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Machne Israel Development Fund Relaunches With New Generation of Supporters

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Chabad reps and supporters renew the Rebbe’s model of collective responsibility for Jewish communities worldwide

Some 100 guests met over an intimate lunch at the elegant, historic Glass House overlooking Bryant Park in Midtown Manhattan. Chabad representatives and their supporters had come for the relaunch of the Machne Israel Development Fund (MIDF). 

Hosted by Steve Rosenberg, founder and CEO of Greystone, the event convened longtime MIDF participants and a new generation of supporters.

Founded and named by the Rebbe in 1985, MIDF was created to support Jewish life through the work of Chabad shluchim — representatives — wherever the need arose. The Rebbe himself was the fund’s first donor. 

Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the Rebbe’s secretary and Chairman of Machne Israel and MIDF, recalled asking the Rebbe before Rosh Hashanah 1985 for a blessing that the Rebbe should have a dedicated group of financial partners. And indeed, within a short while, he was joined by a growing cohort of philanthropists who were willing to look beyond their own communities for the benefit of world Jewry. 

In recent years, the MIDF sought to enlarge its base. Rabbi Shmaya Krinsky, Executive Director of MIDF, spearheaded the fund’s renewal, bringing together a new generation of supporters around an updated version of the model established by the Rebbe in 1985.

At the luncheon, he unveiled a new platform giving supporters a direct connection to the projects they fund, allowing them to explore needs, direct their support and follow the impact.

“The fund is going to operate with an unparalleled level of transparency and efficiency,” Krinsky said. “Our focus will be on a minimal amount of time spent on bureaucracy, but the highest level of responsibility.”

Developed following extensive research and consultation with Chabad representatives, the renewed MIDF will initially focus on four areas: early childhood education; emergency assistance to Chabad reps, families and communities facing crises; the Frontier Fund for smaller, developing and remote Jewish communities; and the Israel Pillar Fund for critical needs in Israel.

“Our goal is to bring a new generation of supporters into this shared responsibility — strengthening Jewish life and standing behind the Shluchim bringing its light to communities around the world,” Rabbi Shmaya Krinsky said.

Rabbi Levi Wolff, Chabad rep and Rabbi of Sydney’s Central Synagogue, placed the evening’s mission in the context of the aftermath of the Bondi massacre. Wolff described the extraordinary response that followed the horrific attack: Jews responding with greater pride, unity and light, and an outpouring of support from non-Jews inspired by the collective Jewish response. Machne Israel, he said,  supports Shluchim around the world as they work to enlarge the light they bring to their communities and to the broader world, especially in moments of challenge.

The event inspired a $1 million grant to MIDF by philanthropists Mordechai and Naomi Gutnick, who have emerged as new leaders in Jewish charitable giving. The announcement drew enthusiastic applause and prompted several others in the room to increase their participation, giving the renewed fund immediate momentum.

Mr. Rosenberg spoke of the extraordinary talent, creativity and dedication Chabad reps and their families bring to their mission.

“Each of these couples possesses the drive, creativity and vision to succeed in the business world,” Rosenberg said. “Yet, inspired by the Rebbe’s vision, they choose instead to dedicate their lives to ensuring that our children and grandchildren have a loving place where they can explore and embrace their Jewish identity.”

Partnership with MIDF, he said emphatically, should not be seen simply as philanthropy, but as a privilege for themselves and their families.

Mrs. Chagit Leviev Sofiev, President of Leviev Companies USA, recalled that her father, Mr Lev Leviev, would emerge from encounters with the Rebbe with another mission — to accomplish more for the Jewish people, to give more and, at the same time, to grow spiritually.

More than four decades after MIDF was established, the scale has changed, but the mandate has not.

An Address in the Amazon

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Guests at the Raichmans’ Shabbat table in Manaus, Brazil think they’re eating chicken schnitzel. It’s pirarucu — a massive Amazonian fish, served kosher in a city reachable only by plane or boat, 1,500 kilometers up the Amazon from the Atlantic.

Manaus is the capital of the Brazilian state of Amazonas, a sprawling city of over two million built where two rivers — the Rio Negro and the Solimões — meet to become the Amazon. There is only one connecting road that leads to the Venezuelan border — so Manaus is practically unreachable by car from the rest of Brazil. There are no sidewalks; it’s too hot for anyone to walk. The coldest it gets is around 80 degrees Fahrenheit, and there is no winter, only a rainy season and a dry one. When you call an electrician or a plumber, you learn the local meaning of “mañana.” “It doesn’t mean tomorrow,” Rabbi Raichman says. “It means sometime in the next several days.”

Rabbi Arieh and Dvorah Lea Raichman arrived in 2009 with a two-month-old son. Both have roots in South America — his father is from Argentina, his mother from Brazil; her parents direct Chabad of Belém, the gateway city to the Amazon.

Jewish history in the Amazon dates to the nineteenth-century rubber boom, when Moroccan traders navigated the river system selling goods to remote outposts. In 1910, Rabbi Shalom Muyal, a Moroccan rabbi who had come upriver to perform circumcisions among the Jewish settlers, died of yellow fever and was buried in the municipal cemetery. Non-Jews in Manaus came to revere him as a saint, making pilgrimages to his grave. For the ninety-nine years between Muyal’s death and the Raichmans’ arrival, the community maintained its traditions — an effort Raichman credits to Isaac Dahan, who served as its lay spiritual leader for more than three decades.

Today, around 250 Jews live in Manaus, some descended from those original Moroccan families, the rest drawn by opportunity over the years. The Raichmans serve them all — plus Jews scattered across four neighboring states, including some near the Venezuelan border.

Nearly everything kosher arrives by plane from Belém, where Dvorah Lea’s parents run the local Chabad — making the supply chain a family operation. Rabbi Raichman still occasionally milks cows himself for kosher dairy. They run a small kosher store and host Shabbat meals for locals and visitors. Chabad also offers Torah classes, children’s programming, a Shabbat minyan now running for nearly three years.

But not long ago, the Raichmans counted the people at their Shabbat table — nine people, all locals, eight of whom had never set foot in a synagogue before the Raichmans came. “That’s when you know your presence is needed,” he says. “We find purpose in this every single day.”

Chabad at USC Opens New Center With Campus’s First Kosher Restaurant

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“A proud Jew rather than a fearful one.”

