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he old, sloping Jewish cemetery in Haditch, Ukraine, is one of those rare windows into the past. Look out from the hilltop, as I did recently, and a vista nearly unchanged in two centuries opens up below. During the winter you’ll see a frozen, grassy clearing dotted with barren birch trees descending to the banks of the placid Psel River. There, at the bottom and to the right, sits the original red brick mausoleum of Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi (1745-1812), the Alter Rebbe. The founder of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, Rabbi Schneur Zalman lived and taught in White Russia...

During the darkest times, Hashem sent Mordechai to shine a light and renew people's faith. His battle wasn't limited to the physical and the natural. As a first step, he strengthened the Torah education of Jewish children and gathered the people to return to Hashem. The darkest part of the Egyptian exile caused Hashem to send Moshe Rabbeinu (Moses) into the world. Were one to pin their success to some characteristic of theirs, no matter how lofty a trait, one would miss the mark. No one set of attributes allowed Moshe to bring the 10 plagues upon the enemies of...

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Borough officials hope some holiday diplomacy will help avoid a First Amendment fight with the Closter Menorah Committee. The group, which has staged menorah-lighting ceremonies on public property for the last 25 years, threatened to sue the town last winter, when officials considered shutting down the event following a raucous time the year before. The Borough Council allowed the ceremony last year under tighter restrictions and, in a divided vote last week, chose to allow it again. But officials want the Dec. 6 event to move from the front lawn of Borough Hall to a park one block from downtown....

Rabbi Brackman attends Chabad emissaries international convention, returns with uplifted feelings and great sense of pride Published: 11.20.06, 23:55 Eating dinner with three thousand rabbis is indeed an experience to write about. This week for the first time I attended the International Convention of Chabad Emissaries. Over three thousand Chabad Rabbis from all corners of the globe came together to share inspiration, camaraderie and love of Judaism. Chabad is arguably the largest Jewish organization in the world. At the convention it was announced that this year three new countries, Vietnam, Laos and Guadeloupe, were added to the list of countries...

Some 3,000 Chabad rabbis and communal leaders converged on Brooklyn for an annual conference. The International Conference of Chabad Lubavitch Emissaries, colloquially known as the “Shluchim” conference, began Thursday and will run through Monday. It will be highlighted by a banquet Sunday night that is expected to draw some 4,000 people to the Garden State Exhibit Center in Somerset, N.J. It will be the first time the banquet is held outside New York. The banquet will honor Sami Rohr, who has given tens of millions of dollars to Chabad and other educational causes.

Jewish leaders meet with Shashi Tharoor, center left, the U.N. Undersecretary General, at an event organized by American Friends  of Lubavitch in Washington on Sept. 7.Photograph: Chabad-Lubavitch Lubavitch assumes high profile at U.N. I can speak for a movement with an energetic, ongoing presence in 73 countries,” said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Chabad’s envoy in Washington, who organized the Tharoor meeting and is spearheading the effort to establish a permanent Chabad presence at the United Nations.Ron Kampeas/JTA WASHINGTON, Sept. 18 (JTA) - As the U.N. General Assembly opens, diplomats vying to be the world’s top peacekeeper are taking the time to consult...

NEW YORK CITY, USA - Shoppers, fresh from the streets of a city mad with holiday glitter swept into the lobby of the New York Hilton and found themselves in a different world. Eddies of buddy groups, the boys who played basketball in the yeshiva gym and grew up into spiritual leaders the world over, who only saw each other over the four-day International Conference of Shluchim clustered alongside the lobby sculpture. Newlywed young, wise eyed sages, the thin, the not-so-thin. Ginger headed, blond, gray streaked, speaking a polyglot of Hebrew, Yiddish, English, Russian and French. Chabad -Lubavitch Shluchim--2,769 representatives--had...

LOS ANGELES, CA, September 14—A California governor, a Chassidic reggae singer, a pair of basketball legends, and a son of “The Godfather.” What do they have in common? All of them have joined the ranks of celebrities scheduled to appear on the upcoming Chabad “Celebration 25” Telethon. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, Matisyahu, Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and James Caan are among those stepping forward to salute the Telethon’s 25th anniversary and encourage viewers to support Chabad’s educational and nonsectarian social service programs. This year’s show will broadcast live from Hollywood on Sunday, September 25th, from 3 pm to midnight, PDT. It...

Rabbi Groner to PM Sharon: You Are the Cause of Murder 00:07 Jul 01, '05 / 24 Sivan 5765 (IsraelNN.com) Rabbi Leibel Groner, who was the personal assistant to the late Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson - the last Rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch Chassidic sect, and someone acknowledged as a world-wide Jewish leader - shouted at Prime Minister Ariel Sharon during a meeting with Chabad rabbis at the beginning of the week. The explosion at the meeting was reported by the Sha'ah Tovah weekly, read among the Haredi public. According to the report, Rabbi Groner shouted, "You are causing the...

Last Update: 10/01/2005 22:07 Tsunami 'wave rat' sells domain name, gives cash to Chabad By Reuters TORONTO - A Canadian student dubbed the "wave rat" for offering the domain name tsunamirelief.com for $50,000 on the online auction site eBay has sold it and donated the money to a Jewish charity's relief efforts, the gaming company that bought it said Monday. Josh Kaplan, 20, branded a "wave rat" by the New York Post, which suggested he was trying to profit from the disaster, sold the domain name to the Montreal-based internet gambling company for $10,000. The entire amount was given directly...

"The Rebbe is Superman and [Rabbi] Yehuda Krinsky is Lex Luthor, you understand?" Meyer Romano, 23, told The Post yesterday as he left Brooklyn criminal court after a night in jail. Romano was one of a crowd that was busted Wednesday for trying to interfere with Krinsky's placement of a plaque honoring Rebbe Menachem Schneerson, the founder of the Lubavitch movement who died in 1994.

Nine people were arrested yesterday in a melee at the headquarters of Brooklyn's most visible ultra-Orthodox Jewish movement, which is divided over whether the Lubavitcher founder, Rabbi Menachem Schneerson, is alive or dead. Workers at Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights were installing a new plaque on the building which refers to Schneerson's "blessed memory."

If the non-Jewish public is even vaguely aware of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, it's probably because its annual telethon draws celebrities including Adam Sandler, Michael Douglas, James Caan, Whoopi Goldberg and Anthony Hopkins. But within the Jewish world, this small branch of Judaism is generating outsized levels of interest — and concern. On the one hand, Chabad — with its rigorous observance of Jewish law and rabbis in long beards and wide-brimmed black hats — has become an island of growth, innovation and success at a time of aging synagogue memberships and stagnant population elsewhere among American Jews.