The first mitzvah campaign to bring Judaism to the individual, wherever he or she was For as long as anyone can remember, the symbol of the High Holidays has been the shofar, the ancient curved instrument used to inaugurate the Jewish New Year. The shofar, most often hewn out of a ram’s horn—although it can […]

Remembering Norman Rosenbaum Thirty years ago, on Aug. 19, 1991, a tragic car accident in Brooklyn, N.Y., sparked what has been called “the most serious anti-Semitic incident in American history.” For four days the Jewish community of the borough’s Crown Heights neighborhood sat in terror, as rioters rampaged through the streets and desperate calls for […]

Eighty public school students find friendship and personal connection to Judaism on a whirlwind summer trip to Israel The energy was building in the terminals of New York’s John F. Kennedy International airport. Alone and in small groups, teens from distant posts around the U.S. trickled in. For many, this was to be their first […]

How humor can make room for a deeper truth otherwise concealed by the apparitions of this world In his 1905 philosophical analysis of humor, Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, Sigmund Freud cites a classic Jewish joke: “Two Jews met in a railway carriage at a station in Galicia. ‘Where are you going?’ asked […]

With Covid safety top of mind, many helped during pandemic say they have found a new Jewish home While still in the midst of a year-and-a-half of assistance that has continued unabated through Covid-19 lockdowns, panic-induced scarcity, health challenges and the ongoing need to comfort the loved ones of those who have passed, Chabad centers […]

Istanbul’s Rabbi Mendy Chitrik tweets his three-week trek across centuries of Jewish life Sometime between the first and second centuries, a discussion was brewing in ancient Israel among the rabbis of the Mishnah. The burden of history and future lay on their shoulders; millennia of Jewish tradition would be based on their word. On this […]

In Episode 8 of Lamplighters: Stories From Chabad Emissaries On The Jewish Frontier, Binyamin Murray, rabbi at Chabad of Middlebury, Vermont, tells the story of his adoption, his upbringing in a loving interfaith family and the intense and challenging search for his true identity. He was inspired along the way by family members and friends; […]

If Jewish parents in Berlin worried that sending their children to a traditional Jewish school would leave them with compromised scholastics in math, history, and language, they worry no more.  The Jewish Traditional School, a Chabad high school for girls, scored top in the city on its Abitur high school exam. This is no modest […]

Families of the Surfside Tragedy Seek Closure On June 24, 2021, at approximately 1:25 am EST, a section of a twelve-story beachfront condominium building in the Miami suburb of Surfside, Florida, collapsed. Rescue operations involved the dangerous work of digging through the rubble in search of survivors. There were none. Nearly 100 people were confirmed […]

Surge in sales again this year for those praying at home With the sounds of the shofar already being heard each day during the month Elul, some can hear the echoes of the upcoming Rosh Hashanah prayers in anticipation of the holiday, which begins this year before sundown on Monday, Sept. 6. The High Holidays […]