That, student Noah Razak told some 400 people gathered on Severance Street Sunday night, is what Chabad at USC made of him. Razak, a senior and student co-president, was speaking at the grand opening of a new 12,000-square-foot home — a $10 million restoration twenty-six years in the making, in the middle of Fraternity Row.

The building was never supposed to be this. When Rabbi Dov and Runya Wagner first drew up plans some fifteen years ago, the idea was modest: raise a million dollars, add about a thousand square feet to the dining room. The project grew roughly tenfold. “We thought we were doing a little addition,” Runya Wagner told the crowd Sunday. “G-d had something much bigger in mind.”

Getting there took years of permits and historic-preservation review on a Victorian mansion that Chabad bought abandoned in 2003. “Anyone who’s done construction in Los Angeles knows what you would expect,” Runya said. The Wagners’ daughters, who spoke together, put it more simply: “A lot of construction. Like, a lot.”

The most consequential thing in the new building may be the kitchen. Chabad estimates some 2,000 Jewish undergraduates at USC and another 1,800 graduate students — and until this month, none of them could get a kosher dinner on campus. “There’s been a long history of trying to get better kosher availability on campus,” Rabbi Wagner said. “At some point we realized that if it wasn’t going to happen on campus itself, then we should do it.”

So Chabad built one — a commercial kitchen and a rooftop restaurant serving shawarma, schnitzel, wraps and burgers on weeknights, shaded by a canopy of twenty-foot bamboo poles sourced from the Amazon rainforest. The bamboo does double duty: come Sukkot, it serves as schach, the natural covering a sukkah requires. The Rooftop, as the new eatery was named, came together only days before classes began, with help from senior administrators. Any USC student on a campus meal plan can now use their meal swipes at Chabad.

The rest of the building leans hard into what was already there. The historic designation kept the front rooms at their original size and shape, so the entry is still a small dark vestibule of mahogany paneling and coffered ceilings. But there are Jewish fingerprints throughout — Jerusalem stone at the entrance and along a wall in the sanctuary, and custom chandeliers, some inscribed “Chabad — University of Southern California,” others with the Shema Yisrael prayer. Upstairs, there are apartments where students live year-round.

One of them is Ava Schwartz, the other student co-president, who has lived in the house for three years. She arrived at USC with Jewish values but no religious practice, she told the crowd, and is now fully observant. “I did not become a follower,” she said. “I was galvanized to become a leader.”

Sunday’s ceremony filled the lawn with about 400 alumni, parents, donors and students. USC President Beong-Soo Kim spoke, as did Board of Trustees Chair Suzanne Nora Johnson and Dean of Religious Life Varun Soni, who has been Chabad’s principal campus partner since 2008. The mezuzah on the front door was affixed by alumni Shelly and Dr. Moshe Bernard Baseri.

Then the ribbon came down, as nightfall brought in Chai Elul, the eighteenth of the Hebrew month and the birthday of both the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Chasidism, and the Alter Rebbe, founder of Chabad. Eighteen is the numerical value of chai, life. “Our prayer is not simply that this building will be filled,” Runya Wagner said. “Our prayer is that it will be alive.”

It already is. Two nights before the opening, 400 students turned up for Shabbat dinner and Chabad was seating people in the front hall again. “We’re bursting at the seams from this new space,” Rabbi Wagner said.

Noah Razak was thinking about that Friday night when he got up to speak. He had come to USC in part because of this house, promised to him as a construction site during Admitted Students Weekend, and now he was standing in front of it, finished. “After Shabbat dinner on Friday,” he said, “you might want to consider starting construction on an even bigger house.”

Faces of Chabad: Shmuli Nachlas

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“My parents gave us a home where Judaism, the Rebbe, and education weren’t just talked about—they were lived. Going to the Rebbe in New York was a priority. It wasn’t easy—packing all the kids into a van, driving twelve hours from Detroit—but because it mattered to them, we did it multiple times a year, every single year, even when we were little. Those trips had a tremendous impact on me.

One memory stands out, from when I was eight. I was at a crowded Farbrengen with a friend, and he said, ‘Come with me, my brother will take care of us, he has a spot up front.’ We came in, and my friend’s brother picked me up and threw me right over the Rebbe’s table. I landed on the other side. There was nowhere for me to go, and just then the Rebbe walked in, so I stayed there—right by the Rebbe’s feet. That was part of growing up as a kid from out of town, coming in to see the Rebbe.

You don’t always realize how deeply childhood shapes you. My mother was a teacher for forty years at a day school in Detroit. Every year she’d invite her class for a Shabbaton at our house—sleeping bags on the floor in the basement or the den. My sisters helped with the girls; my brothers and I would walk the boys to synagogue. The prayers were long, so we’d go outside and play ball. I didn’t think about it until years later, when it hit me: I’m doing so much of what I saw at home. My mother was teaching; I’m teaching. She was running Shabbatons; I’m running them. She opened her home to young people—and that’s exactly what I ended up doing.

I’m also a psychotherapist. Every rabbi is a kind of therapist in some way—the amount of cases I’ve dealt with over twenty-five years is astronomical. But during COVID I saw kids dealing with more problems than ever, and I felt that I needed more tools. So I said to myself – let me go back to school. It’s just another tool in the toolbox for helping the youth.

Outside of work, I love studying the Rebbe’s teachings, playing sports, skiing, and spending time with family. And in a way, that’s what I learned growing up: Yiddishkeit, family, learning, life—they’re not separate worlds. It’s all one lifestyle.”

-Rabbi Shmuli Nachlas, Thornhill, Ontario

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Fourth Chabad Center Opens on the Island of Corsica

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A storefront on the main road in Calvi, on Corsica’s northwest coast, is now home to the island’s fourth Chabad center. Walk out of the town’s train station and it’s directly across the street — wide windows, no shutters, visible from the sidewalk. For a town of fewer than 6,000 permanent residents, it’s a conspicuous addition. For the Jews who’ve been coming to this Mediterranean resort town for decades, it’s the one thing that was missing.

Michel Madie was nine years old when his family arrived in Calvi in 1967 from Algeria. His parents — his father a descendant of Spanish Jews who fled the Inquisition, his mother a Berber Jew from the Algeria-Morocco border — had lost everything in the expulsion of 1962. They were on vacation when they were told not to go back. They never retrieved a single possession.

