Daily Archives: January 23, 2006

New Jewish Community Center Opens in Kazakhstan

In the past few years, more and more people have been returning to their Jewish roots in this largest city in the country with 1.2 million residents with estimated 15,000 Jews. The only existing full-fledged Jewish Community Center in the region happens to be located far from the city’s center and has already become so popular that it is running over-capacity.

It is for this reason that the Jewish community of Almaty has launched yet another institution – a Chabad Jewish Community center which rounds out a series of other Jewish institutions in this Kazakhstan city. Here, there already exists the Ohr Avner Chabad Day School and Kindergarten, a Synagogue, a dormitory for children studying at the Jewish school from outlying settlements, and offices of the local Jewish community.

Food bank helps Philly Jews

Andrew Klazmer had an important delivery to make, but he couldn’t find apartment B11. Toting a heavy box of canned goods, the 12-year-old scanned hallway after hallway, peering at faded apartment numbers in vain.

Then he spotted the mezuzah.

“Mom, it’s over here”, Klazmer called out excitedly, tapping the door.

In addition to acting as an ad-hoc navigational device, the mezuzah pointed to the bond that giver and receiver share — their Jewish identity.

The Jewish Relief Agency, a Philadelphia-based food distribution outfit organized by Chabad-Lubavitch, helps the Jewish community address the poverty in its own backyard.

Stranded in the Brutal Cold: Chabad to the Rescue

Some claim that the last time the mercury fell to 30 below zero in Russia, it was 1927; others say it’s a ten year cycle. All agree, however, that it’s brutal. News reports tell of more than thirty people who died in recent days from exposure to the arctic temperatures blanketing the country where staying warm indoors has become a challenge.

It was at about three a.m. during one of these frigid nights last week that 10 Israelis traveling along an isolated road got stuck when their car broke down. The group of two families were on a pilgrimage to the tombs of Chasidic Rebbes buried in remote, Russian backwaters.

Uzi maniac shot by cops

Tied to 3 attacks on city’s Finest

A trigger-happy cop hater – who once owned the pistol used to kill Officer Dillon Stewart – fired an Uzi machine gun at police in Brooklyn early yesterday, sparking a wild shootout that left him wounded and whimpering, authorities said.

Multiple bullets tore into Damian Henry, 25, but the bloodthirsty hoodlum somehow survived the gun battle outside a nightclub in East Flatbush, police said.

“There were lots of flashes,” Al Zirini said after watching footage of the shooting caught by his restaurant’s security camera on Utica Ave. “He was just spraying it. Who carries around an Uzi, anyway?”