In a diary entry written only days before her death, M., a 40-year old woman from New York battling cancer, listed several things she was grateful for in her life; at the top of the list she wrote: “Spending time with Dad before I go, and, Meeting the Lazaroffs and Yiddishkeit in Houston.”

In his work with patients at Houston’s renowned medical centers, many of which specialize in the treatment of cancer and other terminal diseases, Rabbi Eliezer Lazaroff Director of Chabad at Texas Medical Center in Houston works with patients who face the terrifying space between life and death. In the past 12 years, the Lazaroffs have been holding out hope and light for people at a time when the darkness that surrounds them can be overwhelming.

M. arrived in Houston last year for a final, desperate attempt in her 10-year struggle against cancer. Divorced, with no children, and struggling financially, M. met up with Rabbi Lazaroff on his regular rounds visiting Jewish patients in the local hospitals. For one month, M. stayed in the hospitality suite of the Chabad House, several blocks from the medical center where she was receiving treatment. M. knew that her battle was almost over, but in those few short weeks with the Lazaroffs, her life was enriched and enlightened by Jewish tradition. “M. was so far removed from tradition that she didn’t know what to do with the candle I handed her before her first Shabbos here,” recalls Mrs. Rochel Lazaroff, “By the time she went back to New York a month later, she was a different person. Physically, she was failing. But spiritually, she had never been so alive.” M. passed away several weeks after leaving Houston, surrounded by family and friends in New York, but the long conversations with the Rabbi on the meaning of life, and life after death, and warm family time with the Lazaroff’s eight children, who immediately treated her as an adopted aunt, gave M. insight into a Jewish experience she had never encountered.

When Eliezer and Rochel Lazaroff arrived in Houston in August of ’92, the need for the vital service they provide was quickly becoming apparent. Houston’s medical treatment centers were gaining worldwide renown and attracting patients from across the globe. For Jewish patients in desperate need of physical, spiritual and emotional nurturing, there had to be a full time Rabbi nearby to address their needs. For Shabbat-and-kosher observant patients, staying in Houston for the extended period of time often required for treatment posed serious problems. Chabad in Houston, an established presence since the early seventies, was located miles away, in the suburbs. So under the direction of Rabbi Lazaroff’s father, Rabbi Shimon Lazaroff, director of Chabad in Texas, the couple set up house and Chabad center in the Texas Medical Center area near downtown Houston, a neighborhood populated by numerous hospitals, treatment centers, and schools of medicine and nursing, and the doctors and professors who work there.

“To fully provide for a person or family suffering from a serious illness, you have to approach their condition from all angles,” Rabbi Lazaroff says. In his daily rounds of Jewish patients in the local hospitals, the Rabbi takes the opportunity to meet each one and see what he can do for them. “Sometimes a person is there surrounded by family and able to afford the cost of staying in a nearby hotel and all they need is a measure of spiritual comfort and inspiration from a rabbi,” he says. But some people need more than that. “The Christian organizations are all there, and they are willing to help,” says the Rabbi, “But when you can provide physical assistance together with Jewish warmth and spirituality, you’re really enriching people’s lives in a tremendous way.” For those who cannot afford the cost of a hotel, the Chabad House has a private, fully equipped apartment available for short or long term stays, at whatever cost the occupant can afford. Kosher meals are prepared by Mrs. Lazaroff and delivered to the hospital daily. Families and patients staying over extended periods of time quickly become a part of the small Chabad community in the Texas Medical Center area and benefit from the nurturing Lazaroff family—an experience that is as necessary as any medical treatment they seek at this time.

For hundreds of Jewish patients and their families—be they unafilliated, fervently religious, and everything in between, from countries and cities that span the globe—the warmth they encounter with Chabad remains with them long after their stay in Houston. “We’ve had people who return home and enroll their kids in a Jewish school, or become active supporters of Chabad in their city, as a result of their experiences here,” says Rochel Lazaroff. In cases like M.’s, where patients discover a meaning and spirituality that gives their final days such peace, family members and friends take great comfort and often begin to seek out spirituality in their own lives. And kindness has a ripple effect. People whose lives were touched by Chabad in Houston go on to touch and inspire and give more to the people around them.

“When you can be there for someone physically, emotionally, and also spiritually, at a time when they need it most,” says Rabbi Lazaroff, “You are nurturing them in a very deep way, and the effects of that just go on and on.”

Nine hundred and fifty dinner guests turned up on October 1 at the Westin Hotel, one of Sydney, Australia’s most prestigious venues, in a broad show of support for Chabad of Sydney’s “Jewish House Crisis Center”, a unique and very successful project celebrating its 18th anniversary.

“The Jewish House is simply a place for people to turn to,” says founder and director Rabbi Pinchas Woolstone. “We provide a complete, all-encompassing measure of care for individuals, couples and families in any sort of emotional distress.” A full-time staff of seven mental-health professionals serves two branches of the Jewish House, one in the eastern suburbs of Sydney and one on the North Shore. A third center, in Perth, is scheduled to open later this year.

Though officially classified as a day therapy center, the Jewish House is much more than that to the hundreds of people—from all sectors of the Jewish community, and beyond—who have made use of its services in close to two decades of operation. The center deals with problems ranging from substance abuse to emotional stress, designing a treatment path tailored to the person’s specific needs and directing them to the proper channels once they have finished their treatment at the Jewish House. In recent years, the addition of a crisis accommodation unit with 14 private rooms means the care can be extended even further to those who need it.

Judging by the sheer number of people who avail themselves of the Jewish House’s services, the center fills an important need. “Not everyone experiencing difficulty in their lives can make that phone call and see a therapist on their own,” explains Rabbi Woolstone. “Many people need the sort of complete care that we provide.” And the genuine warmth that typically characterizes a Chabad center is a major boost in the healing process, he says.

