Rabbi Yitzchak Kogan knows the lay of the land in a land where knowing was dangerous. He did what needed to be done even when doing was verboten. A crackerjack on the KGB playing fields, he learned early to tell the good from the bad, to dodge informers and keep one step ahead of the enemy. Today, his years of hard experience in the chokehold of Soviet Russia behind him, he evinces a largeness of spirit and a deep self-knowing.
In light of recent controversy on the subject, Rabbi N. Daniel Korobkin weighs in on the subject of ‘Open Orthodoxy’ with an interesting twist. “Chabad is the most open orthodoxy of them all,” writes the senior rabbi of Congregation Beth Avraham Yoseph (The Bayt) of Toronto in an op-ed published today at The Times of Israel.
A Chabad rabbi is demanding a public apology from Heathrow airport after being told to remove his shoes inside its multi-faith prayer room. Removing one’s shoes is required before entering a mosque, but Jewish law requires one to wear respectable footwear during prayer.
Crown Heights filmmaker Meir Kalmanson has once again taken to the streets of New York City for a hilarious soon-to-be-viral video. This time, however, in addition to the laughs, a worthy cause was being served.
Raizel Raskin’s office feels like a cluttered museum of Moroccan Jewish heritage. A photo from an old Jewish summer camp lays on the table. Another, of a rabbi meeting Moroccan dignitaries, hangs on the wall. Outside the door is a bookshelf filled with Hasidic tracts translated into Arabic.
Mendy Kabacznik (Brazil) and Malky (bas Levi) Feigenson (Crown Heights)
Over 400 fathers and sons attended the first week of the Avos Ubanim Betzalel learning program this past Motzei Shabbos in Crown Heights.
In a spectacle that a mere couple of decades ago would have been unthinkable, a choir of boys from Chabad’s Cheder Menachem day school in Moscow recently performed within the walls of the Kremlin, including an emotional rendition of the song that kept Jews’ spirits up during the dark years of the USSR: ‘Nyet Nyet Nikavo Krome Boga Adnavo’ (there is no one other than G-d alone).
On any given Thursday night from 10:15-11:15pm a constant stream of noise flows throughout the Klein Beit Midrash of Yeshiva University and the Muss dormitory situated right on top. This noise is not some blaring music coming from a party around the block, but the sound of one hundred students learning Torah.
With sadness we inform you of the passing this morning of Reb Aharon Yisroel Chaiton, OBM, of Montreal, Canada.
“We are all here united and larger in number than the representatives in the UN who voted for the two state solution to divide Israel. While they represent different countries we represent the Lubavitcher Rebbe, the one and only leader of our generation who vehemently opposed such a scheme. Therefore we hereby declare in the name of all the Shluchim that the UN Resolution is null and void and there never, ever will be a Palestinian state alongside Israel and every inch of Eretz Yisroel will remain under control of its rightful owner – Am Yisroel,” declared Rabbi Yoseph Gerlitzky, head shaliach to Tel Aviv to a resounding applause by 4, 325 Chabad emissaries from around the globe.
Monday morning in the Ohel, Moishy Holtzberg, survivor of the 2008 Mumbai massacre by terrorists who killed his parents, approached and wished Mazal Tov to Rabbi Berel Lazar, Chief Rabbi of Russia, on the engagement of his daughter Fraidel to Moshe Lerman from Atlanta, GA.
The Jewish Federation’s annual conference in Washington, DC, known as the GA, is being attended by over 20,000 people this year, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Featured at this event was a seminar on the secret of Chabad’s success, delivered by California Shliach Rabbi Dovid Eliezrie, who recently published a bestselling book on the topic.
Alternate side parking (street cleaning) regulations will be suspended Wednesday, November 11, for Veterans Day. All other regulations, including parking meters, remain in effect.
Two Palestinian minors, aged 11 and 14, stabbed an Israeli guard on Jerusalem’s light rail in the Pisgat Ze’ev neighborhood of Jerusalem. The victim was moderately wounded. Both perpetrators were caught; but Israeli authorities say the 11-year-old won’t be prosecuted due to his age.
