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Annual Chabad rabbis’ conference spotlights rise in Jewish engagement as attendees mourn Israel’s dead

(New York Jewish Week) – This year’s conference of Chabad emissaries featured the same highlights that have anchored the past annual gatherings of the Hasidic movement’s rabbis from across the globe.
The thousands of rabbis sat for a panoramic picture in front of the movement’s headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights. On Friday morning, they visited the grave of their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Queens. And on Sunday, as they do every year, they gathered for a massive banquet at a convention center in New Jersey.
But this year much of the conference, planned months ago, had to change on short notice following Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war against the terror group in Gaza — down to the time and guest list of Sunday’s gala. The movement’s 1,400 emissaries in Israel tuned in to the meal remotely, and it was moved from the evening to 12:30 p.m. in order to accommodate the time difference.
“We understand the magnitude of the moment and it’s our time to prove to ourselves and to the world that we live and believe,” said Rabbi Moshe Ze’ev Pizem of Chabad of Sderot, an embattled Israeli city on the border with Gaza. Pizem and other Chabad rabbis from the city appeared in a video showing destruction in the city’s streets and the rabbis collecting donations and visiting troops.
“When everything is fine, it’s easy to believe in God. When do we stand the test? When there’s a difficulty, an enormous difficulty,” he said. “Now is the test.”
The gala, which drew 6,500 people this year and is generally meant to be an uplifting celebration of Chabad’s Orthodox Jewish outreach work across the globe, included mournful elements within the festive atmosphere. It featured psalms for the victims of the attack and hostages, whose names scrolled on a screen as the Biblical verses were read aloud by Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot. The Israeli emissaries, related their experiences on the ground in the past month; they gathered in Jerusalem during the dinner in New Jersey.
“We are davening for your release every day,” Helfgot said regarding the hostages, as the screens showed photos of the captives. At least one soldier from the movement was killed in the Oct. 7 attack, and some Chabad members from Brooklyn flew to Israel to serve in their reserve units after the war started.
But alongside the grief, the Chabad representatives, known as shluchim, who hailed from college campuses in North America to the Australian outback, reported an outpouring of Jewish engagement since Oct. 7. According to a survey by Chabad.org that garnered responses from 211 of the movement’s rabbis, 86% reported increased attendance since Oct. 7. The rabbis also overwhelmingly said community members had increased personal religious practice, felt “scared” and felt a stronger connection to other Jews, to Israel and to their own Jewish identity.
“We’ve seen the community has grown more together than ever before. So many people are asking, ‘What can we do?’” said Yossi Swued, rabbi at the Chabad of Western University in Ontario, Canada. “I feel like the whole world is shaking, everyone wants to do something. I think everyone should tap into that.”
The Chabad conference annual gala, in Edison, New Jersey, November 12, 2023. (Luke Tress)
The gala retained its joyful atmosphere: The elaborate event featured multi-colored lights coordinated to music and videos; smoke machines; crane-mounted cameras sweeping over the crowd; musical performances and speeches by Chabad representatives about their local communities. This week’s conference was for the men, while a parallel event for women emissaries will be held in February.
The meal grew especially lively during the traditional “roll call” that announces the numbers of emissaries in each country and again toward the end of the event when the entire room, almost entirely men, gets up to dance in circles. The rabbis swirled around inside a vast hall, hands on each other’s shoulders, as music blasted and colored lights flickered across the crowd. A group hoisted a table in the air, pumping the platform up and down while two men danced on top, waving Israeli flags, and others stood on chairs nearby to film the festivities.
Chabad says there are 5,813 families serving as emissaries in more than 100 countries around the world, from hundreds in places like the United States and France to lone representatives in locales such as Zambia. That reach has put the emissaries on the forefront of the global reaction to the Hamas attack and subsequent surge in antisemitism, both in areas with significant Jewish populations and those without. The emissaries said Jews approached them after the attack to get mezuzahs for their homes, attend services for the first time or study Torah.
Rabbi Menachem Aron, who serves rural Australia, said a Jewish man contacted him to request a new pair of tefillin after the attack, since the phylacteries were not available in the remote region where he lives.
“He’s 16 hours north of Perth, absolute middle of nowhere, but he knows that he can stay connected even during these times,” Aron said, adding that Australian Jews were grappling with antisemitism in both the city and more remote regions.
“We’re angry but we’re not scared,” he said. “People want to increase their Judaism. They want to put on tefillin, they want to light the Shabbat candles.”
Rabbi Aryeh Long of Camarillo, California, called the moment an “awakening” in his community. A man who lives near his Chabad center had never attended services before Oct. 7, but now comes in every day to pray. The man is an Israel Defense Forces veteran who served in the 1967 Six Day War and in recent weeks started doing volunteer guard duty at the Chabad preschool, Long said.
In El Paso, Texas, Rabbi Levi Greenberg said he received a call days after the attack from a local woman, who said, “Rabbi, I want to put up mezuzahs in my house. How quickly can we do it?”
“I ran over with some mezuzahs and right away we put them up,” he said. “People want to be more connected.”
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The post Annual Chabad rabbis’ conference spotlights rise in Jewish engagement as attendees mourn Israel’s dead appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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FBI Investigating ‘Targeted Terror Attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, Director Says

