Feature

Mastering a complex volume overnight

Jews of all backgrounds find the meaning of life and self in Chabad founder’s works.

With two weeks left on their itineraries, rabbinical students are continuing their global travels to strengthen Jewish life in remote communities and reach the unaffiliated in established ones.

Every night when Avery Sax goes to sleep, she says the twice-daily prayer known as the Shema.

In a world where large families are not unheard of, it’s not uncommon for a student at a Chabad-Lubavitch run yeshiva to find a cousin or two among his peers.

When the Sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, stepped onto a Chicago rail platform on Jan. 25, 1942 to begin a week-long trip focused on inspiring and strengthening the local Jewish community and its commitment to Jewish education, thousands greeted him.

Before he became a U.S. senator, Rudy Boschwitz moved to Minnesota and opened a family business in 1963. By that time, Rabbi Moshe and Mindy Feller were already there.

In the months before bar mitzvah boy Jeremy Benjamin ascended to the Torah at his Nashville, Tenn., synagogue, he learned to don the prayer boxes known as tefillin and to read from Judaism’s holiest scroll—all in all, standard pre–13th birthday fare for a Jewish young man. But Benjamin spent quite some time on an activity just as necessary.

Flint, Mich.’s Lee Cronenwalt has lived through the Great Depression, fought in World War II, seen a man walk on the moon, and witnessed the inventions of laptop computers, cell phones, and hybrid-electric cars. This Sunday, he’ll experience another historic moment: his own Bar Mitzvah.

Not too long ago, it might have been one of the least likely locations from where a religious scribe would start writing a Torah scroll, but on Sunday, families and friends affiliated with a Jewish center in the New York City neighborhood of Harlem gathered to celebrate just such an occasion.

At the start of the Yom Kippur evening services, Rabbi Eli Blokh asked two men to hold the Torah scrolls in front of the ark as a visiting cantor chanted Kol Nidre.

Ezra Rosen, 23, went to Miami last winter to study at a brand-new yeshiva for 10 days. With his boss’ and parents’ blessing, he left New Jersey at the end of December with a round trip ticket. He’s still there.

In May 2010, Jacob Lefkowitz received a kidney donation that changed his life. He was on dialysis, going from state to state to get on lists for a donation, but the wait was long – about 10 years in New York alone.

A full 76 years after turning 13, Eli Moscovitz will celebrate his Bar Mitzvah Saturday as his wife Norma and three generations of descendents look on, including two sons, a daughter, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

Milly Arbib’s prayer minyan is growing. These days, Sabbath services can see a crowd of up to 100 when there’s a Bar Mitzvah. And it all takes place at her summer home outside of Rome, Italy.

Seven decades ago the center of world Jewry in Europe was in the midst of being destroyed. Mass murder by the Germans was the norm, targeted against Jews of all backgrounds and nationalities, who were executed on the streets and gassed in concentration camps.

Benzion Gotlib loved to study Jewish texts, and thanks to the Jewish Learning Network – a worldwide effort to pair study partners by fiber optic cable and phone line – he was able to keep up a weekly learning appointment up until his passing at the age of 93.

It’s not every day that you see a group of men soaring high above the Seattle skyline in a Cessna aircraft donning the Jewish prayer boxes known as tefillin, chanting traditional Chasidic melodies while anxiously prepping for their very first skydiving jump together.