When Rabbi Yosef C. Kantor, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Thailand, sent two young rabbinical students to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the summer of 2006, it was, he said tongue-in-cheek, just “to confirm that there weren’t any Jews there.”
Permanent Chabad House in Cambodia
When Rabbi Yosef C. Kantor, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Thailand, sent two young rabbinical students to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in the summer of 2006, it was, he said tongue-in-cheek, just “to confirm that there weren’t any Jews there.”
Of course, his full mission was to temporarily serve any Jews he could find, learning Torah with them, praying with them and encouraging them, but what the student came across was large enough to justify opening the newest Chabad House in Southeast Asia.
After final discussions this summer with Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky of Lubavitch World Headquarters, Kantor announced that Rabbi Benzion and Mashie Butman of New York will permanently move to the Cambodian capital by the end of the year.
“The Jewish community in Phnom Penh is much like any other in our part of the world,” said the Bangkok-based Kantor. “It’s an eclectic mix of business travelers, Israeli expatriates and backpackers travelling across Asia after serving their terms in the Israel Defense Force.”
Butman was not among the rabbinical students who first went to the city three years ago, but ever since his predecessors spent that summer in Phnom Penh, the capital has been part of list of remote locations where rabbinical students run programs for major Jewish holidays and peak travel periods. Over time, Jewish residents and visitors built up more of a connection with Chabad that Kantor – who oversees activities throughout Indochina – began to think seriously about finding a family who could serve as full-time emissaries to the country.
Earlier this year, Butman and his wife took their one-year-old son to spend Passover in Phnom Penh, where they hosted holiday meals and services for a total of 125 people.
Tanchum
The same story on lubavitch.com but much better.
Why are they competing with each other?
josh
they have the same news stories in the new york times as well as any other newspapers you may read. news is news.if you have a news website you report news. it doesn’t matter if it’s written elswhere.
hershel
Wrong Josh. The NYTImes doesn’t compete with itself. Both chabad.org and lubavitch.com are under Merkos. And it is a Chillul Shem Lubavitch when chabad.org keeps trying to compete and duplicate an already excellent news service.
let’s be honest–chabad.org is trying to bite off more than it can chew, and it shows. I take my news from lubavitch.com, and parsha stuff from chabad.org. Unless you think maybe lubavitch.com should start providing “toichen” –hey, if news is news, then you bet there’s room for chassidus and torah on lubavitch.com.
Lubavitcher
why is there a chabad house there? they are not jews
postville
kol a kavod!
asach achloche!
a few good words to the sheliach will be better than all this complaint about yes news no news,
Baal Chaddisus
For many visitors of Chabad.org, it is their only source of Jewish/Chabad information online. Unaware of or simply uninterested in the many other websites offering Jewish content, for many Chabad.org is their all-in-one location online for sustaining their Jewish identity.
They could be providing the same information for two DIFFERENT audiences, and often for two DIFFERENT purposes.
In Lubavitch.com it could be more for the purpose of ‘news’ for the publicity-minded, while in Chabad.org it could be more for the purpose of inspiration and to remind those who are in the more remote locations, that we Chabad are working hard to eventually reach-out to them too, and that no remote location is over-looked, however it takes to reach it.
If one see’s both of these websites as inyonei Koidesh, then there is surely no issue of ‘competition’.
-All the best