In Calvi, the family were some of the only Jews in town. Madie grew up with no synagogue, no community, no visible Jewish life at all. He left at 18 and has lived in Manhattan for the past two decades. His mother still lives in Calvi.

He was back for the inauguration. “I wouldn’t even consider such a thing as a possibility when I was a kid,” he said. “Entering the Chabad center — being seen from the street, from the main road of Calvi — it was incredibly emotional.”

Rabbi Levi and Mushky Pinson, who’ve directed Chabad of Corsica from the capital city of Ajaccio since 2016, opened the Calvi location this summer with an inauguration that drew some 50 people. The center joins existing operations in Ajaccio, Bastia, and Porto Vecchio, giving Chabad a presence in each of the island’s four main regions.

Jewish history on the island runs deep. Some historians trace the first Jewish presence to Roman times, after the destruction of the Second Temple. Jews from Egypt settled in southern Corsica around the ninth century, and Sephardic Jews and Marranos fleeing the Inquisition arrived in later waves. In the eighteenth century, Pasquale Paoli, the Corsican independence leader, granted Jews equal rights — ahead of most of Europe. During the First World War, several hundred Jews from Tiberias were resettled to the island by the Ottoman Empire after refusing to renounce their French citizenship, building the Beth Meir synagogue in the port city of Bastia. And during the Second World War, Corsican authorities refused to cooperate with Vichy, saving thousands of Jewish refugees. Over three-quarters of the island’s Jewish population survived.

Today, the permanent Jewish community is small — a few hundred people scattered across the island. But Corsica draws thousands of Jewish tourists each summer, mainly from mainland France, and Calvi’s Balagne region has become a popular destination for Jewish weddings. Rabbi Pinson estimates some several dozen Jews live in the Balagne year-round, though he expects to discover more.

The center offers a synagogue, kosher food on-site and for delivery, a small grocery corner, and a snack bar. A group of rabbinical students is running it for the summer. All kosher food is ordered from Paris and shipped through Marseille — the same route that supplies most of the island, where 90 percent of food arrives by cargo ship. Some of it reaches Calvi aboard the train that winds along the coast, dropped off steps from the Chabad house door.

For Madie, who grew up in that town as one of its only Jews, the location is the point. The Chabad house sits next to the post office, next to the bank, on a street no one in Calvi can avoid. Years ago, his parents held Shabbat dinner behind closed doors in a town where no one really knew they were Jewish. Sixty years later, the light from the Chabad house spills onto the main road of Calvi, and no one is closing the curtains.

Chabad Rabbi Menachem Mendel Axelrod Inaugurated as Chief Rabbi of Moldova

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Chabad Rabbi Menachem Mendel Axelrod was installed Wednesday as the new Chief Rabbi of Moldova in the historic Glazers’ Synagogue in Chișinău. Rabbi Axelrod has served the Jewish community in the country for more than a decade. In his new position, Axelrod followed in the footsteps of his illustrious grandfather, Rabbi Zalman Abelsky, who founded Chabad in Moldova and served as the country’s Chief Rabbi. Axelrod’s appointment came after a majority of the rabbis from across the country elected him. His appointment was welcomed with enthusiasm by fellow senior rabbis and leaders from across Europe and beyond.  

Rabbi Kalman Ber — Chief Rabbi of Israel and President of the Chief Rabbinate Council — attended the ceremony and spoke about the Jewish renaissance Chabad has ignited in the country in recent decades. “After the darkness comes a great light,” he said. “That is exactly what is happening here. After years of cruelty — pogroms, Nazis, communists — the light of Judaism is shining again.”

Moldova’s President Maia Sandu offered greetings and congratulations in honor of the appointment. “Taking on this high mission is a joy for the Jewish Community in our country, but also for the entire society,” the President wrote. “The history of the Republic of Moldova is inextricably linked to the history of the Jewish community. For centuries, Jews have contributed to the cultural, economic, scientific and spiritual development … the Jewish Community occupies a natural place in the European future for which we work together.”

“I wish you much success, wisdom and strength in fulfilling the mission entrusted to you,” Sandu concluded.

Chief rabbis and senior leaders of countries across Europe sent congratulations, and many were in attendance as the Tallit was ceremonially placed on the shoulders of the new Chief Rabbi, as he assumed the mantle of leadership for the country’s Jewish community. 

Gary Torgow, Chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, recognised “with gratitude the devoted leadership provided by Rabbi Zushe Abelsky and the Abelsky family, whose unwavering commitment has helped sustain and nurture Jewish life in Moldova.” The inauguration, he wrote, “reflects both the honoring of that remarkable legacy and the promise of a vibrant future.”

Building Connection in Barbados

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Shabbos comes at nearly the same time every week in Barbados, the furthest southeast island in the Caribbean. Close to the equator, the days barely shift — no long summer evenings, no early winter candle-lighting. Even time moves differently this far out. 

There is a street in Bridgetown called Synagogue Lane. Most of the tourists walking past it have no idea why.

The answer goes back nearly four hundred years. Sephardic Jews fleeing the Inquisition in Brazil reached Barbados in the 1620s — barely a year after English settlement — and built the Nidhe Israel Synagogue by 1654, one of the oldest in the Western Hemisphere. They helped transform the island into a sugar powerhouse. The Jewish community peaked at roughly 800 in the 1700s. Then it collapsed — brought down by discriminatory taxes, a catastrophic hurricane in 1831, and economic upheaval after emancipation. By 1928, only two Jews remained. The synagogue was sold to a law firm.

But the thread didn’t break. In the 1930s, Ashkenazi Jews — primarily from Poland — began arriving, planting a new community on the foundations of the old. In the summer of 1959, rabbinical students were sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to visit Jewish communities scattered across the Caribbean. The students connected with the Jews in Barbados, and word went back to Brooklyn that a mohel was needed. The Rebbe dispatched one — along with his own personal Torah scroll for the delegation to read from on the island. Eighteen children had a brit. Afterward, the families cabled New York: we have Jewish children now, but we need someone to teach them. So Rabbi Shmuel Pesach Bogomilsky, one of the original students, was sent back to educate them.

That care is what Rabbi Eli and Sterna Chaikin inherited. The Cleveland-born rabbi and his Paris-raised wife moved to the island in 2017 to establish a permanent Chabad presence in Barbados. “Some of those people impacted by those original Chabad visits — they’re good friends of ours,” he said. “When we came, there was a rekindling of that connection. The seeds that were planted there many years ago are still growing.”

