Rabbi Mendy Kasowitz, director of the Lubavitch Center of Essex County in West Orange, N.J., had been looking forward to the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries that began Wednesday in Brooklyn, N.Y., with intense anticipation.
As a young man, Rabbi Eliyahu Cowen always wanted to run a Chabad House. Every fall, he’d look to the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries – it began Wednesday in New York – and think that one day, he’d be among the thousands of synagogue directors...
These have been anything but regular days at Chabad of the Five Towns. The synagogue and community center has become a shelter, providing food and comfort to victims of Hurricane Sandy.
Even with entire neighborhoods in the dark and devastation stretching for miles, glimmers of life returning to normal could be seen all across the northeastern United States.
Former Israeli Chief Rabbi Israel Meir Lau, a Holocaust survivor whose travels around the world have made him an ambassador of Judaism, will address this year’s International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in New York City.
Their homes and businesses out of power days after the passage of Hurricane Sandy, Jewish families in West Orange, N.J., were facing the prospect of not being able to celebrate the approached Sabbath with the traditional bread known as challah. Rabbi Mendy Kasowitz of the Chabad-Lubavitch Center of Essex County would have none of it.
Days after Hurricane Sandy left millions across New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and New Jersey without electricity, food or water, there are plenty of people who want to help victims and their communities recover.
Rabbi Avrohom Rapoport rode through the streets around Atlantic City, N.J., this morning on a construction truck laden with food and water. Debris is everywhere, with parts of houses, roofs and boardwalk pieces littering the ground. Cars occupy spots on lawns, competing for space with downed telephone wires, while living rooms all across the area sit flooded with water.
In the hours before Hurricane Sandy made landfall Monday, an e‑mail went out to several groups of volunteers in the popular Friendship Circle family of programs, which pair teenage volunteers with children with special needs.