(lubavitch.com) Will Greece abandon the euro? Will it leave the EU? Will China invest more in the eurozone bailout? Did Sarkozy appreciate Obama’s joke? Is history in fact, being written in Cannes this year as posters plastered over the city emblazoned with the words, L'Histoire s'écrit à Cannes, claim?

These are some of the questions on the minds of participants at the G20 summit which began Thursday, on the French Riviera. As heads of state and finance ministers from the world’s largest nations converged on Cannes, the city became a tight security zone, with more than 12,000 police and security personnel securing the area, including the Cannes Chabad Center, centrally located and visible to all summit-goers.  

“We’re in the heart of the area, and with the summit going on, greater numbers of visitors come to our center, so we’ve been under very tight security,” Rabbi Mendel Matusof told lubavitch.com.

Rabbi Matusof and his colleague, Rabbi Youdi Lewin, access summit events to reach out to Jewish participants and welcome them to Cannes. Some 3500 journalists and 5000 guests from around the world are attending. Chabad’s kosher restaurant delivers meals to kosher-observant guests staying in the area’s hotels.  

Rabbi Matusof was among a group of guests invited to a Thursday morning meeting with French President Sarkozy. Later, the Chabad rabbis met with distinguished Jewish businessmen.

“The summit offers us good opportunities to meet Jews and let them know that Chabad is here for them,” said Matusof, the son of Chabad senior representatives to Cannes, Rabbi Yehuda Leib and Tsherna Matusof.

The two-day summit ends Friday.