Today the Chaikins serve three distinct groups: the several hundred Jewish residents that live on the island, a steady stream of tourists, and a rapidly growing wave of second homeowners and snowbirds who have discovered Barbados over the last several years. Weekends revolve around Shabbat — Friday night dinners and Saturday morning services, and weekdays mean one-on-one meetings, relationship building, and Monday night barbecues that have become a fixture for visiting families. All kosher meat, dairy, and wine must be imported.

The Bajans — as the locals are referred to, are, as Rabbi Chaikin puts it, “very friendly and very respectful. They have a lot of respect for religion.” Many Bajans know little about Judaism, but they’re curious, and the warmth is genuine.

Now, after years of work, the Chaikins are in the final stages of completing a new mikvah — on an island that already holds the oldest mikvah in the Caribbean, the centuries-old ritual bath at the historic Nidhe Israel complex. If all goes as planned, Barbados will soon hold both the oldest and the newest.

Faces of Chabad: Talia Voskoboynik

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“I grew up in California in a traditional conservative family. I always had a strong sense of Jewish identity, but Judaism was never something I fully owned or internalized in practice.

When I got to high school, I started asking a lot of questions. My parents had already started going to Chabad of Camarillo. One week Rabbi Lang told me there was a new CTeen chapter having a kickoff event. I went, and I loved it. I became the first president of the chapter. I had already been involved in leadership roles in other school clubs, so it felt natural to take on that role.

I went on a leadership retreat that summer, and I met Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff from Texas A&M Chabad. I loved their personalities—they were so authentic. I decided I wanted to visit the campus just to see if I liked it as much as I liked them. I fell in love with the Texas atmosphere and with how warm the students were. When I got to college, I fully immersed myself. I took Sinai Scholars my first semester; I learned about Shabbat, kosher, modesty—and started observing them, slowly. I reached a point where I felt I understood it, I appreciated it, and I just needed to live it.

When I first started keeping Shabbat in college, I went home for Thanksgiving and my mom told me she wanted to keep Shabbat with me. She eventually started keeping Shabbat herself—and now she covers her hair and dresses modestly.

I had a job lined up for after graduation. At the same time, I was dating. At one point, Manya suggested I take some time to think about whether Shlichus could play a role in my life. I thought about how I could spend my life behind a desk, or I could give that same kind of impact I received to others. I told Manya I was open to the idea, even though I didn’t know what it would look like. She then said she had a match for me. He turned out to be my husband.

It’s really because of the guidance of those who know more than me—the Shluchot and mentors around me—that I got to where I am today. It helped me navigate family dynamics, my own growth, and everything in between.”

– Talia Voskoboynik Milwaukee, Wisconsin

New Youth Center and Mikvah for Thornhill’s Russian Jewish Community

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In the 1950s, Chaya Esther Zaltzman traveled 36 hours by train each way — every month — from Dushanbe, Tajikistan, to reach a mikvah in Samarkand, Uzbekistan. Her husband, Rabbi Chaim Dovber (Berel) Zaltzman, eventually built a mikvah of their own, a pit dug in secret under Soviet rule.

On Sunday, August 2, their grandson — Rabbi Mendel Zaltzman — led the dedication and mezuzah ceremony for the Kholodenko, Murad, and Ressin JRCC Youth Centre, Library, and Mikva in Thornhill, Ontario — a house adjacent to the main synagogue of the Jewish Russian Community Centre of East Thornhill. The event, which drew hundreds for dinner, music, and celebration, marked the formal completion of a project years in the making.

Netanel Sakovitch, a community member who was born in Kherson, Ukraine, and attended Chabad programs in Israel before settling in Thornhill, said the building serves a need he didn’t have as a child. “When I was growing up, places like this didn’t quite exist,” he said. His four daughters now use the library weekly. “The new center covers all the generations — the library for the kids, the after-school for the young ones, and the mikvah for the adults.”

The JRCC was founded in Toronto in 1980 by Rabbi Yoseph Yitzchak Zaltzman, who was sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to serve what was then roughly a thousand Russian Jewish families. Today, the organization operates a network of community centers, Hebrew schools, and programs serving an estimated 50,000 Russian-speaking Jews across the Greater Toronto Area — a community shaped by decades of Soviet-era suppression of Jewish life. Rabbi Mendel, Rabbi Yoseph’s son, opened the East Thornhill branch in 2005. For the first decade, the community operated out of rented spaces. In 2015, they moved into a permanent home.

In December 2020, the property next door came up for sale. The JRCC bought the standalone house and began a phased renovation. The lending library — Shloimele’s Library, named for the Zaltzmans’ late son, Meir Shlomo — moved in first in 2021. The mikvah, a ritual bath, was completed in 2023. Hebrew school and youth programming followed.

The library now circulates 20,000 books a year — and that number is growing annually. It also serves as the Canadian partner for a program that ships Jewish children’s books to Chabad emissaries nationwide. The lower level houses a mikvah and a guest suite; upstairs, a youth center, three classrooms, and an outdoor sukkah that seats 120.

The building is named for three donor families: Kholodenko, Ressin, and Murad. Weeks before the dedication, Rabbi Berel Zaltzman passed away at 91. Rabbi Mendel dedicated the mikvah to his grandfather’s memory. In the USSR, his grandfather had built one in secret. In Thornhill, this one has his name on it.

Innisfil Gets Its First Year-Round Jewish Home

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For decades, Jewish families from Toronto have spent their summers on the shores of Lake Simcoe. “This is the Canadian Catskills,” said David Turk, a Toronto businessman who moved to Innisfil two years ago. A seasonal synagogue opened in the village of Belle Ewart in the 1940s; kosher groceries arrived weekly from the city.

But every September, the synagogues closed, the cottages emptied, and Jewish life in Innisfil went dark until the following summer.

That changed in 2021, when Rabbi Zevi and Mussy Kaplan moved to town to establish a year-round Chabad presence. On July 26 of this year, the community marked its latest milestone — hundreds of residents, summer visitors, and dignitaries gathered for the grand opening of the Chabad Innisfil Jewish Community Centre, the area’s first permanent Jewish home.

