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Bar Mitzvah Year for Jewish Life North of Boston
SWAMPSCOTT, MA — Sunday, July 03,
2005
 he
music is throbbing; the drums pound to a crescendo as the
capacity crowd at the Coolidge Theatre in Brookline,
Massachusetts rise to their feet for a final standing ovation.
The prolonged applause is not exclusively for the Moshav Band,
one of today’s hottest Israeli ensembles, but is also
intended as an outpouring of love and admiration for the work
that Chabad Lubavitch has been doing on Boston’s North Shore
for the past thirteen years.
The celebratory concert, held last Sunday, marked the Bar
Mitzvah year of Chabad on the North Shore and honored Rabbi Yossi
and Layah Lipsker who founded the organization in 1992.
The event was attended by more than 500 people representing a
cross section of the Jewish community.
Peter Samiljan, a Swampscott native who attended the
concert with his family, said that “it was incredible to see
grandparents dancing in the aisles with their grandchildren
and teenagers having the time of their life in a Jewish
setting.”
Had we not joined Chabad, I doubt whether our family would
be experiencing the warmth and love of Yiddishkeit as we do
today
Samiljan, the owner of an online camera company, has been
coming to Chabad for seven years and says it has changed his
life. “I always considered myself a proud Jew,” he says
“but I was never comfortable with the spiritual side of
Judaism and I was saddened to see my three children following
the same path.” At a friend’s suggestion, he met with
Rabbi Lipsker to inquire about enrolling their eldest son in
Chabad Hebrew School.
That was seven years ago and today the Samiljan family is a
familiar sight at the Chabad shul and all three children have
attended Hebrew School. “Rabbi Lipsker always greets me so
warmly whenever I come to Shul” says Samiljan, “and he
always asks how I have been, not where I have been.”
Chabad of the North Shore, which began in 1992 with a small
office in the oceanside town of Swampscott , has become a
powerful force for Jewish life north of Boston. Today Chabad
serves the 23 communities of the North Shore with Hebrew
Schools, Gan Israel Day Camp, the Aleph Bet Montessori
Preschool, and the Adult Learning Institute. The growing staff
includes Rabbi Moshe Kohen, Chabad’s educational
director and Rabbi Nechemia and Raizel Shusterman
who serve as directors of the newly opened Chabad of Peabody.
The highly acclaimed Chabad Hebrew Schools, in three
locations, have a combined enrollment of 180 children and the
newly founded Montessori preschool has doubled registration
for the coming year. Camp Gan Israel, only three years old,
has almost 100 children enrolled this summer. According to Liz
Donnenfeld whose daughter Julie has attended the
camp since its inception, these six weeks are the highlight of
her daughter’s life.
Donnenfeld, who is the community coordinator for the
Anti-Defamation League on the North Shore, says that Rabbi
Yossi and Layah Lipsker have been the driving force in the way
she raises her two daughters. “Had we not joined Chabad, I
doubt whether our family would be experiencing the warmth and
love of Yiddishkeit as we do today,” Liz said.
“Their influence has even spread to Chicago where my mother
lives. I told her about the adult education classes I was
taking with Layah and encouraged her to take one at Chabad of
Chicago. Well, now my mother is talking to me about Kabbalah
and I’m loving it”
The Donnenfeld’s daughter Allie, 12, is in Layah
Lipsker’s Bat Mitzvah club, a program that is receiving rave
reviews throughout the community. “Nothing can come close to
the experience Allie is having,” says Donnenfeld. “Layah
is an incredible teacher and the lessons she is imparting to
these girls will last them throughout their life.”
Both Liz and her husband Neil, an executive with
Advanced Vision Research, love coming to the Lipskers for
Shabbat dinners. “Their home is always open and everyone is
welcome,” says Neil. “Families don’t just come to Shul
at Chabad, they become a part of larger Chabad family.”
“It has been a good 13 years,” says Rabbi Yossi Lipsker,
“but my spiritual mentor, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, was
never satisfied with good.”
"Having reached Chabad’s Bar Mitzvah Year, we are all
infused with a new energy, with great hope and vision for the
Chabad’s future," he says.
Immediate plans include a new office in Beverly.
"We believe that every Jew has an inherent right to Torah
study in an environment that respects and validates them.”
Reported by Fay Kranz Greene
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