In recognition of the Jewish House’s extraordinary contributions, hundreds of dinner guests representing a cross section of the Sydney community, both Jewish and non-Jewish, helped raise funds to cover the center’s enormous yearly budget at the annual fundraising dinner last month. The dinner honored the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. John Howard, for his enthusiastic support of the Jewish House over the last several years. “It is only because of individuals like Mr. Howard that the center has been able to successful make a difference in so many people’s lives,” said Rabbi Woolstone.

“The idea of a Lubavitch center springing up here on the island was just surreal,” perhaps as surreal as the island itself, says Kim Barkan, a businessman and father who’s lived here for the last decade. Only minutes away from the busy city streets of downtown Miami, this incredibly beautiful oasis—one of the wealthiest towns in the States—provides an almost other-worldly escape from life on the other side of the Rickenbacker Causeway, where many of the city’s 12,000 residents work.

Once an exclusively waspy community, the island is now home to some 1,000 Jews. But without a single synagogue, JCC, or Jewish school, the drive over the causeway was, wittingly or not, a departure from all things Jewish. What with a paradise-like lifestyle reflected in this island’s perpetual sunshine, some of the country’s most breathtaking beaches, and a never-ending supply of recreational activities on sea and on land, it is little wonder that few people here were actively searching for more.

That didn’t stop a young Chabad-Lubavitch couple living on the other side of the bridge, in Miami from testing the waters of this paradise island. Three years ago, Rabbi Yoel and Rivka Caroline began introducing various Jewish activities to Key Biscayne’s Jewish residents. At first, few people participated in the educational programs they established, but soon enough Chabad’s rented facilities were filling up. Then, on Lag B’Omer, Chabad hosted its first wedding ceremony for Chuck Alter and his wife Andrea who met at a function here. According to Chuck, a previously unaffiliated restaurateur who’s lived on the island for the past 20 years, having a Rabbi on the Key “is a real novelty.” Chabad, says Chuck, provides a “focal point for the Jews living in this small luxury bedroom community, and helps it grow by being so accessible, just next door.”

Slowly but surely activities expanded, attendance grew, and the need for a permanent Chabad residence on the Key was realized. With the generous support of Jay and Jeannie Schottenstein, to whom the Carolines and the local Jewish community are eternally grateful, Chabad of Key Biscayne moved into a home of its own just in time Rosh Hashana 5763.

In the weeks since, 211 Greenwood Drive has made Jewish life a lively reality on the Key. The Alters participate at the Shabbat minyans and dinners, which draw some twenty people regularly and more than 15 women participate at a monthly Jewish Women’s Circle meeting for evenings of discussion and creative activities centered around Jewish themes. The adult education program now includes several weekly group classes and one-on-one learning sessions, as well as a lecture series.

The island’s uniqueness, says Kim Barkan, presents significant challenges to Chabad here. “The age and socioeconomics of the people living here—many are retirees—lends itself to a certain level of contentment,” and is not particularly conducive to religious awakening. But for parents of young children like himself, the need for religious affiliation increases as the children grow, and through its many programs Chabad succeeds to fill the gap, imbuing young children with a love and understanding of Jewish tradition. Andrea’s son Pedro, is one of twenty others who have joined the Torah Kids In Action club, which meets monthly for an afternoon of fun and creativity in a Jewish atmosphere. Other resources for children include a Hebrew school and a Jewish Children’s Library, a project undertaken in memory of the Caroline’s son Sholom Dov Ber, which will soon be open to the public.

The Carolines anticipate at least 200 people at the grand Chanukah menorah lighting, and express confidence that much like Kim, who feels he has embarked on a “steady, positive move upwards,” Key Biscayne’s Jewish community will discover that even in paradise, the Jewish soul yearns to be nurtured.

Once a capital crime in this region, Jewish outreach and spiritual leadership were recently awarded the highest government recognition.

Rabbi Pinchas Vishedski, Chabad representative to the Donbass region of the Ukraine, realized history was being made when he received news of his award from the representative of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, several weeks ago. “Government awards are very sought after here,” said Rabbi Vishedski, “even high officials work hard, pulling strings, all with the hope of receiving this prestigious decoration.” The medal is awarded annually to recognize outstanding achievements in various fields including business, law, and community leadership, and while Jewish professionals have have earned the medal, it was never in recognition of anything Jewishly-related.

Presenting Rabbi Rabbi Vishedski with the medal at the Academy’s building in the capital city of Kiev, Professor Dmitri Akimov, chairman of the Awards committee, said, “the Government of Ukraine is proud to grant the Gold Medal to one of the most important rabbis in the Ukraine, and one of the main leaders of the Jewish community in the country—for his contribution to good relationships, mutual understanding and dialogue between different nations, and for his major contribution to the renewal of Jewish life in the Donbass region in the realms of education, culture and welfare.”

When the Vishedskis settled here back in 1994 they found a Jewish population of 35,000 Jews but no Jewish infrastructure in place. Since then, Chabad has established a vast network of Jewish educational facilities, including a kindergarten, elementary and high school, and post high school educational insititutions. Once inaccessible, kosher food is now readily available here, and a soup kitchen feeds 500 people daily. And next door the Chabad shul–a hub of Jewish activity–a new Jewish Community Center is under construction, to be completed by next September.

