Passover News from Across the Globe

As the search for missing Israeli backpacker Liat Tess-Okin continued around Queenstown, New Zealand, with the assistance of Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, a team of rabbinical students from neighboring Australia arrived to take up a slew of Pas

This Passover was the first to be held in the new temporary home of the Lubavitch House at the University of Pennsylvania, but as he’s done every year, Rabbi Levi Haskelevich kicked off holiday celebrations with a model matzah bakery in the center of camp

A New Jersey native studying in Santiago, Chile, goes looking for a Passover Seder. Wary of attending a religious event, she ends up at the city’s Chabad House and finds that the experience reminds her of home.

The Chabad Jewish Student Center serving Texas A&M University managed a special Passover dining program during each of the holiday’s eight days.

Polish President Lech Kaczynski received a gift of hand-made shmurah matzah from Rabbi Sholom DovBer Stambler shortly before Passover.

About 95 percent of the Jews living in Aarhus, Denmark, a city with no organized Jewish community, are Israelis. After spending Passover Seders with two Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students, many are hungry for more.

New Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries Rabbi Chaim Hillel and Devorah Leah Azimov koshered the kitchen of a local hotel for Passover celebrations in Northern Cyprus. Some 45 people turned out for the first Seder.

More than 2,000 people, mostly Israeli tourists, joined Chabad-Lubavitch of Thailand for Passover this year.

Two shipments totaling 2,000 bottles of wine, 2,000 pounds of matzah and 3,000 units of gefilte fish arrived at Chabad-Lubavitch centers in Kathmandu and Pokhara, Nepal, in the middle of Shabbat and in the middle of the Saturday night Seder, respectively. They had been stuck at the Indian border.

As part of the hundreds of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students who traveled to locales all over the world this week to lead Passover Seders, Motti Seligson and Shalom Nagar, both natives of Brooklyn, N.Y., arrived in Abuja, Nigeria.

President George W. Bush inscribed a special edition Passover Haggadah with greetings to troops in Iraq in an Oval Office ceremony proclaiming Education and Sharing Day, USA. American Friends of Lubavitch coordinated the Haggadah's shipment to soldiers serving in Iraq.

Although Nepal presents its own special difficulties in coordinating the world’s largest Passover Seders – like a closed border that stalls a shipment of wine and matzah – Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz says such headaches are well worth it.

A total of 500 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students from Israel, the United States, Australia, Russia and Brazil headed out to host Passover Seders in cities around the world not served by full-time rabbis or emissaries.

A handful of Chabad-Lubavitch centers across the globe report on last-minute preparations and plans in advance of Passover, which begins Saturday night.

Caterer Linda Bergh, a Santa Fe, N.M., personal chef, is the provider of choice for the city’s Chabad Jewish Center. In the days leading up to Passover, she was busy preparing a gourmet menu for the center’s two Seders on Saturday night and Sunday night.

Rabbi Nechemia Vogel has been teaching children and adults alike about the intricacies of matzah baking for 26 years.

One of the thousands of Passover Haggadahs in the collection of the Agudas Chasidei Chabad Library is an illustrated volume published by the printing house of Meshulam Zalman Frankel in Sulzbach, Germany, in 1755.

The central Chabad-Lubavitch library in New York posted 1,000 Passover Haggadahs online, some of which are the only copies in the world.

For recovering addicts, the four cups of the Passover Seder can represent enslavement instead of freedom. A Sober Seder run by a Chabad House in Los Angeles will give them the opportunity to celebrate the holiday without the fear of relapse.

Chabad-Lubavitch of Cyprus hosted a model matzah bakery to teach community members about the special process of making shmurah matzah for the Passover Seder.