An hour north of Toronto, on the western shore of Lake Simcoe, Innisfil was once known mainly for its beaches and summer cottages. The town’s population has roughly doubled in the last 20 years as many people, priced out of the Toronto market, moved north. And with that population boom comes, as Turk said, “a lot of young Jewish families” — families who are looking for Jewish connection. Rabbi Kaplan estimates some 350 Jewish families now live in Innisfil year-round, a number that keeps growing.

When the Kaplans arrived, programs ran out of their home, and a Hebrew school was launched in a borrowed daycare space on Sundays.

Before the 2023 High Holidays, Mario Cortellucci, an Italian-Canadian developer and head of the Cortel Group, offered the Kaplans free use of a vacant commercial building he owned — a former sales office for a nearby subdivision. The arrangement became permanent: eventually, renovations began, stalled through months of permit delays, and finally reached completion earlier this year. Cortellucci, who is not Jewish, was instrumental in making the center a reality; he and his son Peter cut the ribbon at the grand opening.

The renovated building now houses a synagogue, classrooms, a library, and a preschool. A kosher café is set to open soon, and a mikvah — the first within an hour’s drive — is next.

The grand opening drew Innisfil Mayor Lynn Dollin, Member of Provincial Parliament Andrea Khanjin, and a representative from the local federal MP’s office. Rabbi Zalman Grossbaum, director of Chabad activities in Ontario and Rabbi Kaplan’s grandfather, addressed the crowd.

Turk, who dedicated the ladies’ sanctuary in memory of his late wife, watched a twenty-something-year-old rabbi accomplish something he never expected. “The grand opening was just magical,” he said. “What the Kaplans have done here is remarkable — this is the first full-time synagogue we have.”

Faces of Chabad: Elie Estrin

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“I remember seeing on the news that the army would allow bearded chaplains. I figured—let me go to a recruiter. I thought that being a chaplain could help my work at Chabad of the University of Washington twofold: many of the students were either coming from or going into the military. Also, by that point we had already been operating on campus for ten years. I figured that if I can maintain some kind of official position, it would help the relationship Chabad had with the administration.

I was in officer training school while my wife was pregnant with our next son. We expected that things would progress as normal. Then, we went to the doctors and they told us they could see something was seriously wrong—the baby had major heart defects. For the next nine weeks the doctors were asking us, ‘Have you prepared for the baby’s funeral?’ ‘Have you decided how you want his last moments to look?’ Miraculously, our son Nissi was born—and he survived. We started posting daily “Nissi Updates” online and people became very invested in the story. It helped us, because knowing that people care is crucial. Writing a book about our story was a continuation of that. There was a kind of internal promise: if we are given this child, we will tell the story and hopefully inspire others. And just recently, at a convention, someone came over to me and told me that when she was going through something similar, she remembered what we said: that every moment of a child’s life has a Divine purpose—you don’t measure it by length of life but by the value of each moment.

We realized we couldn’t just throw ourselves back into our work on campus. We relocated to Miami, and I began to work in the Aleph Institute—continuing my chaplaincy. There are Jewish soldiers scattered everywhere, and they often feel like they are the only Jew where they are—and sometimes they actually are. In the end, it’s really just about trying to stay grounded in that responsibility—whether it’s one student on campus or one Jewish soldier on the other side of the world—you just try to show up and do what needs to be done.”

– Rabbi Elie Estrin, Miami, Florida

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Lake Oconee Chabad Pop-Up Builds “New Jewish Family” In Georgia

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Lake Oconee is a reservoir in central Georgia that has become a vacation destination. Dozens of towns, resorts, and golf communities dot the 374 miles of scenic shoreline. Scattered along the shore are an estimated several hundred Jewish families.

Chabad reps to rural Georgia, Rabbi Chaim and Chayala Markovits, hosted a four week popup Chabad center at Lake Oconee where Jewish residents, snowbirds, and vacationers had the opportunity to connect.

Fred Benoff has been meeting Rabbi Markovits once a month for years. Rabbi Markovits will often drive hours each way to visit a few Jews in a remote town, and Lake Oconee has been a regular stop for some time. 

“I joined them for Shabbat dinner, and for bagels, lox and tefillin on Sunday morning,” Benoff said. “Then I asked the rabbi if he would start a Talmud class for us. Markovits, of course, gladly agreed, and the burgeoning Lake Oconee Talmud class plans to transition to Zoom during the winter months. 

Besides Shabbat meals, community prayer services, and brunches, the Markovitses spent quality time with many locals over mahjong evenings.

Joyce Gropper is a Florida resident who spends her summers in Lake Oconee. A friend introduced  her to the Markovitses after a Providential meeting at a grocery store. Joyce met Chayala at a home on the lake for a friendly evening of mahjong. “Chaya was learning how to play, but we made sure she won her first game,” Gropper said. 

“It’s so important because I got to meet multiple Jews at one event—15 or 20 at a time,” Gropper said. After years of barely knowing anyone Jewish in the area, Gropper now has meetups scheduled with many new Jewish friends 

“Because of this encounter, I have a bigger comfort level in my surroundings here,” she said. “I’m reaching out to people like crazy to get together. Because of the Markovitses I have a new Jewish family up here.”

As the Markovitses prepared to head back to Atlanta and their work serving Georgia’s rural communities across the state, Joyce and her friends stopped by with a token of their gratitude and newfound friendship for Chayala: her own mahjong set. 

“Now, when I walk into a room, I don’t feel like a stranger,” Joyce said. “And I wanted to say thank you for that.”

Where the Continent Ends

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Newfoundland runs on its own time — literally. The province keeps a half-hour time zone found almost nowhere else in the Western Hemisphere, thirty minutes ahead of Atlantic Canada, as if the island couldn’t quite be bothered to sync up with the mainland. It didn’t bother syncing up politically, either. Newfoundland was Britain’s oldest colony in North America, a self-governing dominion with its own flag and national anthem. It didn’t join Canada until 1949 — and even then, the vote was 52 to 48. St. John’s, the capital, voted two-to-one against. To this day, it remains a place slightly apart.

It is also a place with a Jewish history longer than most people would guess. Sephardi traders arrived as early as the 1770s, dealing in fish, seal fur, and lamp oil. A century later, Ashkenazi peddlers fleeing Russian and Polish pogroms followed, traveling the island trading salt fish and textiles. The Hebrew Congregation of Newfoundland was incorporated in 1909. A synagogue went up on Henry Street in St. John’s in 1931. At its peak in the early 1970s, about 360 Newfoundlanders identified as Jewish. In the 1930s, there was even a push to resettle Jewish refugees on the island’s west coast — but the government, insisting on “British stock,” turned them away.

