MONTREAL Canada [CHI] — A new Sefer Torah was completed and dedicated this past Sunday in Montreal, Canada. Many members of the community came to the home of Rabbi Moshe Stern, Rov of Cong. Tzeirai Dath Vedath Shul, when the final letters were filled in, and from there a joyous procession went to the Shul.
One of Russia’s chief rabbis on Sunday spurned an honor from the mayor of the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, formerly Ungvar, who has publicly made anti-Semitic statements.
Rabbi Berel Lazar, who is one of two claimants to the title of Russia’s chief rabbi, refused the honor from Mayor Serhiy Ratushnyak at a reception given by the Jewish community after a memorial ceremony for a mass grave of murdered Jews from the Holocaust, which was discovered in the city.
CAIRO — Egyptians generally do not make any distinction between Jewish people and Israelis. Israelis are seen as the enemy, so Jews are, too.
Khalid Badr, 40, is pretty typical in that regard, living in a neighborhood of winding, rutted roads in Old Cairo, selling snacks from a kiosk while listening to the Koran on the radio. Asked his feelings about Jews, he replied matter-of-factly. “We hate them for everything they have done to us,” Mr. Badr said, as casually as if he had been asked the time.
ISRAEL — Religious Services Minister Ya’acov Margi of Shas recommended during a cabinet meeting on Monday that the state fund Chabad Houses around the world, to “strengthen Jewish identity and the connection with the Land of Israel and the State of Israel.”
He told Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the other cabinet members that the difficult economic situation worldwide meant many Chabad emissaries were financially strapped.
“As if a tornado struck, a real smelly and dirty tornado” was the way one passerby described what Eastern Parkway looked like, as an army platoon of city sanitation workers labored throughout the night cleaning up.
Men armed with brooms were not enough, they had leaf blowers and plows, along with street sweepers and garbage trucks, and this year the city employed a new weapon, a bulldozer with jaws to collect the garbage.
14