Accepting the award, Rabbi Vishedski expressed his appreciation and thanks to the Ukrainian government for a democracy that grants full equal rights to all national minorities in the country. Rabbi Vishedski went on to say that he was accepting the award as representative of the entire Chabad-Lubavitch movement to the Donbass region of Ukraine, and as an emmissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The Rebbe, he noted, was born and educated in Ukraine, and “it is thanks to his great vision, his prayers and his advice, that we have been able to bring about the renewal of Jewish life in Ukraine and in the entire CIS.”

For the 25,000 Jews living in Novosibirsk, Russia’s third largest city, Jewish identity has long become no more than a sad footnote in their personal histories. It was Siberia, a “land of ice and chains,” after all, that Stalin chose as a punishing destination for thousands of Jews. And while Novosibirsk was never nearly as forbidding a place as its neighboring Siberian cities, the pall of gloom that has come to characterize the misery of Jewish exiles suffering in Siberia still lingers in Jewish memory.

Add to that an almost non-existent Jewish infrastructure, and Siberia’s capital city, a vibrant center of academic and business activity, was quickly losing its Jewish population to assimilation and intermarriage. But when Rabbi Shneur Zalman and Miriam Zaklos, both natives of Israel, settled here in January, 2000, Jewish activity began to thrive openly for the first time. In less than three years, their operation has grown well beyond anyone’s expectations, prompting the recent purchase of a new 2,500 square meter building, a hint of things yet to come.

In a very short time, the Zaklos’s have developed numerous educational and social programs. A Jewish Heritage Library, Torah seminars, and several weekly classes cater to the community’s growing curiosity, and more than 150 women participate regularly in functions and activities at the Women’s Club with similar turnouts at a children’s Youth Club and the Golden Age Club for senior citizens. Weekly Shabbat gatherings and an Evening of Jewish Music twice monthly are part of an ever-widening gamut of activities reviving Jewish awareness here.

Thanks to the George Rohr Family Foundation, the Jewish Federation of the CIS, and the local community, the new building will replace rented facilities and house a permanent synagogue for the daily minyan and Shabbat services, a Jewish community center and offices for a staff of about one hundred people.

Perhaps Chabad’s single most important achievement here in Novosibirsk is the Or Avner school, which includes a nursery, grammar school and high school, with close to 200 children enrolled. One of only five schools in the city to be awarded the Letzay title, the highest recognition of academic excellence, the school’s certified teachers place special focus on Hebrew, English, Mathematics, Computer Technology and Ethics, and students here have repeatedly reached second and third place in competitions that included tens of thousands of students city-wide. Three meals served daily are an attractive feature for parents, 80% of whom live well below the poverty line, many earning a monthly salary as low as one hundred dollars. And plans for a new school building are in the works, to ensure that an ever greater number of Jewish children benefit from a solid Jewish education.

Humanitarian aid is a central focus of much of Chabad’s work, with a soup kitchen serving freshly cooked meals to thirty people daily, food packages distributed to thousands of the city’s poor, and cash allotments granted to destitute families. And with the high cost of medical attention often completely unaffordable to the average Novosibirsk resident, a free doctor’s service and a medicine fund offer a desperately needed benefit.

After decades of assimilation, Rudolph Rabinowitz, a famous Novosibirsk architect had lost any sense of Jewish identity. But when his eleven year-old grandson, Dmitri, chose of his own accord to attend the Or Avner school, Rudolph’s surprise soon turned to pride. “I don’t know what led my grandson onto this path,” he says. But whatever it was, Rudolph says he was overjoyed to see “Judaism manifest itself here, in a new, young generation.”

Over the last few decades, a full 80% of Atlanta’s Jewish population of 100,000 migrated to the suburbs. For a while, it seemed as though Jewish life in the city’s center was a closed chapter. The JCC shut its doors and moved to the suburbs. And although the city itself was flourishing, only a single shul with 15 members remained to bear witness to the thriving Jewish community that had once existed there.

In January of 1997, Rabbi Eliyahu Schusterman and his wife Dina, both native Californians, were recruited by Rabbi Yossi New, director of Chabad of Georgia, to work with the remaining community in town and direct activities at a nearby campus.

Within a few short years, the Schustermans’ hands were so full with the activities of “Chabad Intown”, that Rabbi New had to recruit another couple to direct the campus programs.

The fading Jewish community had been given another lease on life.

This past August, Rabbi and Mrs. Schusterman, together with a now-thriving community of 150 families, celebrated the grand opening of Chabad Intown’s newly renovated 4500 square foot center, in Virginia Highlands, a young, new-age sort of residential area adjacent to Atlanta’s business district.

A general resurgence in the area in the last few years, and a booming economy, has attracted thousands of yuppies and their families to Virginia Highlands. Chabad is based in the neighborhood, while serving the entire city center.

“A revival was happening here and there needed to be a Jewish revival to meet it,” says Rabbi Schusterman, “We found ourselves in the right place at the right time.”

In the years since their arrival, as the community flourished and increasing numbers of people began attending programs, Chabad had successively outgrown several rented locations and was searching for a property. Finally, in December 2001, they closed on a building that had at one time been an old southern mansion and was then being used as office space.

Renovations began immediately to adapt the building to Chabad’s needs, and, now the beautiful center houses a shul, classrooms, youth room, and offices.

“We have a community that wants a Jewish experience for their kids, a deeper understanding of Judaism for themselves, and a warm family atmosphere,” says Dina Schusterman.

With a wide range of programs including holiday events, services, Hebrew school, programs for toddlers, and the Intown Jewish Academy, an expansion on Chabad’s current classes and lectures that have opened this fall, Chabad meets the community at their needs.

