(lubavitch.com) Needy children in the Israeli coastal city of Yavne had much to cheer about last week thanks to an unsolicited generous donation from the PazGaz natural gas company to Chabad Computers for the Needy program.

PazGaz recently replaced a large number of office computers and wanted to donate them, according to a statement released by the company. “We found an article about Chabad’s computer donation program and a large donation they received from the Zara fashion chain’s offices. We contacted them and arranged for pickup.”

The Computers for the Needy program was launched by Chabad Director Rabbi Yitzhak Lerer a year ago to provide local students from poorer families with an educational boost. While appeals to several businesses such as Zara have landed donations, Lerer said that the PazGaz story was special.

 “It was truly incredible to have PazGaz approach us without being asked and then to make such a significant donation,” he said. “This is a needed and important project that makes a big impact on the kids and generates good will between the community and local businesses.”

Rabbi Lerer expects the computers will be ready for delivery throughout the community next week.

(lubavitch.com) In a shift unheard of since pre-Nazi Europe, multitudes of Hungarians took to the polls last week in support of an extreme neo-Nazi party. As often happens in times of economic meltdown and general woe, far-right parties (representing anti-Semitic and racist views) come out on top.

Way on top in the case of the recent European Parliament elections in Hungary. Calling themselves “the movement for a better Hungary,” the Jobbik party captured an astounding 15 percent of the local vote. To the dismay of the local Jewish community, their website and politicians espouse hateful views on Israel, including its politics and people.

“The situation has developed over the past couple of years,” explains Rabbi Shlomo Koves from his home in Budapest. “The results are not totally unexpected. The surprise is that the far right received three times as many votes as what was originally projected.”

Though the party’s main prey has been the Gypsy community, Koves says that their growing popularity has enabled them to “say politically unfair and unacceptable statements about and to the Jewish community.” 

The Hungarian Jewish community, where Koves serves as a Chabad representative, is the fourth-largest in Europe. Of its 100,000 members, 12,000 are Holocaust survivors, with the younger generation largely descendants of survivors. It is a community for whom anti-Semitism is a very real issue.

Koves’ own grandparents survived the Holocaust; both his parents were born soon after the war’s end. The Budapest-native was raised in a typical affluent Jewish family, discovering Chabad at the age of 12. Yeshiva in Israel and the United States followed soon after. In 2003, Koves was the first rabbi to be ordained in post-war Hungary.

Despite his own connection with the ghetto and camps, Koves tries to steer the community away from a Holocaust fixation. In this country where the local intermarriage rate is 60 percent, many Jews’ only connection with Judaism is the Holocaust or contemporary anti-Semitism. Because many have experienced the horrors of the Holocaust, they are too afraid to share their Jewish identity with their children. Another generation lost.

It doesn’t have to be like that, Koves stresses.

To prove their point, Koves and his mentor Rabbi Baruch Oberlander, have created a dynamic community in Budapest. A kindergarten and primary school educate 100 children. In Budapest’s main square, Chanukah menorah lightings attract 500 each night; 1,500 people crunch on matzah at public seders around the country; a monthly women’s club has 200 members.

Study is important to this well-educated, secular community. The Open Jewish University’s classes, on every conceivable Jewish topic, include 2,500 students. Prayerbooks, haggadahs, the Pentateuch, and children’s books have been printed in Hungarian by Chabad leadership. And to supplement the local rabbinate, young men study in the Pesti Yeshiva and assist with communal activities.

One of those students is Michael Rose, who spent last year in Budapest. Though he currently learns in an American yeshiva, Rose still follows Hungarian news and political developments.  

“I wouldn’t freak about the election as I would the report that Hungarian policemen have declared war on the Jewish community,” he comments. Rose refers to a recent Haaretz account of a local police union informing members in their newsletter that, “anti-Semitism is not just our right, but it is the duty of every Hungarian homeland lover, and we must prepare for armed battle against the Jews.” That union has signed a cooperation agreement with the Jobbik party.