FILE PHOTO: FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before the Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on President Trump’s proposed budget request for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., May 8, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo
FBI Director Kash Patel said on Sunday the agency was aware of and fully investigating a targeted terror attack in Boulder, Colorado.
While he did not provide further details, Patel said in a social media post: “Our agents and local law enforcement are on the scene already, and we will share updates as more information becomes available.”
According to CBS News, which cited witnesses at the scene, a suspect attacked people with Molotov cocktails who were participating in a walk to remember the Israeli hostages who remain in Gaza.
The Boulder Police Department said it was responding to a report of an attack in the city involving several victims. It has not released further details but a press conference was expected at 4 p.m. Mountain Time (2200 GMT).
The attack comes just weeks after a Chicago-born man was arrested in the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, D.C. Someone opened fire on a group of people leaving an event hosted by the American Jewish Committee, an advocacy group that fights antisemitism and supports Israel.
The shooting fueled polarization in the United States over the war in Gaza between supporters of Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
The post FBI Investigating ‘Targeted Terror Attack’ in Boulder, Colorado, Director Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Terrorist Responsible for Death of 21 Soldiers Eliminated

An Israeli F-35I “Adir” fighter jet. Photo: IDF
i24 News – Khalil Abd al-Nasser Mohammed Khatib, the terrorist who commanded the terrorist cell that killed 21 soldiers in the southern Gaza Strip on January 22, 2024, was killed by an Israeli airstrike, the IDF said on Sunday.
In a joint operation between the military and the Shin Bet security agency, the terrorist was spotted in a reconnaissance mission. The troops called up an aircraft to target him, and he was eliminated.
Khatib planned and took part in many other terrorist plots against Israeli soldiers.
i24NEWS’ Hebrew channel interviewed Dor Almog, the sole survivor of the mass casualty disaster, who was informed on live TV about the death of the commander responsible for the killing his brothers-in-arms.
“I was sure this day would come – I was a soldier and I know what happens at the end,” said Almog. “The IDF will do everything to bring back the abductees and to topple Hamas, to the last one man.”
The post Terrorist Responsible for Death of 21 Soldiers Eliminated first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Stanley Fischer, Former Fed Vice Chair and Bank of Israel Chief, Dies at 81

FILE PHOTO: Vice Chair of the U.S. Federal Reserve System Stanley Fischer arrives to hear Governor of the Bank of England Mark Carney delivering the Michel Camdessus Central Banking Lecture at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, U.S., September 18, 2017. Photo: REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo
Stanley Fischer, who helped shape modern economic theory during a career that included heading the Bank of Israel and serving as vice chair of the US Federal Reserve, has died at the age of 81.
The Bank of Israel said he died on Saturday night but did not give a cause of death. Fischer was born in Zambia and had dual US-Israeli citizenship.
As an academic at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Fischer trained many of the people who went on to be top central bankers, including former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as well as Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank president.
Fischer served as chief economist at the World Bank, and first deputy managing director at the International Monetary Fund during the Asian financial crisis and was then vice chairman at Citigroup from 2002 to 2005.
During an eight-year stint as Israel’s central bank chief from 2005-2013, Fischer helped the country weather the 2008 global financial crisis with minimal economic damage, elevating Israel’s economy on the global stage, while creating a monetary policy committee to decide on interest rates like in other advanced economies.
He was vice chair of the Federal Reserve from 2014 to 2017 and served as a director at Bank Hapoalim in 2020 and 2021.
Current Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron praised Fischer’s contribution to the Bank of Israel and to advancing Israel’s economy as “truly significant.”
The soft-spoken Fischer – who played a role in Israel’s economic stabilization plan in 1985 during a period of hyperinflation – was chosen by then Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Prime Minister Ariel Sharon as central bank chief.
Netanyahu, now prime minister, called Fischer a “great Zionist” for leaving the United States and moving to Israel to take on the top job at Israel’s central bank.
“He was an outstanding economist. In the framework of his role as governor, he greatly contributed to the Israeli economy, especially to the return of stability during the global economic crisis,” Netanyahu said, adding that Stanley – as he was known in Israel – proudly represented Israel and its economy worldwide.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog also paid tribute.
“He played a huge role in strengthening Israel’s economy, its remarkable resilience, and its strong reputation around the world,” Herzog said. “He was a world-class professional, a man of integrity, with a heart of gold. A true lover of peace.”
The post Stanley Fischer, Former Fed Vice Chair and Bank of Israel Chief, Dies at 81 first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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