DRESDEN, GERMANY–The elderly man expressed interest in receiving Chabad’s new weekly update, providing that its cover won’t display anything too Jewish. It wasn’t a good idea, he felt, for his neighbors to know that he is a Jew. So when Rabbi Shneur Zalman Havlin ticked off “Judaism” as the religious identity of his newborn son at a government registration agency, his openness was met with surprise. Jews here don’t volunteer that information. A former hotbed of Anti-Semitism, first under Nazi and then communist rule, Saxony, East Germany, is now home to 5,000 Jewish families, where old fears die hard.

The desire to keep a low Jewish profile, so prevalent among the Jewish population here creates a challenge for Rabbi Havlin and his wife Chanie, Chabad’s new representatives to the state who settled in Dresden with their children this past March. The Havlins are working the Jewish community with sensitivity, opening their home to create smaller, and more intimate settings in which to conduct Jewish functions: the Havlin’s living room converts into a synagogue—the first traditional one in Dresden in over half a century—where fifty people regularly attend Shabbat services and kiddushim. As well, they’ve adapted their home to include a lecture hall, classroom, and a meeting place for members of the local community.

Of the 6,000 Jews living in Dresden before the War, only 60 remained. With the fall of the Iron Curtain and an influx of Russian Jews to the area, the Jewish population here has since doubled. But half a century of bans on religious practice left little in the way of Jewish communal religious life, and only three weeks after their arrival here, the Havlins weren’t sure what kind of turnout to expect at their Passover seders. To their surprise, fifty people showed up, and it wouldn’t take long before they would establish contact with 400 local Jewish families.

Slowly but surely, a Jewish pride is emerging. Eighty people celebrated joyfully at a Lag B’omer bonfire and barbecue, despite the scare of a Neo-Nazi event scheduled to take place the next day, and fifty people joined Chabad for a Shavuot ice cream party. Now, says Rabbi Havlin, the community seems ready for a public Chanukah menorah lighting ceremony, to take place in the center of town this Chanukah. Children here will get to make their own olive oil in Chabad’s trademark Chanukah olive press that will be set up at the local JCC, where they’ll explore all the holiday rituals through hands-on activities.

The city has recently approved the founding of a Jewish nursery school, scheduled to begin next fall, and permission to move into the old synagogue building is pending approval.

Given the ominous history of this place, says Rabbi Havlin,“every time a Jewish child identifies Jewishly, every time a Jewish adult makes another effort to study Torah or participate at a Jewish function, it is a development worth celebrating.”

Reported by S. Olidort

“I love this more than anything in the world,” says Jordan Fishman, 13, of her weekly visits with 11-year-old Stephanie, an autistic girl. Since joining the Friendship Circle of Michigan last year, Jordan has earned two links on her friendship nomination bracelet for 30 hours of volunteer work.

Possibly one of the most highly innovative programs catering to children with special needs, the Friendship Circle, as its name suggests, is really a chain of goodness, one that comes around full-circle, forever transforming the lives of those involved at either end.

For nearly 150 children with special needs—learning, emotional, or social, the Friendship Circle’s various programs effectively involve them in activities that are both enjoyable and educational, as each child receives the undivided attention of a devoted volunteer. Weekly visits from a pair of volunteers—known as the Friends at Home program—offer the parents and siblings of special needs children a much-needed respite from the the struggles that are a constant in negotiating daily routines. Volunteers will often accompany families to holiday programs and services where they can participate, uninterrupted, as the volunteers tend to the children.

Founded some six years ago by Rabbi Levi and Bassie Shemtov and Chabad of the Detroit area, the Friendship Circle began with ten special needs children and twenty volunteers. Since then it has grown into a huge operation, with ten full time staff members, and close to 300 working part-time. Several trailers serve as its temporary center with plans for a building pending approval.

The program’s tremendous success here in Michigan served as model for other Chabad centers who adopted the Friendship Circle, among them, Livingston and Manalapan in New Jersey; Columbus, Ohio; Montreal and Toronto in Canada. Two hundred and fifty teens, ranging in age from 11 and up, volunteer for the Friendship Circle, where they earn points towards their community service requirements—an incentive, at least initially, for teenagers to join.

Forging close friendships with their respective charges, the teens quickly realize their ability to bring joy into people’s lives, building their own self-esteem and motivating them further to fill their time with meaningful activity.

Reflecting on her experience, Jordan, who joined the Friendship Circle expecting to be on the giving end, says that she “gained much more than I could ever give back,” and feels uplifted and inspired.

Twenty-four children and an equal number of volunteers participate at a Sunday Children’s Circle. In the course of the 2Å“ hour program, the children get to join a professional therapy session of their choice: music, art, karate, or sports. A Life Skills program, aimed at helping children communicate and improve social interaction, meets once a week in the form of a music therapy session. Additional programs include the Fun & Physical sports therapy sessions, which meet twice weekly.

Shabbatons, trips, and seminars will follow this year’s kick off party for volunteers, where in addition to an exciting evening out or a weekend away, they will be kept up to date on new developments in working with children with special needs. The program is a source of pride for the mothers of volunteers as well. Two hundred volunteers and their mothers attended a mother and daughter Friendship Circle event last year, and a similar program is planned for fathers and their volunteer sons, in December.

“Our goal is really twofold; on the one hand we are trying to foster feelings of openness and warmth towards these children and their families, and on the other we are providing young adults with the opportunity to be productive in a way that will have a lasting, positive influence on their lives,” says Bassie Shemtov.

Coined the “technology corridor” of Illinois, Naperville and its surrounding areas are home to dozens of hi-tech firms and company headquarters for several large companies. The area is also home to approximately 20,000 Jews, and hundreds more Jewish businesspeople make the daily commute from Chicago, some 40 minutes away.