And it is not only rhetoric. There has been a rise in anti-Semitic crime, particularly in the defamation of Jewish cemeteries, in recent years. Its steadiness has seen sanctioned by police officers.

Despite a growing disconcertion, Koves and Oberlander are plowing ahead to help this previously apathetic community revel in its roots. Plans are underway for a new million-dollar synagogue to be constructed in the Buda side of town and programming continues unimpeded.

 “The only thing we can do is hope for the best politically,” says Koves. And toil for the best religiously. 

(lubavitch.com) A sold-out crowd of 700 Montrealers, all in search of a good belly laugh, will pile into the Oscar Peterson Concert Hall Sunday. The Jewish Comedy Fest, to aid Chabad of NDG and the Loyola campus, will feature two Jewish comedians and a world-renowned mentalist. Montreal’s own Joey Elias will share the stage with Yisrael Campbell from Jerusalem and Marc Salem, direct from Broadway. Chances are, it will be a funny night.

“Montreal is a humorous city,” explains Rabbi Yisroel Bernath of his decision to present comedy for the evening’s entertainment. “It was a natural choice.” Bernath and his family moved to the NDG (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce) neighborhood six months ago to serve that budding hip community and the students of Concordia’s Loyola campus. Soon after settling in, Bernath envisioned an event that would both empower students and reach out to other young Jews who may not have heard of Chabad’s presence.

One meeting, and 30 enthusiastic volunteers later, the Jewish Comedy Fest is ready for the stage. The evening is created almost entirely by volunteers, (some with useful degrees in marketing and journalism), who have created a media whirlwind in Montreal’s newspapers and television. An enticing ad, playing on the city’s largest station, Global TV, is responsible for most of the evening’s reservations.

In the 30-second advertisement, Rachelle Segal, Sunday night’s emcee, invites people to attend “a night of comedy with a Jewish twist.” In her professional life, Segal emcees for major events around Montreal and hosts television and fashion shows. Come Sunday, she hopes to “get the crowd going” with a “little shtick and a little shpiel:” classic Jewish humor techniques. The show, believes Segal, is a great way to unite Jews and to get them involved.

“The typical young Jew that I know won’t attend a class, but they will come to a professional show,” Segal says. “There will be elements of Judaism without it being too overbearing. There’s a definite positive vibe when you’re involved with the Jewish community.”

Joey Elias agrees. The six foot four stand-up comedian, a local icon, is excited to be one of the evening’s headliners. And not only because he will get another shot at self-deprecating humor (many of his jokes focus on his size and accompanying klutziness). Elias hopes the program will give “young Jews a sense of community.” At a certain age, he says, English-speaking Montrealers pack out of town to bigger cities like New York and Toronto. This event, he hopes, will help instill in them feelings of pride, and responsibility.

“Really we are all part of a puzzle,” he says. “If even one person leaves, then everything falls apart. And that is what Chabad is working to combat here.” Both Segal and Elias attend some of Chabad at NDG’s programming and classes.

According to Elias, it is humor specifically that has the power to keep people connected. Elias, who also works as an actor and radio host, says that comedy is a Jewish specialty. “I once overheard two Holocaust survivors talking about how they tried to make each other laugh in the camps, just to get through the day,” he recalls. “With everything our people have been through historically, it is good for us to laugh once in a while.”

Last year, Mireille Alvo attended her first class with Rabbi Bernath. She came at the advice of a friend and since then, she has been bringing more and more young professionals into the fold. Alvo was a clear choice for Bernath when he was forming the comedy fest’s initial committee. She helped recruit more volunteers and is currently working on the evening’s ad journal, a cross between a who’s who of donors and a joke book.

“Since I met the rabbi, religion has become a little more important in my life,” Alvo divulges. “It is amazing how that positive energy can change a life.”  

