Judaism Straight Up: Why Real Religion Endures Moshe Koppel Jerusalem, Israel: Maggid, 2020 About thirty years ago, wandering through the stacks of Cornell’s Olin Library, I found a book of old sermons by a prominent early twentieth-century rabbi. He offered a valiant defense of traditional Jewish practice. He wrote that the prohibition against pork, science […]

Chabad of Ivory Coast This past winter, Debbie Bensaid traveled to her childhood home in Kinshasa to help her parents with their community work. Her mother, Miriam Bentolila, was receiving treatment in Israel, her husband, Rabbi Shlomo, at her side. Debbie, their eldest, brought her husband and two kids to the Democratic Republic of the […]

In Episode 10 of Lamplighters: Stories From Chabad Emissaries On The Jewish Frontier, singerDavid Babinet tells the story of his journey to Torah Judaism, which included stops on opera stages all over the world, and the home of Rabbi Simcha Backman, the shliach at Chabad of Glendale, California, whose friendship helped Babinet find the balance […]

Conference hosted on Zoom from Oct. 11 to Oct. 14 Inspired by sociologist Professor Philip Wexler’s 2019 book, Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World an international group of scholars and practitioners in various spheres of research and social work will convene this week on Zoom to share new insights and ideas […]

Deep in Siberia, Russia, the city of Tomsk has long been home to a storied Jewish past. With the inauguration of its new Children’s Сultural and Educational Center on September 12, the city’s Jewish community celebrated a bright future. Standing next door to the Tomsk Choral Synagogue, the new center boasts twenty-five thousand square feet […]

A community comes together after a canceled celebration in Israel Daniel Azoulay is among a handful of Jewish kids living in a radius of hundreds of miles of his hometown of Townsville, Australia, and his parents, Eyal and Anat, wanted to give him a memorable bar mitzvah. The planning began well before his 13th birthday: […]

A call for help in Shenzhen from an elderly sister in Ohio leads to international effort In a lonely hospital bed in bustling Shenzhen, China, lay Sam Briskin, an 85-year-old Holocaust survivor who had no family or friends to care for him. His elder sister, Madeleine Briskin, 89, was desperate for someone on the ground […]

The red and white brick walls that once housed Samara’s Choral Synagogue stand proudly against the vast blue skies of southwestern Russia. Built in 1908 on the banks of the Volga River, its distinctive architecture earned it renown as one of the most beautiful synagogues in the world. Confiscated by Soviet authorities in 1923, the […]

The Making of the Holy Alshich Teacher, preacher, proto-Chasidic outreacher? How Rabbi Moshe Alshich’s new approach to Torah teaching in sixteenth-century Safed prefigured the Chasidic movement two centuries later and half a world away.  A Synagogue, a City, and a Story Not far from the art galleries that fill the Old City of Tzfat, or […]

Scottsdale’s Jewish Community Turns Thirty Ian Sachs remembers the time he and some of the other seven-year-old kids at the Chabad shul in Scottsdale, Arizona, sneaked out of services and called 911 from the old phone booth outside. Fire trucks arrived, sirens blaring, and the kids ran off squealing as the rabbi came out to […]