Soon after starting his new job in Naperville, Reuven Cheruff, from Chicago, along with several other businessmen, began organizing a daily minyan for Minchah. Words spread and interest grew, so he asked Rabbi Avrohom Wolowik, then serving as program director for the Cheder Lubavitch Hebrew Day School system in Chicago, to teach a monthly Torah class in private homes in the Naperville area. And the rest, says Rabbi Wolowik, is history. Over two years, the class snowballed into well-attended holiday programs, additional Torah classes, community Shabbatons, until, just six weeks ago, Rabbi Wolowik, his wife Baily, and their three children moved out to Naperville to establish a permanent Chabad presence, under the auspices of Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois directed by Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz .

As the only organized Orthodox presence in Naperville, Chabad has already set in motion a full range of community programs and services, including well attended Shabbat services, lunch and learn Torah classes at local business establishments, weekly torah classes, and hospital visitations.

In addition to serving the local population of mostly middle to upper-middle class working families, the Wolowiks will be working with several community and state colleges in the area, with a combined Jewish student population of several thousand.

Currently running operations from their rented home in Naperville, the Wolowiks say they are grateful for the warm reception and strong support of the community. “This is a very friendly, family-oriented community,” says Rabbi Wolowik. “We are focused on enhancing Jewish awareness here, and hope to see a lot of dynamic activity and involvement in Jewish life in this area.”

For the better part of the last half-century, Bulgaria’s Jewish population (12,000) has not had the benefit of educational and social institutions so integral to Jewish communal life. Spared the worst of WWII’s ravages only to fall under the communist regime, many of Bulgaria’s Jews emigrated to Israel in the decades since, bringing Jewish activity to a standstill in this once thriving center of Sephardic Jewry.

But as the country seeks to gain membership in the European Union, re-establishing itself as a player in the world economy, Jewish life has seen its own resurgence in Bulgaria. In just two years since the arrival of Rabbi Yosi and Tamar Solomon, Chabad’s full time representatives to Sofia, participation in Jewish life has grown dramatically, prompting the purchase and renovation of a six story building to replace the small apartment that served as the center of Chabad activities up until now.

The Solomons have created a dynamic range of programs reaching many of the capital city’s Jews (5,000). Working out of their small rented apartment, they’ve developed various educational and social programs, and conduct weekly Jewish studies classes exploring the fundamentals of Judaism, the weekly Torah portion, and Chasidic philosophy.

The Solomons are also reaching many of the country’s Jews in some of the more remote cities, among them Plovdiv, Yanbul, and Starasgova. More than 2,000 Jewish people participated in any of Chabad’s nine seders, and some 500 of Sofia’s Jews turned out for an inspirational Lag B’Omer bonfire last May.

The new $600,000 facilities, purchased with the generous support of the Rohr Family Foundation, provides comfortable quarters for the 80 children enrolled in the new Ohr Avner kindergarten and Sunday school. The building will also house a synagogue and a well-stocked Jewish library, in addition to a kosher restaurant and grocery. And with many of Bulgaria’s Jewish population below the poverty line, Chabad is launching a food care package program to provide the city’s poor with Shabbat food parcels each week.

At the core of all the programs and projects they plan so meticulously, says Rabbi Solomon, is the underlying message that, “each Jew is a world on his own, and also an essential part of the entire Jewish nation.”

In a moment of heartrending closure, the kaddish was recited on a ship in the Black Sea in the area where flight Tu-154 went down October 3 of last year, killing all 78 passengers aboard.

150 relatives of those killed in the plane crash marked the one-year anniversary last week, coming from cities across Russia and Israel to Sochi—a resort city on the Black Sea’s north shore—the city nearest the crash site, for a memorial tribute. The event was organized by Chabad representative to Sochi, Rabbi Aryeh-Leib Aidelkopf, in conjunction with Mr. Levi Leviev, president of the Jewish federation of the CIS.

The fated flight had been en-route from Tel Aviv to Novosibirsk, Siberia, when an explosion sent the aircraft into the Black Sea, nearly 300 miles off shore. Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar, the local Rabbi Aidelkopf, and Rabbi Zaklos, Chabad representative to Novosibirsk, were on hand to make the necessary arrangements for burial of the bodies that were recovered, and stayed in close contact with the families of those killed in the difficult months since.

Itzik Kamri, an Israeli whose daughter was lost in the crash, has been trying to work through his enormous grief. Rabbi Aidelkopf, who has been at his side since the tragic day, has been a source of much needed support. “I felt like he was G-d-sent,” says Kamri who later donated an ark to Sochi’s Jewish synagogue in his daughter’s memory.

At the ceremony, on the port of the Black Sea, Rabbi Zev Wagner represented Russia’s Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar with a message of hope and solidarity. Sochi’s mayor addressed the community, expressing his condolences to the families of those killed, and thanking the local community for opening their homes and hearts to the bereaved. Several other officials spoke, including Yitzchok Scwartzberg, president of the Jewish community, and representatives from Sibir Airlines.

The crowd then boarded a ship and in the spot where dozens of their loved ones met their untimely deaths one year ago, Rabbi Aidelkopf led kaddish services, and families lit candles in memory of those who had perished. The site was chosen because “family members see this as the true burial site of their loved ones,” says Rabbi Aidelkopf, who saw this event as an opportunity to convey a message of faith, hope and continuity. He talked about that comfort that one finds in a life enriched by Torah and mitzvot, which empowers humanity to perfect the world and hasten an era of peace, prosperity, and life.

Only several weeks after torrential rains and flooding left half of Prague submerged in water, Chabad here is back in business, and “stronger than ever,” says director Rabbi Manis Barash.

