by Rebecca Kanthor and Jeanine Buzali Shanghai, China: one of the world’s busiest ports. China’s most populous city. A top-25 global financial center. And on April Fourth, host to the region’s emerging Jewish renaissance. While strange to some, this historic and fascinating city steeped with Jewish history will provide a springboard for Asia’s emerging Jewish communities through Destination Shanghai, a four-day celebration of what it means to be Jewish in Asia. Seventy years ago Shanghai was home to tens of thousands of Jews - of Russian, Sephardi, and various European backgrounds (including refugees escaping Nazi persecution), but today it will inspire contemporary Jewish leaders from Asia and around the world who with gather here and build a Jewish identity and community uniquely … [Read more...]
Destination Shanghai Gathers Asian Jewish Leaders for Learning and Innovation
JDC, Limmud China, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Philanthropic Network Host 4-Day Event, Including Young Regional and Global Jewish Activists Shanghai, China, March 22, 2013 - Nearly two hundred Jews from Asia and around the world will arrive here on April 4th for Destination Shanghai, a four-day gathering of Jewish learning, creativity, and history in Asia. With sixty educational and cultural workshops, a Shanghai Shabbat experience, and a day dedicated to Shanghai’s WWII Jewish history and global Jewish responsibility, the event is a project of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), Limmud China, and a volunteer network of Asian Jewish community leaders. Forty regional young Jewish leaders will attend through a partnership with the Charles and Lynn Schusterman … [Read more...]
What One Chabad Rabbi Can Teach Synagogues About Money
by Dan Judson Rabbi Peretz Chein, the Chabad Rabbi at Brandeis University, is doing something completely unusual for a Jewish religious organization when it comes to money: he is completely transparent about it. On Rabbi Chein’s website, chabadbrandeis.org, below the tab to respond for Shabbas dinner, is a tab with a picture of Rabbi Chein’s smiling face marked, “Finances: See what it costs to operate the Chabad House at Brandeis, and who is supporting it.” Clicking on it brings you to a basic fiscal report, where you can learn that his revenue for FY 2012 was $260,812 and he ended the fiscal year $6286 in the red. Under payroll is budgeted $73, 604 so one has a sense of what he takes as a salary, and from other numbers you can approximate what he spends on a mortgage for the Chabad … [Read more...]
Chabad Founder’s Works Are Republished 200 Years After His Passing
by Dovid Zaklikowski As part of the 200th anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, the founder of Chabad-Lubavitch, Kehot, the Chabad-Lubavitch publishing house, has reissued the full corpus of his written works, including 26 volumes of his discourses and one volume that contains all of his surviving correspondence. Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, popularly referred to as “the Alter Rebbe,” did not personally publish his works on Chassidic philosophy and Jewish mysticism during his lifetime, with the exception of the Tanya. Over the years, hundreds of manuscripts and pamphlets containing these discourses were found and kept by the respective leaders and followers of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Some of them were published as appendices to Tanya, others … [Read more...]
The Best of The Year
In case you missed any, here - based on site analytics, and in alphabetical order - are our Top Ten posts from 2012: Do our Compensation Patterns Reflect our Values? by Avi Herring, Justin Rosen Smolen, Tamar Snyder, Mordecai Walfish, Ruthie Warshenbrot, and Naomi Korb Weiss An initial analysis of the 2012 Jewish Communal Professional Compensation Survey … [Read more...]
After Sandy, NY Jewish Community Comes Together
from Chabad.org: After Sandy, Volunteers Crisscross Manhattan to Help In a nearly dark corner of lower Manhattan, in an area otherwise known as Tribeca, Rabbi Zalman Paris stands tall, cellular phone in hand, to answer another call from a young volunteer eager to offer assistance. 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. From his window, Paris, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Tribeca and SoHo, watched the storm hurl itself into the homes and lives of residents nearby. The storm prevented him from venturing outdoors, but the moment he was able to, the rabbi assembled a plan and a team to help his … [Read more...]
