Chabad Lubavitch World HQ

It’s mid-summer and somewhere in a train car way below New York City a group of ninety kids are playing a lively, volley-ball like game involving red balloons they are trying to keep in the air. The train rounds a bend, the game is over and some kids start singing a camp song while others chat happily with their counselors and friends.

Over the last 30 years, every August the Peguisha has brought thousands of young Jews together for 4 day of workshops, lectures, kumzits and inspiration. 230 eighteen to thirty five year-olds from Argentina, Paraguay, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil joined this year’s weekend held at a beachfront hotel in Carilo, Buenos Aires.

The idea of a visit to the cemetery was hatched when Rabbi Nochum and Chyena Yusewitz of Chabad of Grass Valley were called to the bedside of a synagogue member on life support. The family was open to hearing about Jewish burial but had already decided to cremate. It took an agonizing few days before the family finally chose a Jewish burial for their loved one.

Sudak’s ordeal is dramatized in Come From Away, a Tony award-winning musical in which his character plays a key role. The show is still running on Broadway, and after a sold-out streak in Dublin, it recently opened in London to standing-room-only audiences.

Two weeks ago, after years of unsuccessful recovery attempts that included a 1992 lengthy legal battle that failed, Chabad of Brest purchased the city’s second largest historic synagogue, the Hekdesh Shul. Built in 1886, the synagogue had been confiscated by the Nazis, together with the neighboring Jewish hospital, and housed wounded soldiers. When the Soviets reclaimed the city, it became a nightclub. It has since passed from hand to hand eventually being owned by a private individual and used as an office space. The iconic facade and inside architecture had been destroyed by the various occupiers but the original building remained.

Two weeks ago, after years of unsuccessful recovery attempts that included a 1992 lengthy legal battle that failed, Chabad of Brest purchased the city’s second largest historic synagogue, the Hekdesh Shul. Built in 1886, the synagogue had been confiscated by the Nazis, together with the neighboring Jewish hospital, and housed wounded soldiers. When the Soviets reclaimed the city, it became a nightclub. It has since passed from hand to hand eventually being owned by a private individual and used as an office space. The iconic facade and inside architecture had been destroyed by the various occupiers but the original building remained.

It was raining that Shabbat and I would not be driving. And the Torah prohibits us from carrying on Shabbat, so I didn't have an umbrella either. What I did have was a nice Italian suit and a score of congregants waiting for me at the synagogue.

Sudak’s ordeal is dramatized in Come From Away, a Tony award-winning musical in which his character plays a key role. The show is still running on Broadway, and after a sold-out streak in Dublin, it recently opened in London to standing-room-only audiences.

Set on five sprawling acres and surrounded by New Jersey’s hills and parks, LifeTown offers children and adults with special needs the opportunity to work, play, and learn together with their peers, with and without disabilities, in a rarefied setting of true integration.

“I was shaken,” Ella remembers. “She told me how her mother walked in as she was swallowing pills, intent on ending her life. And I felt terrible that I had not noticed that this teen was struggling.” The warning signs were all there, Ella says, “But I didn’t recognize them.”