Some eighty students from the University of Pennsylvania recently returned from a 10 day intensive trip to the holy land as part of the Mayanot-birthright Israel excursion organized locally by the Jewish Heritage Programs and Lubavitch House at Penn.
Launched in May 2006, the Million Mitzvahs Campaign initiated by The Shul, a Chabad Lubavitch institution serving Bal Harbour, Surfisde, Bay Harbor Island and Indian Creek, is motivating community members and people around the world to fulfill one more commandment. They’ll do this until, collectively, 1,000,000 concrete steps to a better world have been taken.
In recent days there have been a number of religious forums on the internet that have posted a rare video clip of an elderly Jew who had converted to Catholicism at the age of 29 passing by the Rebbe one Sunday when he was distributing a dollar to give to charity. He treis to convince the Rebbe of the significance of Christianity.
The Rebbe in a very calm but firm tone tells him that a Jew born a Jew remains a Jew for the rest of his life and if he doesn’t feel that what he is doing is wrong it is an indication that he is very ill and needs immediate treatment. At the end of the encounter the Jew requests of the Rebbe that he pray for him.
He then gives the Rebbe a pamphlet of missionary material, the Rebbe takes it and tells him thank you adding “I am taking it from you so you won’t give it to someone else.” The Rebbe then takes the pamphlet and throws it down on the floor.
Rebbe Video in the Extended Article!!
In contrast to NYC administration opposition to the traditional Bris Milah Metziza B’peh, the New York State Health Commissioner Dr. Antonia Novello officiated Monday at the signing of a protocol authorizing Metziza B’peh as a safe and accepted procedure.
The event followed a series of lengthy meetings, research and deliberations between CRC Rabbis and Commissioner Novello coordinated by Rabbi Niederman of Williamsburg.
Rabbi Yisroel Rubin the Rebbe’s Shliach in Albany, in coordination with Rabbi Nochum Kaplan of the Merkos Misrad HaChinuch in Crown Heights, helped direct the effort, and were thanked at the signing ceremony for their assistance.
We’ve become accustomed to hearing exotic Chabad stories. In Peru, Lubavitchers hiking up the Inca Trail to the lost city of Machu Picchu bring kosher food and religious services to Israeli backpackers. In Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City they make a Seder.
But what happens when hassidim in black hats and scruffy beards, or hassidic women in wigs and long sleeves, set up shop on the home turf for philosophy, science and skepticism? How does asking “are you Jewish” and issuing Shabbat dinner invitations fly on university campuses steeped in universalism and political correctness?
That’s what The Hebrew University’s esteemed researcher and professor of Jewish education Barry Chazan and doctoral student David Bryfman set out to find out. Their recently published results debunk a fair number of myths about Jewish young adults.
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