Chabadnik News
I miss my community. For two weeks, my Shabbat has not felt the same. And truth be told, even Fridays have not been the same. So much of what I used to do revolved around my community. Preparing the tasty (may I say legendary?) cholent on Friday. Working with my wife to get everything ready […]
Last year, a friend’s healthy teenage son died suddenly. Her intense grief was compounded, she told me later, by confusion. Why had this happened? She sought out various rabbis and rebbes, made appointments with teachers and mentors, and searched their minds for insight. If they could help her take meaning from her son’s passing, she […]
Besides the coronavirus epidemic, Israel has another crisis on its hands. It’s inside the government and only tangentially related to COVID-19. Here’s the short version: After Israel’s latest election earlier this month — its third in a year — Benny Gantz and his center-left coalition seem closer than ever to garnering enough support to oust […]
Like most religious groups, the Chabad of Venice and North Port closed its temple in mid-March and began offering services and classes on line. “We have gained people,” Rabbi Sholom Schmerling said by phone. “An elderly (90 year-old) lady who went up north and managed to get online, attended our service. “We discussed how to […]
Andre Touboul, a rabbi affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who led one of France’s most prestigious high schools, has died of the coronavirus in Paris. He was 64. Touboul led Beth Hanna, a Jewish institution of some 1,500 students whose high school was ranked the best in France in 2015 by Le Parisien daily, since […]
“Technology is not here simply to provide utility. It is also meant as a springboard to wonder, allowing us to conceive our reality in ways previously unimaginable. “Technology provides an ever-expanding bank of metaphor to crystallize the most abstract ideas into tangible form. “Don’t think that this is a mere side benefit of technology. On […]
The dam finally burst! For a while, there was an ongoing existential shift, beginning with the tightening in my chest as the days wore on, and the news reports grew more and more grim. But today was different. Today, I got a text from my daughter that the father of her very close friend had […]
Dear Rachel, I’ve been unemployed for a couple of months. I collected severance pay, but not much, so my finances are strained. I feel rather depressed. I’m not doing anything important and have not yet found another job. But most of all, I miss having a sense of purpose and identity. Got the Unemployment Blues […]
Due to the coronavirus, synagogues, like all places of gathering, have temporarily closed their doors. But Chabad does not see it as closing doors, but rather as opening new ones. “Hundreds of new synagogues have opened in Orange County,” said Rabbi Pesach Burston, director of Chabad in Orange County. “These synagogues have ‘opened’ in the […]
Shabbat 2020, an iconic program run each year at Binghamton University in New York State and conceived by the Rohr Chabad Center for Jewish Student Life at Binghamton University, was expected to bring together as many as 2,000 students, alumni, family members and faculty for Shabbat dinner and prayers this past Friday night—and it did, […]