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Chabad-Lubavitch in the Media
Stories and reports that have appeared in the media during the past two weeks
| Recalling a great man of light: Eli Schlanger The Australian,Wednesday, May 27, 2026 |
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| A new book, Conversations With My Rabbi, captures the human toll of the Bondi massacre, up close and in an unforgettable way. The conversations are between the joint authors, Nikki Goldstein and Eli Schlanger, the beloved “rough diamond” Bondi rabbi who served the local Jewish community and was one of 15 men, women and children gunned down dead in December, in our worst terrorist attack. Eli organised the Chanukah by the Sea event. His wife, Chaya, hit by shrapnel, shielded their youngest child as her husband died. | ||
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| Nikki was days from death when Rabbi Eli blew an ancient horn by her bedside Sydney Morning Herald,Tuesday, May 26, 2026 |
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| The rabbi asked a nurse if he could blow his shofar, an ancient ram’s horn sounded on special days to stir the soul. The nurse agreed, conceding it was unlikely to bother anyone. “Most of them are comatose,” the nurse said drily. Schlanger’s horn briefly silenced the machines of the ICU ward. Twenty-four hours later, Goldstein’s lungs began to repair. Within days, instead of dying, she was moved to a general ward in the hospital, where she recovered. Schlanger popped by, surprised but thrilled to see Goldstein had survived. | ||
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| Mitzvah Kitchen Marks One Year Anniversary! | Featured# Miami's Community News | Your local connection,Tuesday, May 26, 2026 |
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| Mitzvah Kitchen is proud to celebrate its first anniversary with a community cooking event in which over 700 meals were prepped, cooked and packaged for people experiencing food insecurity. The event on May 13th marks the 38th event in one year and the accomplishment of a grand total of 20,000 meals served to date. The nonprofit centered on combating food insecurity while building community emerged in May of 2025 under the direction of Rabbi Yossi Harlig at the Chabad of Kendall & Pinecrest. | ||
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| Bridging the Divide: A Conversation with Nikki Goldstein Jewish Book Council,Monday, May 25, 2026 |
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| I don’t remember the first time I met Rabbi Eli Schlanger because I was in a coma. The second time I met him, I was awake and alive — though barely — and I was still in the hospital. When he saw me alive, he came directly to my bedside and pulled up a chair. He was surprised because the doctors had told my husband and daughter to prepare for the worst when they asked him to pray for me. He instantly called my recovery a miracle, and Eli considered his part in my survival as something very special, mystical, and powerful. | ||
| New Torah Scroll Welcomed into Mykolaiv Synagogue Ahead of Shavuot - The Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS The Federation of Jewish Communties of the CIS,Sunday, May 24, 2026 |
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| The Jewish community of Mykolaiv, Ukraine led by Rabbi Sholom and Rebbetzin Dina Gotlieb, celebrated the dedication of a new and beautifully written Torah scroll to the city’s central synagogue ahead of Shavuot, the festival marking the Giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. Hundreds of community members, guests, local dignitaries, and students from the city’s Or Menachem Jewish educational institutions joined the festive procession, which made its way through the streets accompanied by live music, singing, and dancing. | ||
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| Our book began after my coma. It ended with Rabbi Schlanger’s murder at Bondi Beach Jewish News UK,Sunday, May 24, 2026 |
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| It is late evening in Sydney, and Nikki Goldstein’s voice breaks as she shares the story of the man to whom she feels she owes her life. Four years ago, against all the odds, Rabbi Eli Schlanger helped her to survive. Six months ago, he himself was cruelly taken – killed by a terrorist at the ‘Chanukah by the Sea’ party he helped organise every year. Back in 2022, Goldstein was 57 years old and chronic lung disease had pushed her into a ‘white out’ – where the air in the lungs is replaced by fluid. | ||
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| ‘To bring light’: Slain rabbi’s mission for us all The Australian,Saturday, May 23, 2026 |
