It's cold in South Africa, at least on their terms, but that hasn't stopped Camp Gan Israel – the network of Chabad-run summer camps – from operating a camp during the Southern Hemisphere country's current winter vacation…

The Alexandra family came to the Chabad-Lubavitch synagogue in Ashkelon, Israel, to name their new baby daughter, but by the time they left, they had celebrated a grand bar mitzvah for the father; he had let slip that he had never before put on tefillin…

Millions of viewers were treated to the Jewish view on marriage when Chabad Rabbi Mendel Gershovits, an emissary in Alma-Ata, Kazakhstan, appeared as a guest on a national television program about marriage...

Rabbi Asher Jacobson, a graduate of the central Lubavitcher yeshiva in Crown Heights, was elected president of the Montreal Region of the Rabbinical Council of Canada...

An anonymous charity campaign in Japan has apparently landed at the Sydney, Australia, doorstep of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Eli and Elka Malka Feldman. The Feldmans found a package containing thousands of Japanese yen and no indication of who sent the apparent international donation...

In a locale known more for its Israeli backpackers than its homegrown Jewish community, the relatively new Chabad-Lubavitch center in Chiang Mai, Thailand, is starting a weekly class for the city's few resident Jews...

After leading an eye-opening session for 80 Jewish students at the Lauder Business School in Vienna, Rabbi Shaya Boas plans on offering two more Rohr Jewish Learning Institute courses come this fall...

It was back to their roots for the young students of the Lubavitch yeshiva in Lod, Israel, when they paid a visit to their school's former building in the Pardess neighborhood. The dilapidated old building is now home to an Arab family, but the students found a mezuzah still hanging on one of its doorposts...

Former Israeli Supreme Court Presidents Aharon Barak and Meir Shamgar were among those who turned out for a memorial service for fallen colleague Adi Azar, a judge assassinated three years ago outside of his Ramat Hasharon home. Chabad Rabbi Yehuda Butman lead the annual service...

The homes around the Rebbe's resting place in Queens, N.Y. hosted 50 Thornhill, Ontario, community members this past Shabbat...

It was reunion time this month for alumni of the vocational school in Kfar Chabad, Israel...

Warsaw's Chabad House grew by one. On hand for the festivities celebrating the birth of a son to Rabbi Shalom DovBer and Dina Stambler were Polish Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich, MP Katarzyna Piekarska, Israeli Ambassador David Peleg and Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky from Lubavitch World Headquarters...

It's time for bottled water for Kfar Chabad after Israel's Health Ministry announced high bacteria levels in the Lod Valley's drinking water. The Chassidic village's residents will have to boil tap water if they want to cook with it...

Donate it like Beckham? Chabad of California hopes to secure an appearance by world-famous soccer star David Beckham for its "To Life Telethon," to be televised on Sept. 9. Says an insider, "We hope our ideals will appeal to him to get involved." ...

In Congo for a presidential visit, Burkina Faso’s Blaise Compaoré met with local Chabad Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila. The rabbi taught the head of state about the Seven Laws of Noah, whereupon Compaoré invited Bentolila to visit his landlocked West African nation to continue the lesson...

Following a trip to the Dead Sea and Masada, teenage students at Safed’s Summer Yeshiva for Young Shluchim headed to Jerusalem, where they discussed Torah with Talmudic commentator Rabbi Adin Even-Yisroel Steinsaltz, who celebrated his 70th birthday a few days later…

Conejo, Calif.'s Recreation and Park District will be consulting its local Chabad House on ways to move forward in its relationship with the Jewish community, which was strained recently by a Holocaust talk held at a senior center that many found to be anti-Semitic...

Freeborn, Minn., Mayor Mark Gruben turned out for the community’s celebration upon completing this year’s Maimonides learning cycle. The pol gave the yeshiva students some practical tips for their summer stay at the local Ha’chayal camp. Rabbi Shmuel Kaplan of Maryland balanced things out with his own tips for thriving spiritually in the summer…

Germany’s national Jewish weekly Jüdische Allgemeine ran an article this week on Lubavitch rabbis who turned out for a two-day conference in Dresden. Curiously enough, one of the topics under discussion at the conference, attended also by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky of the Lubavitch World Headquarters, was “proper utilization of the media”…

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb? Arab residents of the conflict-torn Israeli city of Hebron are apparently renovating the Chasidic section of the old Jewish cemetery. They didn't have much of a choice: A blockage in the plumbing of a nearby Arab home flooded the area, including the grave of the well-known Rebbetzin Menucha Rachel Slonim, whose family kept a good rapport with their Muslim neighbors.

When visiting the Mishkan Israel synagogue in Oak Park, Mich., to recite Kaddish for his late mother, Alan Zekelman was disheartened by the condition of the building. That was a year and a half ago. On June 11, he announced a donation of $2 million to expand the facility to 20,000 square feet. At the event, up and coming Chasidic music performer Benny Friedman got the dinner crowd to get up and dance … the men at least.

Western Washington University's Associated Students organization awarded their campus Chabad House -- which, they said, "brought Shabbat for everyone to campus" -- the coveted distinction of "Club of the Year"...

Rabbi Yitzchok David Groner, our man in Melbourne, Australia, since 1958, defied the odds by leaving his hospital bed to attend the 50-year celebration of Yeshiva-Beth Rivkah Ladies College this past week. Alongside Washington, D.C. lawyer Nathan Lewin, the 82 year old Groner demonstrated his fundraising abilities: "Your task," he exhorted the crowd, "is to open your hands to ensure the future of all that we have worked for."

Israeli Defense Forces from the Zerifin army base took a break from their training to shore up on their "spiritual training" at a day-long Judaism seminar in Kfar Chabad. Soldiers heard lectures, joined prayer services and enjoyed the relaxed atmosphere of the small town...

Cyprus is talking -- about the island's first-ever Jewish children's camp, Camp Gan Israel, serving 20 local children...

The parents of soldier Daniel Agami, who was killed last month in Iraq, joined Rabbi Sholom and Dina Ciment and hundreds of fellow congregants in a moving memorial ceremony at Chabad-Lubavitch of Boynton Beach, Fla...

Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Michal Mendelow of Stamford, Conn.; Rivkie Spalter of Mequon, Wisc.; and Sarah Cunin of Reno, Nev., were chosen as "leader-activists" by JECEI (Jewish Early Childhood Education Initiative) and the Covenant Foundation to be fellows in their new program for educational excellence...