Today, the Jewish population numbers at several hundred — and Rabbi Chanan and Tuba Chernitsky are working to make sure there’s a place for them to call home. Rabbi Chernitsky was born in Buenos Aires, raised in Winnipeg, and ordained as a Rabbi in Venice. When the Chernitskys started looking for a place to open a Chabad house, a friend in Toronto connected them with a man who had been funding yeshiva students to visit for the holidays but believed the province needed a permanent Chabad presence. They visited twice in 2016. “There were more Jews than we expected,” Rabbi Chernitsky says, “and almost nothing here for them.” They moved in February 2017 with three children under four and whatever kosher meat they could ship frozen from Montreal by truck and ferry.

The nearest Chabad center is in Halifax — an hour and a half by plane. You can drive, but you need a ferry. The island stretches more than 500 miles end to end, with a population of half a million, most of it concentrated in greater St. John’s. The culture runs deep Irish and Scottish, the accent unlike anywhere else in Canada, and the economy is built on fishing, mining, and oil. Downtown is known for the candy-colored houses of Jellybean Row. Minutes away, Cape Spear marks the easternmost point in North America. Signal Hill is where the first transatlantic radio signal was received in 1901. After that, there’s nothing but ocean until Ireland.

The Chernitskys run a Hebrew school on Sundays, host Shabbat meals, hold a monthly community Friday night dinner, and recently finished building a mikvah. But perhaps the most unexpected chapter of their work is the Friendship Circle, launched in 2021 for children with special needs — and every participant is non-Jewish. Eighty children across the province receive monthly letters from volunteers. There are group music lessons, bowling outings, and fun events like reptile shows. “It’s definitely out of the box,” Rabbi Chernitsky says.

During their very first visit in 2016, the Chernitskys met an Argentinian Jew in St. John’s who mentioned another Argentine Jew in town. Rabbi Chernitsky looked the name up in the phonebook, drove to the address, and knocked. He introduced himself in Spanish. The man at the door paused. “Chernitsky,” he said. “I know a Chernitsky.” He knew the Rabbi’s aunt — someone he had worked with back in Buenos Aires years earlier. Now they were both standing on a doorstep at the edge of the continent, a rabbi from Argentina and a stranger who turned out not to be a stranger at all.

Immersive Summer Fellowship Brings Jewish Confidence to Students

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This summer, more than 40 Jewish college students applied for one of the 15 spots in the Jewish Summer Fellowship, a program under the auspices of the National Committee for Furtherance of Jewish Education (NCFJE) and led by Rabbi Mendel Brawer.

Participants spend six weeks on a converted farm in the Borscht Belt town of Ellenville, New York, surrounded by nature and immersed in Judaism. They will also leave with a generous stipend.

“Its a unique experience to be able to have six weeks at any point in your life to dive into learning,” said Jonah Gardberg of the University of Missouri. “There are so few distractions. It’s a beautiful place. You can lock in.”

The Fellowship re-creates the atmosphere and rigorous schedule of a yeshiva, as classes begin at 8:15 and run until well into the evening. Subject matter includes Jewish prayer, Hebrew reading, Chumash and Biblical history, Jewish law, and Chassidic philosophy.

Rabbi Shimon Hecht, a member of the Executive Committee of the NCFJE, says that what makes the program unique is the atmosphere. “It gives them the opportunity to immerse themselves in Jewish learning and living,” he said.

Bolstering the immersive atmosphere are a staff of instructors including scholars-in-residence and visiting rabbis, as well as rabbinical students who serve as study partners and listening ears.

Last summer, Ellis Kaye was looking for spirituality on a buffalo ranch in Montana.

Kaye, who just completed his sophomore year at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, describes himself as a searcher. For a long time, he found spirituality in backpacking; in spending weeks outdoors in the vastness of the American West, away from people. But Kaye found these to be spiritual experiences without grounding. After his rabbi recommended the Fellowship, Kaye says he found what he was looking for.

“The guidance here is very powerful. I can have one-on-one conversations with the rabbis, which I really appreciate,” said Kaye. “It’s also balanced with a beautiful space. We are surrounded by natural beauty. It’s very meditative.” 

There’s also time to enjoy the surroundings and enjoy sports and excursions, like kayaking, camping, paintball and sunrise hikes.

“Jewish pride is a great thing, but in my opinion, even more critical is Jewish confidence. And that rests on knowledge and understanding,” said Rabbi Brawer. “This program gives students the tools to be confident in their own Judaism; to own it.”

Faces of Chabad: Judy Lazar

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“My childhood was quite picturesque until I was three. That was when the Nazis invaded Hungary. We had to leave our hometown and hide in Budapest. My mother had a two-week-old baby, my sister was two, I was three. A brave young man dressed as a Nazi and took us on the train to Budapest, which was quite dangerous as, on the train, I told people “I’m not Jewish but my mother has a yellow star.” A righteous gentile kept my mother and the baby in her home, and they sent us to hide in the countryside, with a Roma family. 

When I was 10, we moved to the U.S. There were hard times. My mother spent hours bent over sewing ties, and she developed crippling back pain. On 10 Shevat, 1960 — the tenth anniversary of the Previous Rebbe’s passing — during the farbrengen attended by thousands, the Rebbe called my father to the dais and handed him a piece of cake “for your wife.” 

The next morning, the pain was gone.

When I was 19, I met Rabbi Moshe Lazar, and we were married when I was 20. Before I even got engaged, my husband told me, “There’s one thing above everything else: the Rebbe. The Rebbe wants people to go on shlichus. Are you willing to go on shlichus?” I said, “Sure! Why not! Sounds very adventurous.” 

At the beginning, it was very exciting, but then things got tough.

I didn’t mind that we had to kosher our own chickens, pasteurize our own milk, and make our own herring. But I felt my husband was not getting the respect and satisfaction he deserved. I wrote to the Rebbe, and the Rebbe replied, “All beginnings are difficult.”

Thank G-d, in the 65 years we have lived in Milan we accomplished a lot. But the biggest accomplishment is that our children showed that they wanted to follow in our footsteps. Not many children say, “This is what I want: what my parents are doing.” But all eight of ours did.