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| In Conversations with my Rabbi, written by Nikki Goldstein and Rabbi Eli Schlanger, there is a striking omission. The book arose from the unlikely friendship formed by Nikki and the rabbi, when the former was on the cusp of receiving her last rites from an infection that could not be contained. Eli appeared and blew the ceremonial ram’s horn known as a shofar, and days later the infection began to recede and Nikki survived. They then undertook a prolonged dialogue, the secular, worldly culturally Jewish writer and the rabbi steeped in Jewish law and tradition. | ||
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| Before His Murder, a Rabbi Addressed the Danger of Hatred | National Review National Review,Saturday, May 23, 2026 |
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| Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Nikki Goldstein’s Book, Conversations with My Rabbi: Timeless Teachings for a Fractured World, will be published Tuesday 5/26/26. The book reads as a conversation between Rabbi Schlanger and Goldstein, a secular writer. Shortly before the book’s completion, Schlanger was killed during the Bondi Beach mass shooting in Australia in December 2025. In this excerpt, Rabbi Schlanger and Goldstein discuss the Third Noahide Law, “Do not murder.” It is reprinted here with permission from Harper Influence, an imprint of HarperCollins. | ||
| Bay Area fourth-grader reigns at Chabad’s global JewQ contest J. Weekly,Friday, May 22, 2026 |
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| Chabad’s annual JewQ competition, which tests children on Jewish knowledge, drew 400 finalists this year out of 4,200 contestants in grades 3 to 8 from 25 countries. Since its inception in 2019, JewQ has attracted more than 29,000 competitors. All of them go to public schools or non-Jewish private schools and study for the competition with their local Chabad rabbis.Children prepare by studying the same textbook, grade by grade, that covers Jewish law, history, holidays and customs, and Jewish heroes through the ages. | ||
| Valley Chabad honors teen volunteers Pascack Press & Northern Valley Press,Thursday, May 21, 2026 |
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| Valley Chabad Center for Jewish Life hosted its annual Teen Awards Night on May 4, celebrating more than 100 teens for their dedication and contributions to the CTeen program. Awards were presented across CTeen initiatives including Linking Hearts, Friendship Circle and CTeenU. Families gathered to celebrate the teens’ accomplishments, with food, conversation, raffles, prizes and remarks from several teen participants. | ||
| Peer to peer: Shluchos expand student engagement at Chabad at Rice Jewish Herald Voice,Thursday, May 21, 2026 |
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| As Chabad at Rice University marks a decade of serving Houston’s Jewish student community and prepares for future expansion, its leadership is also looking ahead to new ways of strengthening and broadening student engagement. This academic year, Chabad at Rice launched a pilot program bringing two young post-seminary women to campus for an entire semester as outreach interns. | ||
| My Rabbi Was Killed in the Bondi Shooting: What His Memory Teaches Me | Nikki Goldstein TIME,Wednesday, May 20, 2026 |
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| Rabbi Eli Schlanger (my rabbi) organized a Chanukah candle-lighting ceremony on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Bondi is home to Eli’s Chabad synagogue and has been an idyllic haven for Jews since the early 20th century. Jewish restaurants and social clubs sit alongside tattoo parlors, Italian pizza bars, and chic boutiques. It’s a magnet for people from every corner of the globe, and it was Eli’s backyard. For 18 years, he’d organized “Chanukah by the Sea.” It was the quintessential Eli event—families gathered, united in joy and prayer, for the festival of light. | ||
| For Shabbat, Chabad of Upper MoCo Delivered ‘Hugs’ Washington Jewish Week,Tuesday, May 19, 2026 |
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| Volunteers with Chabad Lubavitch of Upper Montgomery County delivered boxes with a Shabbat guide, electric tealights, a Kiddush cup, grape juice, challah and a cover to senior citizens who are unable to make Shabbat on their own or a family that doesn’t celebrate the weekly day of rest. “This is for unity, so all Jews, we all know we’re one together,” said Rebbetzin Chana Raichik, who spearheaded the effort at Chabad UMC. The original project, the “Shabbat Hug,” is an initiative by the nonprofit Chabad on Call, inspired by an elderly recipient’s grateful words. | ||
