Toronto’s Lubavitch Day Camp received its third 15-passenger van in 25 years as part of a grand 70th birthday celebration for local lawyer Martin Teplitsky.

Teplitsky’s friends and family members donated the new van – bearing a giant ribbon and bow and emblazoned with the name and logo of the Jewish camp – during a party while staff and campers sang “Happy Birthday.”

According to Rabbi Zalman Aron Grossbaum, director of the Chabad-Lubavitch Community Center in Toronto, the gift has become somewhat of a tradition among Teplitsky and his friends. In 1986, when Marty Richman turned 50, the group donated the first such van to the camp, and 10 years later they donated another one in honor of Morty Goldhar’s 60th birthday. Although the camp of 600 kids utilizes a commercial bus fleet and school buses for the bulk of its transportation needs, it uses the smaller van to pick up campers in remote locations and deliver lunches and supplies to outlying camp branches.
Click on image to enlarge

Upon news of the first van donation, the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, wrote a letter to Richman lauding his support of Chabad-Lubavitch institutions in Toronto.

“I was particularly gratified to be informed of your forthcoming 50th birthday celebration,” the Rebbe wrote. “This is, indeed, a welcome occasion, not only for the immediate family, but also for the wider family in the community at large. For you have the [merit] of seeing the good fruits of your labors, particularly your involvement with the educational institutions and programs of Lubavitch in your city.

“Inasmuch as Torah [education] is a ‘perennial plant,’ bearing fruits and the fruits of fruits continuously,” the Rebbe continued, “there is no greater and more lasting [merit] than this.”