass.

Steve Bauml, president of Congregation Beth Ephraim-Maplewood Jewish Center, spearheaded a six-person committee that presented the issue at a township committee meeting on Dec. 6. The committee included members of Beth Ephraim and of Maplewood’s other Orthodox synagogue, Congregation Ahavath Zion. The rabbis of both synagogues are associated with Chabad-Lubavitch, the hasidic outreach movement.

The Festival of Slights?

Happy holidays?

Apparently not for the Town of Huntington where, barring an 11th-hour resolution, a U.S. District Court judge in Central Islip will be asked tonight to decide the fate of a holiday display on the Village Green on Park Avenue and Route 25A.

This after a local lawyer who sued the town agreed to a court-brokered compromise Friday hours before the annual Xmas tree lighting ceremonies apparently had a change of heart over the weekend, making new demands yesterday.

Tuning Out Terror

Florida professor’s trial and acquittal generated little national coverage despite its consequences.

Perhaps no one since Adolph Eichmann has been charged with complicity in more Jewish murders than Sami Al-Arian, the Florida professor affiliated with Islamic Jihad.

The difference between Eichmann and Al-Arian is that in 1962, the year the Nazi was hanged for his crimes against humanity, the American public and the Jewish public cared. In 2005, with the lack of media coverage, maybe they weren’t given an opportunity to care.