Rabbi Barash, who established Chabad in the Czech capital with his wife Dini just over six years ago, reports that damage to the ground floor of the Chabad House—located in the center of the Old Town City Center—was substantial, but thankfully, not irreparable. A team of community members and local Yeshiva students worked around the clock to ensure Chabad would be completely ready for the high holidays. During all that time the daily minyan and Chabad’s programs carried on as usual- with some minor differences, such as kerosene lighting due to a two-week long power failure.

When Rabbi Barash and his wife arrived in Prague, the city was a curious irony. Home to some of the oldest and most beautiful synagogues in Europe, and host to thousands of Jewish tourists a year, there was not a single place to join a weekday minyan or participate in a traditional service on Shabbat.

“The synagogues had all been converted to museums, and in a sense, that’s what Jewish Prague was—a monument to Jewish life in the city many years before,” recalls Rabbi Barash.

Rabbi Barash estimates that as many as 6,000 Jews live in Prague, many of them holocaust survivors and their children. The city—world famous for its beauty, and with strong economic potential—also has a large foreign population among its residents.

The Rabbi and his wife have devoted all their energies to creating a vibrant, active Jewish community in Prague. The Chabad synagogue is a constant stream of activity with community programs, Hebrew school classes, daily and Shabbat services, a newly-opened Chabad Yeshiva, and a kindergarten on the ground floor.

Twenty-five of Prague’s Jewish youngsters are enrolled in Chabad’s kindergarten this year. Hit hardest by the flooding waters, the kindergarten classrooms have now been completely renovated and look better than ever.

Since the flood, Rabbi Barash observed many new faces at Chabad, particularly over the High Holidays as compared to last year. “It is written,” says Rabbi Barash, “that even many waters cannot stop the strong love that a Jew feels for G-d.”

“We are seeing this in our community. The floods in Prague brought out a sense of faith in so many people and a desire to connect with other Jewish people in the city.”

Jason Kirsch, a sophomore psychology major, loves jamming nights at Shabbos House on campus. Jason is one of seventy students who bring their musical instruments and play the night away over a kosher pizza dinner, doing improvisations and Jewish adaptations of old and new numbers.

The Shabbos House on campus at SUNY, Albany, is something of a miracle. A room designed to seat 30, which it did when the Rabbi Mendel Rubin and his wife came to the Shabbos House in 1997, has stretched to accommodate more than 100 on Friday night Shabbat dinners during the last four years. Sofas and furniture are removed to accommodate the ever-growing number of students who participate at Chabad’s activities for Jewish students on campus.

Preparing lavish meals for more than a hundred in one’s own home kitchen is daunting; doing so in a kitchen where the workspace is only a few feet long is downright difficult, a challenge Raizy Rubin has met time and again, but one that becomes more difficult as programs are added and attendance grows. Unwilling to resort to membership fees or limited seating, in 1999, Chabad purchased two adjacent lots right off campus.

It wouldn’t be long before Norman Massry and Jack Rosenblum came into the picture. Both long-time members of the Albany Jewish community and affiliated with Chabad of the Capital district, they soon noticed the need for new, expanded facilities after attending several Chabad functions at SUNY, where the house was bursting at the seams.

“I am impressed by the Rubins’ dedication and commitment to helping students on campus,” says Mr. Rosenblum, President of the Rosenblum Development Corporation. “The time and energy they devote to bringing Jewish awareness to the campus is incredible, and I want to support their efforts.” Together, Rosenblum and Massry developed a plan where they would match the number of funds raised by Chabad to facilitate the building of a new, expanded Shabbos House.

Now in full swing, The Shabbos House Building Campaign has won the interest and commitment of students and alumni who are working with the Rubins, raising funds that will allow them to expand their programs and incorporate even more functions into an already packed schedule. The new Shabbos House will include a large kitchen, a student lounge and computer and library facilities. The building will be big and spacious, but will maintain a cozy, homey atmosphere.

The original Shabbos House established in 1975 by senior Rabbi Rubin, Yisroel, director of Chabad of the capital district, continues to function on overload. Twenty students get together twice a week where a dinner of meatballs and spaghetti can serve as the launching point for a lesson by Rabbi Rubin on the mystical significance of the two foods, based on their respective shapes—linear and round. Twenty-five students join Raizy for Challah baking, and it seems that rarely an hour passes where either of the Rubins are not engaged in individual study sessions with students.

In an unusual determination to seize every moment, Rabbi Rubin conducts 5 minute one-on-one learning sessions with dozens of students at the university’s cafeteria. “It’s amazing how much you can teach or learn in five concentrated minutes,” says Rabbi Rubin.

Students at Albany are especially responsive because of the genuine openness and warmth the Rubins exude. One student confessed that throughout his four years in college Rabbi Rubin was the only adult who knew his first name. Jason Kirsch recalls the feelings of uncertainty that accompanied him during his first few days of college, last year, until he met the Rubins and began to see Shabbos House as “my second home.”

Many alumni stay in touch with Chabad on campus with the help of an interactive website: www.shabboshouse.com.

Alumnus Shaun Zeitlin says that spending a Friday night dinner at Shabbos House was an experience that taught him more than all his years studying Talmud in Yeshiva. “Seeing the love and self-sacrifice that the Rubins practice gave me a deeper understanding of what Judaism really is all about–the feeling and meaning that is the very basis of everything I had ever learned,” says Shaun.

Ten years ago, newly arrived Chabad representative to the state of Utah, Rabbi Benny Zippel, received a call from a fellow Chabad Rabbi in California. The teenage son of a congregant had “gotten into some trouble” and was being sent to a Residential Treatment Center for adolescents in suburban Salt Lake City. Could Rabbi Zippel go down there and see what he could do for him?

