RARA in the Media

YESHAYA Shagalow and Yisroel Plekarskl are is long way from home this Jewish Passover. The young ultra-orthodox flew from Melbourne on  Sunday carrying a batch of unleavened bread to commemorate Passover. 

Mr Shagalow. 20. and Mr North 20. are members of the Chassidic movement. said to be the largest Jewish outreach organisation In the world.

Both grew up in the United States and studied in Europe before volunteering for a year's service at the Chabad of rural and regional Australia, based in Melbourne.

They are planning seder meal tomorrow night to mark the beginning of the Passover festival. 

Mr Piekarski said yesterday, their organisation visited the North two to three times a year to contact an es… Read More »

THIS weekend is one of the most significant in the Jewish calendar.

The Passover is cele-brated. marking the Jews' flight to freedom from slavery in Egypt about 3000 years ago.

The Border's Jewish community will be mark-ing the anniversary with help and guidance from two visiting Jewish scholars from Brooklyn. New York.

Mr Israel Zavdi and Mr David Losh are six months into a year of study in Melbourne that will lead them to be rabbis.

Mr Zavdi said a venue had been booked for Passover celebrations in Albury for Saturday and Sunday nights.

The celebration will have key elements including matzoh, which is flat bread.

As the Jewish people fled Egypt they had no time to wait for their bread to rise so they took flat bread.… Read More »

MISSION ... Rabbis Chaim Lipskier and Leibi Marozov are visiting areas in North Queensland to arrange Passover gatherings 

CHAIM Lipskier, a 24-year-old rabbi from New York is preparing for Passover in Townsville, with help from his mother.

"I am trying to get my mother to send me a recipe for matzo. flat bread," Mr Lipskier said on Monday.

He said he and fellow rabbi Leibi Marozov, 23, of Montreal, would provide the traditional Seder plate and probably bake flat bread for a Passover meal on April 23.

The two men arrived in the North about a fortnight ago after a three-day drive from Melbourne in a campervan they call the Mitzva Tank.

They are on a mission for a Jewish outreach organisation, the Chabad of Rural … Read More »

A MELBOURNE cemetery has reportedly broken a 100-year-old tradition by allowing a Jewish family to customise the headstone of their relative.

Dr Harvey Cohen, who lives on the NSW north coast, successfully applied for permission from the Necropolis in Springvale to inscribe the tombstone of his wife, physicist Dr Elizabeth Cohen, with a graphic of a satellite image of the Earth.

Traditionally, the headstones at the Necropolis carry a standard design and are bereft of any large graphics or other embellishments.

Dr Elizabeth Cohen, who died in March 2004, was one of the first Aus-tralian women to hold a PhD in physics and devoted her entire life to space science, according to her husband.

"I conceived of her headstone as bo… Read More »