Passover preparation more than kids’ play

Children got a chance Sunday to learn to make their own matzo for Passover.

Pleasanton’s Amador Recreation Center was turned into a bakery for the afternoon, as the children threshed and winnowed the wheat, milled and ground the flour, and kneaded and shaped the dough to make the unleavened matzo.

Rabbi Raleigh Resnick, the director of Tri-Valley Chabad, which organized the event, said “the whole process is done in 18 minutes” or less to make sure the dough does not have time to rise.

Use Web to “Find a Seder” for Passover

If you’re away from home for Passover but would like to take part in the traditional holiday celebration called a seder, click on “Find a Seder” at http://www.chabad.org/passover.

Chabad-Lubavitch, a Jewish outreach organization, hosts 2,000 public seders around the world, from Beijing, Berlin and St. Petersburg, Russia, to Lima, Peru, and Nairobi, Kenya. Closer to home, you’ll find Chabad seders in Las Vegas, Miami, New Orleans and dozens of other U.S. cities, along with 80 college campuses. A trilingual seder — English, Hebrew and Spanish — is being held in Tijuana, Mexico. And what Chabad bills as “the world’s largest seder” takes place under a huge tent in Katmandu, Nepal, typically attracting 1,000 backpackers, many of them young Israelis.

Passover begins the night of April 12.

Kids learn how to make staple for the holiday

Rabbis bring their matzoh factory to youngsters at Posnack Hebrew Day School, hoping to pass on the tradition by making it fun.

Just like the Jews who fled Egypt to escape the pharoah’s soldiers, students at the David Posnack Hebrew Day School recently made matzoh, unleavened bread, in a rush.

Chabad Lubavitch Rabbis Yossi Gansburg and Adi Goodman brought their portable matzoh bakery to the Plantation and Davie campuses of the school last week.

Gansburg, who grew up in Brooklyn, brings the matzoh-baking experience to thousands of Broward students in the two weeks leading up to Passover, which begins at sundown April 12.

Chabad Center to build own synagogue in Abacoa

Within the next two years, Chabad Jewish Center of Jupiter could have a permanent home.

The three-year-old orthodox synagogue has closed on 1.5 acres at University Boulevard, east of Military Trail, west of the New Haven community, for $1 million, said Rabbi Berel Barash, the synagogue’s founder/leader.

“The location couldn’t be better,” Barash said. “It’s the last available property the Abacoa developer had remaining,” said Barash. “Now that Scripps is coming, it only doubles and triples the need for our Jewish campus which will be located in the heart of Jupiter.”

“A place of worship will fit right into Abacoa,” said Nader Salour, Abacoa Development Company president. “The site is perfect for this kind of use.”

Another Mugging Mid Evening

Yesterday [Thursday] Evening at around 9:45 a girl was mugged on the corner of Lefferts Ave. and Troy Ave. Two younger black males ran up to the girl and snatched her purse, then ran up Troy Ave. Police arrived on scene and took the girl to the police station where they filed a police report.

This come’s just two days after the vicious attack on a 14 year old boy on Schenectady and Carroll, where he was both mugged and severely beaten. In this case B”H they did not assault the girl.

A ritual route back in use after Wilma repairs

With sunset tonight, like every Friday night, dozens of Orthodox Jews will walk to synagogue. But when Hurricane Wilma damaged the delicate boundaries of the eruv west of Boynton Beach, the walk became a bit challenging.

An eruv turns the public domain into the private, allowing those who strictly follow Jewish law to carry objects from their home to synagogue. Now, after hundreds of hours of painstaking labor, the eruv surrounding Chabad-Lubavitch of Greater Boynton Beach is back up.

“People had a real sense of freedom,” said Aaron Itzkowitz, who helped reconstruct the eruv, functional for the first time last week.

Passover Joy Begins Early in Nepal

This tiny mountaintop kingdom has one of the largest Passover Seders in the world, with more than 2,000 guests. But getting the Passover goods onto the table is a hi-suspense drama that has, in past years, come to 11th hour resolution.

This year too, Chabad Rabbi Chezy and Chani Lifschitz waited with bated breath for the container carrying tons of matzah and seder food supplies to arrive. Enroute for a month, the container traveled from Israel to India by ship, and from India to Nepal by land. Last year, the 18-wheeler carrying the cargo overturned, with cases of the precious Passover goods spilling out only days before the holiday. It took several helicopters arranged by Rabbi Lifschitz, to retrieve the cases of food and deliver them in the nick of time. The year before, the container arrived 24 hours before the Seder.