We involved our kids in our shlichus. Whenever there was a garden party or a kiddush, they helped set up. When we went to southern Italy to supervise the etrogim harvest, they packed etrogim. We didn’t tell them, “You stay there and I will go off and do my mitzvah.” We involved them. That’s why they were motivated to keep this way.”

-Rebbetzin Judy Lazar, Milan, Italy

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A Mikvah in Mat-Su, Alaska

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More than 350 residents of Alaska’s Mat-Su Valley contributed to the construction of a local mikvah. The first to be built in the state outside of Anchorage, the mikvah formally opened on June 30.

The Matanuska-Susitna Valley covers 23,000 square miles of small towns, homesteads, and long roads — roughly the size of West Virginia. It is the fastest-growing region in Alaska, with a population exceeding 120,000. An estimated 1,000 Jews live scattered across it. Before Rabbi Mendy and Chaya Greenberg arrived eleven years ago, there was no organized Jewish life in the valley at all. Jews who wanted to attend a Passover seder or High Holiday services drove to Anchorage, some 45 miles away, on roads that winter weather could make treacherous.

The Greenbergs, who run Chabad of Mat-Su, built a community from that starting point — Shabbat and holiday gatherings, a summer camp, adult education. But for all those years, anyone who needed a mikvah still had to make the drive to Anchorage. “It was time we built one where we were,” Rabbi Greenberg said.

In 2025, Rabbi Greenberg reached out to Keren HaChomesh, a fund started by the Rebbe for causes relating to Jewish women and girls. “It’s a true honor to receive money from the Rebbe’s fund,” he said. “We feel we were blessed from it.”

Local volunteers dug the foundation. Within a week and a half, the cement was poured — before the High Holidays. Construction on the building began in February.

In addition to the hundreds of both Jewish and non-Jewish contributors from the local community, people from around the world joined as well. Major supporters included George and Pamela Rohr, Rabbi Mendel and Nechama Lichtenstein, and Rabbi Dovid Derly, who made the first commitment to the project.

“There’s no better way to introduce this mitzvah than building it in front of our community for a year,” Rabbi Greenberg said. Locals had watched the construction unfold and came to appreciate it before it ever opened, with tours given along the way.

One year after that first shovel entered the ground, the mikvah was complete.

The grand opening on June 30th drew more than 100 people. A letter of the Lubavitcher Rebbe was read in front of the crowd, which had been written in 1974 to Israel Haber, a Jewish military chaplain stationed at Elmendorf Air Force Base, when the first mikvah in Alaska was built there with the help of rabbis the Rebbe had dispatched for the job.

The mayors of the Mat-Su Borough, Palmer, and Wasilla — Edna DeVries, Jim Cooper, and Glenda Ledford — each spoke, addressing the mikvah’s importance to the community and noting the halachic principle that a mikvah’s construction precedes that of a synagogue or even the writing of a Torah scroll. Rabbi Greenberg’s parents — Rabbi Yosef and Esther Greenberg, the regional directors of Chabad in Alaska — also spoke at the event.

“No one would have thought that a mikvah would be built in Mat-Su,” Rabbi Greenberg said. “We see how, now more than ever, the Rebbe’s vision is alive.”

Iceland Gets Its First Jewish Center in History

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The sign went up on one of Reykjavik’s main streets, and people stopped to stare. For a community that had spent decades gathering in living rooms and hotel ballrooms, the sight of a Jewish center sign — on a striking green-and-white three-story building in the heart of Iceland’s capital — was a turning point.

“It was very emotional for people,” said Rabbi Avraham Feldman of Chabad of Iceland. “Just seeing that sign.”

On July 7, more than a hundred guests — community members, dignitaries, and rabbis from across Nordic countries — gathered for the grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony of the Beit Shvidler Jewish Center of Iceland, the first permanent Jewish institution in the country’s history.

The celebration began on the sidewalk, where guests cut the ribbon at the building’s entrance. Among those who addressed the guests was acting U.S. Ambassador Joanie Simon, along with local community members. Jón Gnarr, the former Mayor of Reykjavik and now a member of parliament, also spoke. “Many Jewish residents in Iceland have reported feeling hesitant to self-identify,” he said. “That’s why education and dialogue are key.” He described the center as “a living bridge, connecting cultures, dispelling ignorance, and fostering dialogue.”

Jews have lived in Iceland for more than a century. But until now, there had never been a permanent physical space to show for it. Rabbi Avraham and Mushky Feldman arrived in 2018 as Chabad representatives — the country’s first permanent rabbi and rebbetzin — and for eight years they held every Shabbat dinner, holiday event, and program in temporary spaces.

The path to a permanent home had its own turns. In early 2022, the Feldmans purchased a building and spent more than two years on plans and permits. But just as construction was set to begin, a second property — more than three times the size — became available. At 9,000 square feet, it was the kind of space they had only dreamed of: room for a sanctuary, a social hall, a Judaica and kosher shop, and a permanent exhibit called the Gallery of Jewish Life in Iceland — historical photos, documents, and stories tracing a hundred years of Jewish presence on the island.

The $3.8 million project was made possible by the generosity of key donors, among them Eugene Shvidler, Isaac and Tovah Cohen, George and Pamela Rohr, the Shmuel Isaac and Miriam Popack Foundation, and Dovid and Rivka Feldman.

The opening drew recognition from every level of Icelandic government. Prime Minister Kristrún Frostadóttir called the center “an important milestone for the Jewish community and for Icelandic society.” Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir, Speaker of Iceland’s parliament, wrote that “for the first time, the Jewish community in Iceland has a place of its own in which to gather, to learn, and to celebrate.” And Reykjavik Mayor Hildur Björnsdóttir sent a letter on behalf of the city, writing that Reykjavik “supports freedom and human rights, regardless of culture and religion.”

Iceland recognized Judaism as an official religion in 2021, a milestone Rabbi Feldman helped bring about. The recognition gave the community formal standing — but for many, he said, it was personal. “It makes people feel like their Jewish identity is recognized here.”

Now the community has something more than recognition. It has a home — with a sign on the street to prove it.

“A community is not a building,” Rabbi Feldman told the crowd. “A community is the people who fill that building with life. Together, we are writing the Icelandic chapter in the story of the Jewish people.”

