Rabbis Nourish Crews With Food, Lessons

CHI ED: Massive Kiddush Hashem made by Chabad Shluchim of California recognized by the AP!

RUNNING SPRINGS, CA — Dark beards blowing, black felt fedoras flying off their heads, the four Hasidic rabbis clapped their chests with open palms and cheered as the firefighting helicopter dipped its bucket into their camp swimming pool.

At the Camp Gan Israel, crews fighting devastating blazes in the mountains east of Los Angeles have found more than a source of water. The rabbis have been serving kosher meals, spiced with a dollop of their own spiritual musings.

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Los Angeles Chabad’s Food Truck Feeds Evacuees in S. Diego

The number of displaced Southern Californians climbed to more than 1 million Wednesday as several wildfires continued their warlike march across the state’s arid brush and forests.

Tuesday night saw some 12,000 S. Diego residents bed-in at the downtown Qualcomm Stadium, waiting for word on the fate of their homes and belongings. There to feed about 3,000 of them were Chabad-Lubavitch representatives and a team of volunteers who had driven in a mobile kitchen to supplement the relief efforts of the city’s own Chabad Houses.

Pioneering Chabad Emissary, Mother and Grandmother Passes Away in Nashville

Mrs. Risya Posner, who with her husband Rabbi Zalman Posner established the first Chabad-Lubavitch presence in Nashville, Tenn., died Tuesday at the age 80. An inimitable force behind Lubavitch outreach operations and techniques across the world, she was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., to Lubavitch parents who had immigrated from Russia. She and her husband pioneered the field of campus-based outreach, almost immediately inviting Vanderbilt University students to their home after their arrival in Nashville.

From when she was a baby until her last day in the hospital, she elicited love from those who were mere acquaintances as easily as from those who had known her for decades.