Rabbi Yoḥanan says: Why were the Jewish people likened to an olive tree? It is to tell you that just as an olive tree brings forth its oil only by means of crushing . . . so too, the Jewish people . . . must be pressed in order to emit its oil. Menahot 53b:12 […]

Shterna Wolff oversees the expansion of the Chabad center in Hanover When Rabbi Binyamin Wolff passed away in Hanover, Germany, at the age of 43 last April following a brief illness, he left behind his wife, Shterna, their eight children, and a shocked and devastated Jewish community. But the tragedy has not deterred Shterna Wolff […]

Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a Chabad rabbi, and the mysterious nature of Jewish identity My mother would smile to think of me lighting candles, and saying the brucha, something she made very special in our home… Writing by hand, on stationery bearing the seal of the Supreme Court of the United States, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg […]

Northern Georgia gets a JCC Earlier this month, the Jewish community in Forsyth County, Georgia, laid the cornerstone for the first Jewish establishment in an area where it once would have been inconceivable. “I remember watching live demonstrations of the KKK in this spot in the eighties,” says Forsyth resident Stu Cohen. “When I came […]

Excerpt from Sacks’s Torah Studies Taught in Six Languages as Part of Worldwide Project The world suffered a devastating blow this past November when Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, former chief rabbi of the United Kingdom and a brilliant scholar and teacher, tragically passed away at the age of 72. In the time since his untimely […]

The strange, funny and meaningful things that happen out in the trenches as Chabad representatives go about their business . . . Shaindy Gluck, West Lafayette, IN Episode 8/8 Shortly after we moved to Indiana, I went out for coffee with a friend from our community. While we were waiting in line to order our […]

A celebration of warm relations and growing ties between the two nations When Israel’s Chief Rabbi Yitzchak Yosef landed in the United Arab Emirates at the end of last week, he made history as the first-ever sitting Israeli chief rabbi to visit an Arab country. Rabbi Yosef’s visit and reception, which comes following the U.S.-brokered […]

A survivor relives forty minutes that changed his life forever Baruch she-asah li nes ba’makom hazeh.  “Blessed is the One who performed a miracle for me in this place.”  Yisroel Brownstein, a 40-year-old clinical psychologist, could barely make it through the words of the blessing as he stood in a cornfield in Sioux City, Iowa, […]

County’s first Jewish mayor says the scroll will serve as a reminder of her “guiding faith” Among the first orders of business for newly elected Miami Mayor Daniella Levine Cava was affixing a mezuzah to her office doorpost. The ceremony, on Friday, November 20, was led by Rabbi Moishe Kievman of Chabad Chayil in Highland […]

How good and how pleasant it is when brothers dwell together (Psalms 133:1). When Jewish people unite in holiness, our tradition teaches that the shechinah rests among us and endows us with the power to evoke Divine blessings.   Such was the experience of a farbrengen with the Rebbe. It is now more than a quarter […]