Like the others so happily involved in Sunday’s venture, Alvo is motivated to, “raise money for a good cause and provide the community with something it has been missing for a long time.” Monkland Village, the center of NDG and the hub for everything youthful and fun, is filled with Jews. Alvo hopes Sunday’s event will get them laughing and tempt them to discover more of their Jewish heritage.

Laughter, then, may be the best medicine for this growing community.

(lubavitch.com) Until he was three and a half, Isaac lived with 10,000 other Jews in the Nowogrodek ghetto. His father Zev Wolfe, a successful farmer, was licensed to provide the prisoners with wheat and potatoes from his nearby farm. In August 1942, Zev Wolfe was attacked by German officers. He escaped, but his enemies quickly turned their attention towards his wife. Sarah, Isaac’s mother, was called to the German’s head office one afternoon; she approached them with young Isaac in hand. Sarah overheard their murderous intentions (she spoke three languages including German), and threw Isaac over the fence.

That was the last time he saw her. Sarah was arrested and murdered by the Germans.

And though he can’t picture his mother, his memories begin after that tragedy.

Isaac Koll, now 70, will join his older sister Paula Burger to share those memories at the Ross Albert Scholarship Fund’s second annual gala at Chabad of NW Metro Denver. The scholarship fund established in Albert’s memory provides the local Camp Gan Israel with $9,000 in scholarship money. Until he succumbed to cardiomyopathy, Albert was known for his ready enthusiasm and fun spirit.

When he died in 2006, at the age of 13, his parents decided to memorialize him in the one way they saw fit: a camp scholarship fund for other children to have as much fun at Chabad as he did. Until now, that fund has given kids “their only Jewish experience of the year.” Its support comes almost entirely from community members, specifically from functions such as this gala. And in today’s recession, the fund’s import is only greater. This year, explains camp director Rabbi Benjy Brackman, “our camp has taken a real hit from the economy. Roughly 35 percent of our campers will be attending on scholarship.”

It is the symbolism of the June 18th event that has Brackman excited. “It is really a unique triangle at work here,” he explains. “Presenting at our event are two child partisans, whose speech will benefit children who otherwise would be unable to attend camp, all in memory of our Hebrew school student, Ross.” Though Koll and Burger never experienced camp, or an idyllic childhood, their story will help Denver’s Jewish children summer carefree.

Part of their tale is chronicled in “Defiance,” the cinematic hit about the Bielski brothers who saved 1,200 Jews in the Polish forest. Through their heroism and cunning, the Bielskis created a community (complete with clinic, court of law, and bakery) that existed for two years. When they weren’t actively saving lives, the partisans sabotaged German war efforts. Koll and Burger were the youngest member of that group.

“We were the only children with the partisans, and my father didn’t want us to be there for too long.” Instead, Koll’s father brought his children and nine other adults deeper into the forest where they lived in an underground dugout and scavenged for food. Cooking was done at night to avoid detection, food was preserved four feet below the ground. In addition to their buried home, Koll’s father built a well with a secret hiding room. They lived there for a year until they returned to the Bielskis and the other partisans.

“Without TV, radio, books, or balls,” recalls Koll, “I spent my days watching the squirrels, foxes, and wolves.” Koll adopted a chicken as a pet, calling him “hun berriya,” super chicken. The two were inseparable until the chicken was needed for soup to save a dying man’s life.

Burger, now an artist in Denver, carried her younger brother on her back and cared for him as per her dead mother’s instructions. “It was a scary, miserable, fearful time,” she says. “We didn’t think we would survive. No one did. It was only from a miracle.” Burger says she was in “G-d’s witness protection program.” Her survival, she believes, was in “order to tell my story. To be a witness forever.”

That story will help over 70 children in NW metro Denver experience a summer Burger could never have dreamed of in the Polish forest. Helping others study Torah and live Jewishly is, for Koll and Burger, one way they continue to sabotage the Nazis’ brutality. 

“Jewish has to be learned,” says Burger of Gan Israel’s importance. “The earlier you teach it, the better it takes. And children learn by playing.”