Rabbi Zippel went down the next day and discovered, to his amazement, that there were a dozen such schools in the Salt Lake City area alone, and many more across the state, and, in any given year, an estimated 200 Jewish students were coming through them.

A typical RTC (Residential Treatment Center), situated in Utah specifically because of state laws allowing parents to forcibly send their children to such an institution, provides living and educational facilities for kids 12-18 years old with serious drug, alcohol, and behavioral problems.

“These kids come from all over the country and even abroad,” says Rabbi Zippel, “Some of the Jewish kids come from solid traditional homes, and just need the right help to get their lives back on track.”

Working hand-in hand with the schools, Rabbi Zippel has become a confidante, mentor and spiritual guide for hundreds of Jewish adolescents over the last ten years. As the official chaplain in several institutions, he visits the children before each Jewish holiday, teaches weekly classes on Judaism in the nearby schools, and comes by often just to chat. Kids who receive permission, join the Rabbi and his family for Shabbat and holidays.

“As something of an outsider to the school, the kids see me as someone who’s on their side,” says Rabbi Zippel. “We’ve had a lot of cases where kids leave Utah after spending several months here, and are very interested in exploring Judaism after their positive experience here with Chabad.”

The experience often extends to the parents and families of these kids. Lubavitch World Headquarters received the following letter from a grateful father of a student at Island View, an institution in Salt Lake City where Rabbi Zippel serves as official chaplain and visits frequently: The subject heading on the email: “Thank you for your Salt Lake City Chabad.”

My 17-year old son recently completed an 8-month stint at Island View Residential Treatment Center in suburban Salt Lake City. It’s a place for adolescents with a variety of problems ranging from drugs and alcoholism to failure to succeed in school and even suicide attempts. We live in suburban Chicago and are members of a conservative synagogue, but I was pretty much resigned to the fact that J. would have no contact with Judaism while in Utah. Was I ever wrong! Rabbi Benny Zippel at Chabad of Utah in Salt Lake City visited with J. and the other Jewish students every week. He counseled them, listened to their problems, their issues with Judaism and with life in general. He did it all in a low key, non-judgmental way that really allowed these troubled youngsters to open up.

Last week, we went to pick up Jon as he graduated from Island View. On Saturday, we shared Sukkot services with Rabbi Zippel and the congregation.

We went into the Sukkah for Kiddush, said the blessings over the lulav and etrog — and were even invited to lunch by the assistant rabbi and his wife. Of course we accepted!

J. isn’t out of the woods yet. He’s moving to an adult transitional living center in Bend, Oregon for a year or so. He’ll finish high school, start community college and get a part-time job (G-d willing), all while continuing to receive substance abuse counseling. I noticed there’s a Chabad in Eugene, Oregon. Unfortunately it’s 120 miles from Bend. Do you think Rabbi Spiegel in Eugene could talk to J. from time to time? Or maybe he could even visit occasionally. I understand there are other Jewish kids living in this place as well.

Anyway, thank you, thank you, thank you for making it possible for J. to cling to his Jewish roots in ‘Mormon country’ … and thank you for Rabbi Zippel!

J. S.

The last time Karen Guttman, 28, had contact with her father was 14 years ago. By a series of serendipitous events that brought her to Chabad for Yom Kippur services, Karen would meet up with her father, on the holiest day of the year.

Chabad emissaries working their respective corners of the globe have long known that a small action can, and often does, go a long way. Rabbi Dovid Flinkenstein of Chabad of Wilmette, Illinois, a quiet suburb of Chicago, discovered this to be true on his own home turf, and all because he thought to let people know that they were invited to spend Yom Kippur with Chabad.

Several weeks before the holiday, relates Rabbi Flinkenstien, Chabad sent a press release to the local paper, the Pioneer Press, informing them of their High Holiday services and inviting the community to join. The item merited a small mention in the paper.

But the notice caught the attention of Karen Guttman, who realized she hadn’t made any arrangements for Yom Kippur. So Yom Kippur found Karen seated with 200 other worshipers at Chabad of Wilmette. During the Torah reading, Karen suddenly heard a voice coming from the bima that sounded oddly familiar to her. Karen saw that the voice belonged to the man reciting the blessing on the Torah.

Karen didn’t recognize the man, and would have left it at that. But she knew the voice, and turning to the woman seated behind her, she asked if she knew the man’s name. “That’s my husband,” said Annette Guttman. David and his second wife, Annette, were active members of Chabad of Wilmette, and close friends of Rabbi Flinkenstien.

Estranged from her father for so many years following her parents’ bitter divorce, Karen was finally reunited in a joyous reunion on Yom Kippur, bringing tears to many of the people at Chabad that day.

In his Neilah sermon at the closing of the holy day, Rabbi Flinkenstein compared the reunion of father and daughter to the idea of Teshuva, of a Jewish soul returning to G-d, his father in Heaven. No matter the circumstance, a Jew is always connected to G-d, he explained, as a child is connected to her father. Sometimes all it takes to reunite them is a little sign, a tiny reminder that could go unnoticed … even a small, easily overlooked announcement in the local paper.

Like dozens of cities in Eastern Europe and the former USSR, Donetsk, one of the largest cities in Ukraine, was home to a thriving Jewish community before the Second World War. A mass grave in the city’s center marks the resting place of 40,000 Jewish residents—only a small percentage of Dontesk’s Jewish population at the time. The war, and decades of harsh communist rule after it, eroded whatever Jewish life Donetsk had once had.

Today the city is abuzz with preparations for a Torah dedication ceremony, festivities and the groundbreaking for a four-story Jewish Community Center next door to the main shul—the community synagogue and center for Chabad activities in Donetsk. The new JCC, to be completed by Rosh Hashana 5764, will house a library, classrooms, youth rooms, sports complex, auditorium, and offices.