From Florida to Hawaii, Chabad Rabbis Fight for the Right to Gather

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A Legal Battle in Boca Raton

For fifteen years, Rabbi Naftaly and Henya Hertzel ran the Chabad Israel Center in Boca Raton. For fifteen years, their local Homeowners Association tried to stop them.

The HOA classified Shabbat gatherings as commercial activity. Congregants arriving for services found nails scattered in front of their tires. Drones flew overhead during programs. HOA leaders, Hertzel says, told residents they “didn’t want Jews” in the neighborhood and made antisemitic references.

In 2023, First Liberty Institute — the nation’s largest religious liberty law firm — and Jones Day took the case. In 2026, the HOA settled for approximately $850,000 and agreed to strip anti-religious language from its bylaws. The Hertzels plan to use the settlement money to enhance and further their activities.

What the Law Says

The legal framework that protects religious gatherings rests on two pillars: the First Amendment’s free exercise clause and RLUIPA, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal statute that bars government from imposing land-use burdens on religious activity that it doesn’t impose on comparable secular uses. If the zoning code allows a book club in a living room, it has to allow a Torah class.

“There is no functional difference between gathering in your home to read Oprah’s book club selection and gathering for a Shabbat dinner,” said Jeremy Dys, Senior Counsel at First Liberty. “You cannot contract away your guaranteed rights as a citizen.”

But RLUIPA only applies to the government. In most states, private HOAs fall outside its reach. In the Hertzels’ case, First Liberty brought suit under the federal and Florida Fair Housing Acts — not RLUIPA — which prohibit discriminatory housing practices by private entities. In states without comparable fair housing protections, a rabbi facing a hostile HOA has fewer tools.

Not an Isolated Case

The Herztels’ experience is unusual in its severity, but not in its basic shape. A handful of Chabad houses across the country have faced similar collisions — and the cases that have gone to court have produced significant results.

In 1992, Rabbi Aaron and Chanie Konikov moved to Old Westbury, New York and invited neighbors to their rented home for Shabbat dinner and Torah study. The village sued them and their landlord. Had they hosted a barbecue, no one would have filed a thing.

The Konikovs spent the next three decades trying to build a Chabad house. They found a former commercial nursery on a five-lane thoroughfare — a property that had operated without complaint for fifty years — and assembled nine acres over time. The village adopted a religious land-use ordinance in 2001 that a federal court would later find “discriminated against religious use generally.” In March 2026, the case ended with a $19 million court-approved settlement. Chabad is now engaged in obtaining permits to begin building a facility that will serve hundreds of families with sanctuary space, classrooms, and recreational facilities.

“The village was very adept at never issuing a final decision,” said Eric Robinson, the attorney who represented Rabbi Konikov, “knowing that the law required a final decision before someone could go forward in federal court.” Robinson describes a power imbalance built into the system. “A young Rabbi has got no money in his pockets. His job is to go and plant the flag. And any government officials who look at that realize there’s a significant power imbalance — and that time is on their side.”

Similar disputes have played out elsewhere. In Atlantic Beach, Long Island, a village announced plans to seize a building Rabbi Eli and Beila Goodman had purchased for Chabad — weeks after their first Chanukah celebration there. A federal judge blocked the seizure, and the case settled in 2025. In Hawaii, Rabbi Levi and Fraida Gerlitzky were hit with escalating daily fines after the county decided their home gatherings were out of compliance — despite having received HOA approval before moving in. “We came here to help the community,” Rabbi Gerlitzky said. “Not to fight lawsuits.” The U.S. Department of Justice filed a statement of interest on his behalf, and negotiations are ongoing.

Why It Keeps Happening

Chabad is, as Rabbi Mendy Rivkin of Towson, Maryland — who went through his own years-long zoning dispute — puts it, “quite possibly one of the only Jewish organizations that’s opening at all outside of established Jewish communities” — and those outposts tend to land in residential neighborhoods. That creates a collision with zoning systems and HOA bylaws that were never designed to account for a rabbi’s living room doubling as a synagogue.

There is no single legislative fix — the cases get resolved one at a time. But the issue is heading to the highest court in the country. On June 30, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Grand v. City of University Heights, the case of Daniel Grand, an Orthodox Jew in Ohio who in 2021 invited friends to his home for prayers. Before anyone arrived, the city ordered him to cease all “religious assembly” unless he obtained a special use permit — one that would have required converting his home into a house of worship. Lower courts dismissed Grand’s lawsuit, ruling he hadn’t finished the permitting process. The Supreme Court will now decide whether he has to.

Faces of Chabad: Dovid Gurevich

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“I had a pretty typical Soviet upbringing—just being aware of my Jewishness without really knowing what it entailed. There was little access to anything Jewish until 1991. That’s when the first Chabad summer camps opened there. I went to a camp in Bucha, a suburb of Kyiv. It was a four-week immersive exposure to Judaism. I went back home with a kippah, a prayer book, and a mezuzah that my parents were too afraid to put up. About eight months later we left and moved to Los Angeles. 

We moved next to a Chabad house, so it was convenient—I hung out there all the time. After graduating high school, I decided to do a gap year in a Chabad yeshiva in Israel. Then I went back to the States, went to college, and then law school—I got married while in law school.

I had a law degree and a practice. Becoming a Chabad representative wasn’t the obvious next step. But when an opportunity at UCLA opened up, it felt like something we couldn’t pass on. For a year and a half I essentially had two full-time jobs—the legal work and the Chabad work—it was hard to find a balance. Someone advised me to choose only one between the two, so I can be fully invested in one. A couple of weeks later, I was laid off from the legal job—so the decision was made for me. That was May 2006. The relationships you build over twenty years are unlike anything else. I’ve officiated weddings, I get calls about career and relationship decisions… life. You can’t graduate from family.

In June 2024, I went to campus to support our students during an anti-Israel protest. Someone approached me from the side and violently knocked my phone from my hand, shouting death threats. It made the news. My incident was one of many—what struck me, though, was how familiar it felt. A lot of what is being hurled at Jews today is Soviet-era propaganda repackaged. The answer is the same too: don’t back down, don’t let them define you by their hate.

That’s what I always tell students—you need to own your Judaism. Not just as your heritage, but something you have your own relationship with. It needs to be something to explore in depth in order to truly take ownership of your identity.”

-Rabbi Dovid Gurevich, UCLA

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