PARIS, France — After four decades of outreach in France's capital city, Chabad-Lubavitch of Paris is turning its sites to expanding its programming for the region's many university students.
Student Takes Center Stage at Parisian Chabad’s 40th Anniversary
PARIS, France — After four decades of outreach in France’s capital city, Chabad-Lubavitch of Paris is turning its sites to expanding its programming for the region’s many university students.
At its seventh-annual gala banquet this week, 1,600 supporters not only toasted Rabbi Shmuel Azimov, who opened the city’s first Chabad House – Beit Loubavitch Centre – in 1968 as a continuation of the vast educational and humanitarian programs Lubavitch established in the early 1940s, but listened to a University of Paris medical student detail the evolution of his close relationship with the institution.
Frederiac Emkies, 26, started attending classes taught by Azimov’s son nine years ago. Rabbi Levi Azimov, would come from Beth Loubavitch of Neuilly just west of Paris, to the university every week, where he would lead discussions on Judaism. Rabbi Eliezer Arnauve of the central Chabad House later took over, adjusting the seats in his minivan to create a mobile “class on wheels.”
“It was something very special,” said Emkies, who five years ago gave Arnauve the honor of being a witness at his wedding. “We didn’t have a classroom, so we learned in the emissary’s car.”