When she arrived in 1994, recalls Nechama Vishedsky, Chabad representative to this city, there was exactly one lulav and esrog in Donetsk. It belonged to her husband, Rabbi Pinchas Vishedsky, who was one of only a tiny handful of Jews in the city who knew what it was.

Eight years later and more than 40 families in Donetsk were proud owners of a kosher lulav and esrog. Sukkahs across the city were bursting with men, women and children celebrating the holiday, and over 500 Jewish students in Chabad schools participated in the festivities.

Jewish life in Donetsk, it appears, has undergone something of a rapid revival.

When the Vishedskys arrived here from Israel, their native country, no formal Jewish community association existed. There was nothing in the way of Jewish education or kosher food, and the city’s main synagogue was empty and had fallen into disrepair. The Vishedskys got to work immediately, building up a community with the 35,000 Jews who still lived in Donetsk.

In late August of this year, the community celebrated the dedication of the most recent Chabad building in the city, —a brand-new, modern facility for the Or Avner Boys Junior High School, with dormitory accommodations, a large kitchen, and bright beautiful classrooms. The building, made possible with the support of Rabbi Sholom Duchman and Collel Chabad, provides a home for 40 boys and a future for hundreds more.

The school is only one of a vast network of educational and social institutions in Donetsk, built from the ground up in only eight years, including a kindergarten, elementary school, Yeshiva High schools for boys and girls, post-high school institutions for men and women, Judaic study programs for all ages, summer camps, and a soup kitchen that provides kosher meals for over 500 needy people daily.

Working the Jewish landscape are 10 Chabad couples who joined the Vishedskys in the last few years.

“Donetsk now has the feel of a regular Chabad community,” marvels Nechama. “Eight years ago, even my most optimistic visions would not describe what goes on here today.”

Thanks to the hard work of the Shluchim and the generous assistance of the Rohr Family Foundation, kosher food—meat, chicken, dairy products, and packaged goods—are readily available in Donetsk, which also supplies all Chabad communities in Ukraine with kosher products.

Rabbi Vishedsky points to the assistance of several generous benefactors as key factors in Chabad of Donetsk’s success, including the Or Avner Foundation and Mr. Levi Leviev, the Rohr Family Foundation, and Rabbi Sholom Duchman of Collel Chabad, whose contributions to Jewish life in Donetsk, he says, have had immeasurable impact.

With all the hectic activity, the Jews of Donetsk take pause every year to remember and reflect. On the tenth of Teves, a public fast commemorating the destruction of the Temple and other tragic periods in Jewish history, Chabad students and community members gather at the site of the mass grave in the city center for a memorial ceremony. It is here that they remember their duty to carry on the legacy of those who were destroyed, and ensure that Jewish life in Donetsk continues to flourish.

Only fifty feet from the glamour and glitz of the fall fashion show in Bryant Park last week, an odd looking hut became a curiosity item drawing the attention of models, designers, and media personnel from the international press. Approaching, gingerly at first, they soon found themselves in the spacious Sukkah. Their curiosity only grew as they observed people taking the lulav and esrog and observing the unique mitzvah of the “four kinds.”

Pizza boxes, bagged lunches and other take-out meals were carried into the Sukkah by businessmen, professionals, midtown residents, and tourists, all wanting to fulfill the mitzvah of taking meals in a Sukkah while on their lunch break. Sponsored by Chabad of Midtown, the Sukkah was brimming with lively conversation as Rabbi Yehoshua Metzger, Chabad representative to Midtown, took the time to introduce himself to visitors and make them feel welcome.

Situated in the heart of Manhattan on 42nd and 5th, just behind the New York Public Library, more than one thousand people a day visited the Sukkah during the eight-day long holiday that ended on Saturday.

Attorney Michael Brown is especially grateful for Chabad’s Sukkah in Bryant Park. He lives in an apartment building in Midtown with his wife and two daughters, making it impossible for him to have a private Sukkah. So during the week of Sukkot, the Browns take their meals in Bryant Park. Michael, who met up with Chabad of Midtown four years ago and has since become an active member, says that sitting in the Sukkah amid the hustle and bustle of Manhattan “sort of stops time and brings you back to where you came from.”

Established seven years ago, Chabad of Midtown, located on Fifth Avenue, addresses the needs of Jewish professionals and businessmen in the area, numbering in the tens of thousands. The community is also home to 50,000 Jewish residents. Three minyans daily attract close to 200 people collectively. Torah classes over lunch break and seminars throughout the day offer a spiritually stimulating respite from the busy work world. In a highly innovative program, several hundred attorneys participate at Chabad’s Continuing Legal Education program, designed for attorneys to keep their law licenses current by thought-provoking sessions on American and Jewish law.

Shabbat dinners and lunch at Chabad of Midtown is a 100-plus person affair every weekend. Mommy and Me Music sessions for mothers and their toddlers, and a full time hospital visitation program through which all Jewish patients at Bellevue and NYU receive a Challah and care package every week, courtesy of Chabad of Midtown.

But it is the Sukkah, by now a seasonal feature of Bryant Park, that has stopped so many in their tracks as they race their way through the busiest and fastest-paced zone in the world. Here, over a cup of coffee, a conversation easily becomes the first of many long lasting connections that point them in another direction.

Venture capitalist Mark Fischer, a regular at Chabad of Midtown, says that it is thanks to this Sukkah “that thousands of people who otherwise would not observe the holiday, were able to perform the mitzvot of Sukkot.”

“People are glad to have the chance to fulfill the mitzvot of the holiday,” says Rabbi Metzger. “And the experience usually makes them want to look into other aspects of their Jewish identity.”