2010

A network of soup kitchens in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon won more than $28,000 in an online vote-based competition sponsored by Bank Leumi.

More than 1,000 locals flocked to the dedication of a new synagogue in Eilat, Israel’s southern-most city and a popular resort on the Red Sea.

While Americans struggled to cope with one of the Northeast’s largest winter travel disruptions in years, Muscovites thousands of miles away endured their own nightmare as ice and hail plunged Russia’s largest airport into darkness.

Adding to the list of foreign dignitaries who have toured the construction site of what is slated to be the largest Jewish community center in the world, German Consul General Klaus Zillikens made a point of networking with Jewish representatives during his official visit to Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine.

For the students who frequent the Chabad-Lubavitch Jewish Center at the University of Chicago and Hyde Park, no longer will cramped Shabbat meals and Torah classes in close quarters be the norm.

As one of the biggest blizzards in decades hammers states up and down the east coast, dumping 20 inches of snow in some cities and with winds upwards of 60 mph, Chabad Houses from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania have been forced to rethink, reschedule, and in some cases, cancel many activities of their annual Gan Israel winter camps.

Until just last week, going off to school has had a dual meaning for Rabbi Meir Muller.

In the wake of Israel’s worst natural disaster in modern history, a Chabad-Lubavitch organization has joined other non-profits and government agencies in providing badly-needed financial aid to the 43 families whose loved ones perished in the flames.

Life for Chana Sharfstein, a short, energetic woman who moved from Scandinavia to Boston only to experience the pain of her father being murdered at a young age, has not been easy.

A late 19th-century Torah scroll that survived the Holocaust and spent more than 40 years behind the Iron Curtain completed a long journey back to a synagogue when Jewish residents in Cutler Bay, Fla., celebrated its donation to the local Chabad-Lubavitch center.

Mendy Maierovitz flew in from Toronto specifically to attend a New York event supporting one of the oldest social service organizations in operation in Israel.

More than 50 Toronto women celebrated their completion of a yearlong weekly in-depth course on Jewish laws dealing with Sabbath observance, prayer and family life.

Tovia Luskin, whose Givot Olam drilling company discovered an oil field 20 km northeast of Tel Aviv, was named to Globes financial news service’s “Men of the Year” list.

Diamond magnate and Jewish philanthropist Lev Leviev joined locals in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its Ohr Avner Chabad Day School.

More than 500 students, parents, alumni, faculty members and local residents filled the streets near California State University, Northridge, to welcome its Chabad House’s first Torah scroll.

More than 300 people turned out in a show of support for the Chai Center of Dix Hills, N.Y., celebrating the Chabad-Lubavitch organization’s 18 years of serving the local Jewish community. (Photos: Levi Stein)

When Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yaakov and Zoey Saacks moved from Brooklyn to the Suffolk County community of Dix Hills, N.Y., their newly-formed Chai Center began in their home. Prayer services took place in their dining room; they ran a Hebrew school from their kitchen.

Jews in the southern Russian city of Saratov had a lot to celebrate last week. As they reveled in the last night of Chanukah, hundreds of people gathered in the hall of the city’s central synagogue to welcome a new Torah scroll.

Lian Zucker, a sophomore and one of 2,000 Jewish students who attend Yale University, effuses praise for its Chabad House, a center of Jewish life that she describes as a home away from home.

This month’s eight-day holiday of Chanukah was a record-breaking season for the Judaism website Chabad.org.