Skullcap on Recruit’s Head Keeps Him From Serving in Coast Guard

Jack Rosenberg wants to serve his country.

Mr. Rosenberg, a 34-year-old tire technician and a certified pilot from Spring Valley, N.Y., signed up for the Coast Guard Auxiliary last year, hoping to fly on search-and-rescue missions and the like.

He underwent a full military background check. He had several sets of fingerprints taken. He passed the boating test and the written course.

“But as soon as I got sworn in and got ready to put on the uniform,” Mr. Rosenberg said, “the commander came to me and said it’s going to be a problem.”

Amusement park plans kosher fun for Passover

Broward’s own kosher crusader is doing it again.

For the second year running, Rabbi Pinny Andrusier has organized a day of faith and fun for observant Jews — and everybody else — during the Jewish holiday of Passover.

On April 17, Boomers! amusement park and arcade in Dania Beach will close its concession stands and make room for specially prepared barbecue grills that meet the strict food-preparation requirements of the holiday.

”We are celebrating the liberation of the Jewish people coming out of slavery,” said Andrusier, the religious leader of the Chabad of Southwest Broward. “We don’t have to live like slaves in the kitchen. We can go have fun at Boomers!”

Clash between officer, U.S. official intensifies Chabad dispute in Hollywood

Hollywood · A tense encounter between a police officer and Justice Department employee last week outside a controversial synagogue has sparked outrage from both sides and demands that supervisors investigate.

The U.S. Department of Justice is locked in a legal battle with Hollywood over alleged religious discrimination by the city.

In 2005, the agency joined the Chabad Lubavitch’s lawsuit, filed in 2004, against Hollywood over the city’s attempts to oust the Chabad from the single-family home it had converted into a synagogue in Hollywood Hills.

Small town yeshiva enters the big leagues

Yeshiva Darchai Menachem, a Yeshiva in Crown Heights providing a quality education on a individualized bases currently in its fifth year, is proud to announce it’s Chidon winners who will be going to California to challenge the big leagues in their knowledge in Sefer Hamitzvos. “It’s a big step for our school” says Principal Rabbi Eyal Bension, “we are very proud of our boys, they are a great example of true success that comes from a genuine effort.” Eli Sandhaus who has been the main driving force behind our winners, Menachem Winner, Yisroel Zalmanov, and S.Z. Silverstien is also very proud of their achievements and is being sent with our boys to California. Our staff at the Yeshiva would like to wish all the participants from around the world lots of success.

More pictures in the extended Article!

Rabbi oversees returning bodies of crash victims from Chile

Rabbi Leibel Miller was in Chile on Thursday dealing with how to return bodies to the United States – and the ticking clock of Jewish law.

Miller, of Hallandale Beach, Fla., was in the desert “in the middle of nowhere,” he said, rushing to get the dead home to New Jersey following Wednesday’s accident when 14 Celebrity Cruise ship tourists in a van careened off a Chilean mountainside. A dozen died and two were injured.

Miller needed to bring the bodies home by the Sabbath beginning Friday at sundown. Jewish law prohibits flying on the Sabbath, and the law also requires the dead be buried as quickly as possible.

New Women’s Summer Seminary: An Innovative Experience

The Shluchos Division at The Shluchim Office has announced the launching of a women’s seminary together with The Montreal Torah Center. The seminary will offer four stimulating days of intensive learning from Sunday, July 16-Thursday, July 20, Tamuz 20-24, 5766.

Shluchos are anticipating this exciting new program. It offers them a unique opportunity to spend time with their community women through a fabulous and concentrated learning experience. “I truly look forward to sharing those few days with some very interested women from my area… This program is something quite unprecedented,” commented Baila Gansburg, of Coconut Creek, FL. Shluchos and mikuravos are also looking forward to the opportunity of doing in depth textual study in an intensive learning environment.(Interested women may also attend independently.)

Chabad Leadership Gearing Up To Take On Messianists

While last week’s 770 decision passed without much comment, the leadership of the movement as embodied by its central organization — Agudas Chasidei Chabad — sees it as a watershed moment allowing it to take on the messianists in the sect with a move they’ve long been hoping for. For them, this isn’t just about the right to keep a cornerstone plaque referring to the late Rebbe as “of blessed memory.”

Rabbi Avraham Shemtov, chairman of the executive committee of Agudas, said in a phone interview yesterday that “There are many things that we have refrained from doing in order to avoid confrontation and in order to avoid unnecessary conflict,” and that now, with the legal decision in hand, they will endeavor to restrict “the access and the over-excessive access by individuals whose beliefs and whose conduct is completely foreign to the Lubavitch movement,” referring to the messianists who’ve been occupying 770.

Responding to the common assumption that the reason why the messianist element within 770 has remained is because of political considerations or a lack of desire to see it gone, Shemtov said “That is completely incorrect; the desire has always been there, but there were considerations that could not have been avoided” before the ruling. Now, he said, Agudas is “weighing the immediate steps to implement the permissions that come with it.”

Kosher BBQ in Rancho Mirage: A Torah Oasis

If you’re in California’s desert off Highway 10 on a Tuesday, and find yourself getting hungry for some kosher food– you’re in luck. Chabad of Rancho Mirage, 25 minutes out of the resort city of Palm Springs, hosts a weekly community barbecue that is redefining gastronomic Judaism.

One-inch thick steaks sizzle on the grill. Patties are being flipped into single and double burgers resting on cushion-soft buns. The crowd’s senior, junior, more than 50 strong, easy going and dressed in short sleeves; it’s day two of spring and it’s 87 degrees at sunset. Jewish diners order up California style veggies burgers and veggie soup served alongside Chabad of Rancho Mirage representative Chaya Posner’s famous salads. Since moving down to Rancho five years ago, Joan Kramer has tucked into her share of barbecue fare. “It is wonderful. The camaraderie is the very best. Everybody mingles with everybody,” she says. “I’d recommend it for every community.”

Building bonds between Jews in the area is as part of the barbecue as hotdogs and mustard. At least one couple met at barbecue and married. Still more have dated, discussed prospective pairings, and done business along the eight-foot tables and under the twinkling lights. Kids down their burgers and whiz around the concrete plaza on scooters and bikes. Not on the agenda, however, is a formal Torah program. “When Abraham welcomed people into his tent, he fed them, he didn’t lecture them,” said Chabad of Rancho’s Rabbi Shimon Posner. “In the Torah, people met and gathered at the well. Out here, the barbecue is a Torah oasis.”

Simchas Made Simple

The first volume of Simchas Made Simple has already proven to be of tremendous assistance to Shluchim, less then a month after its release. Simchas Made Simple is a book developed and published by the Shluchos Division at The Shluchim Office.

“Shluchim are always looking for creative ways to convert their personal joys into a community simchas” commented Mrs. Chana Piekarski, who heads the Shluchos Division at The Shluchim Office, and oversaw the Simcha book project.

With Shluchim constantly searching for new and innovative ways to bond with their communities, what better way is there, then to connect through a personal simcha.