2010

More than 400 locals and out-of-town guests packed an auditorium at a Northern Virginia Jewish Community Center in tribute of a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary whose dedication to his community would not be sidetracked by the three-year illness that ultimately claimed his life.

For students of California State University, Northridge, Chanukah celebrations were much brighter this year thanks to the dedication of a new Torah scroll completed just days before the festival.

Down Under, in Melbourne, Australia, at the Yeshivah-Beth Rivkah Colleges, there’s a learning revolution going on.

After years of shunning the spotlight, Holocaust survivor Leah Bedzowki Johnson picked a forum of Jewish students at the University of Texas as one of the first public audiences to hear her tales of fighting Nazi forces and their collaborators as a member of the famed Bielski Brigade.

A network of Chabad-Lubavitch run soup kitchens in the Israeli coastal city of Ashkelon is competing for almost $300,000 in an online voting-based competition sponsored by Bank Leumi.

The ancient synagogue atop the Judean desert fortress of Masada is by no means large. But on the eighth night of Chanukah last week, the rededicated space seemed to expand with revelers as they celebrated the completion of the first Torah scroll to be written on the historic mountaintop in 2,000 years.

A Constitutional authority and a Talmudic scholar will pair up for an upcoming presentation entitled “The Tea Party and the Talmud” for legal professionals in the New York City area.

Given its placement on the academic calendar, this Chanukah was the first in a long time that college students en masse sought to light their menorahs on school grounds. Chabad Houses across the country, in turn, bolstered their long-standing effort to ensure that any student who chose to light a menorah would be able to do so.

Chabad-Lubavitch centers stretching from Smolensk, Russia to Vancouver, Canada, hosted more than 15,000 Chanukah events this year. Taking place in 75 countries, the public menorah lightings, holiday carnivals and Chanukah parties served hundreds of thousands of people.

Across the United States, public officials joined tens of thousands of their Jewish constituents to celebrate the eight-day holiday of Chanukah.

The tiny Balkan nation of Albania installed Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Yoel Kaplan as its first chief rabbi.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper made history this month by hosting a Chanukah celebration at his official residence in Ottawa. It was the first time since Canada’s founding that its prime minister brought the holiday to his private chambers.

Mumbai, India’s Jewish community celebrated Chanukah with increased vigor, continuing a tradition begun by the slain directors of the city’s Chabad-Lubavitch center by lighting a towering menorah at the Gateway to India monument.

Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries from across the Lone Star State celebrated Chanukah with Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a private ceremony in the governor’s office at the capitol in Austin.

Chabad-Lubavitch of Northwest Metro Denver inaugurated a new location for a public Chanukah menorah lighting this year, welcoming about 200 people to Arvada, Colo.’s Olde Town Square for a holiday party and lighting of a towering eight-foot candelabra.

Sydney’s Our Big Kitchen has joined forces with the Australian National Rugby League’s Wests Tigers to raise awareness of childhood obesity.

When the six-foot-tall Chanukah menorah belonging to the Tannenbaum Chabad House at Northwestern University was found vandalized, locals looked at the religious symbol – its bulbs broken, its branches smashed – as indicative of an undercurrent of anti-Semitism piercing the peace of their college town. Such fears, however, were put to rest when, on the first night of Chanukah, university president Morton Schapiro flipped a switch to light the candelabra.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer celebrated the return of a Chanukah menorah to the state capitol in Phoenix, joining a delegation from area synagogues in lighting the eight-branched candelabra that Chabad-Lubavitch of Arizona erected at Wesley Bolin Plaza.

More than 800 people gathered at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate to celebrate the eight-day Jewish holiday of Chanukah and the resurgence of Jewish life in Germany.

U.S. Rep. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming sent her wishes for a happy Chanukah to her state’s Jewish community, reflecting in a video message on the meaning of the eight-day Festival of Lights.