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| Joint Kotel bar mitzvah held for 125 boys, orphans The Jerusalem Post | JPost.com,Tuesday, May 19, 2026 |
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| Over a hundred boys who lost a parent, including during the October 7 War, celebrated their bar mitzvah in a joint event at the Western Wall on Sunday, Colel Chabad Rabbi Sholom Duchman told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday. The 125 boys enjoyed a day-long celebration, proceeding down to the Western Wall, accompanied by their families, where they were called up to the Torah. According to a press release, before the Torah readings, Colel Chabad gave the boys new tefillin. A celebratory dinner and gala were later held at Jerusalem’s Binyanei Hauma International Convention Center. | ||
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| CommunityChabad rabbis bond at annual kinus in North West province South Africa Jewish Report,Tuesday, May 19, 2026 |
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| I took the two-hour drive to Rutenberg last week to meet some five dozen friends and colleagues, fellow Chabad rabbis from across South Africa, emissaries of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. It was a long way to go, but towards a most meaningful destination: our annual get-together for a national kinus, a meeting of minds, hearts, and souls. For 48 hours, the world did not exist as we sat in the conference rooms of Hunters Rest. We strategised and debated, brainstormed and shared ideas, planned and discussed approaches. Most importantly, we studied Torah, shmoozed together, and bonded. | ||
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| Teachings of rabbi killed in Bondi Beach terrorist attack live on with new book: ‘A profound gift’ New York Post,Sunday, May 17, 2026 |
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| He saved her life — now her mission is to save his legacy. Nikki Goldstein doesn’t remember the first time she met Rabbi Eli Schlanger in September 2022. She was comatose in a Sydney, Australia, ICU, battling pneumonia. Doctors didn’t think she would live to see the next day. Moments after her husband and daughter lifted their bowed heads resting over her hospital bed, they caught a glimpse of a man darting past the room wearing a yarmulke. Though Goldstein was a secular Jew who never went to synagogue, her husband Rowan asked the rabbi to give his dying wife a blessing. | ||
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| Rabbi Yaakov Raskin | The 10 commandments: Unlocking the key to God's heart Jamaica Gleaner,Sunday, May 17, 2026 |
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| The ten commandments form the basis not only for Judaism, but for all Abrahamic religions and Western civilisation. They are core to what it means to live a moral and ethical life. How does the idea that "Love is my religion" square with the idea that we should obey these 10 commandments? Isn't it a contradiction to say "all you need is love" on one hand, and "thou shalt not" on the other? Not at all. The Ten Commandments aren't an imposition or a nuisance given by a tyrannical God. They were lovingly given to teach us how to express love and care for one another. | ||
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| See what new Bergen center for Valley Chabad has to offer North Bergen Record,Sunday, May 17, 2026 |
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| For the past 25 years, since Valley Chabad opened in the borough as a hub of Jewish life and learning, the center has moved from one building to another while its community grew. What started in 2000 with a handful of people has expanded to a religious, educational and social center that serves several thousand people in the Pascack Valley and Saddle River communities. On May 17, surrounded by hundreds of North Jersey residents and community leaders, Rabbi Dov Drizin celebrated the groundbreaking for Valley Chabad's permanent new space. | ||
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| Chabad of Sunny Isles Beach Brings the Community Together for an Inspiring Shavuot USA Today,Friday, May 15, 2026 |
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| Chabad of Sunny Isles Beach is preparing for the inspiring holiday of Shavuot with a full schedule of meaningful community programs, uplifting synagogue services, children’s activities, and acts of kindness that bring the entire community together. As the holiday approaches, excitement is building in our shul as families, children, and visitors prepare to celebrate the giving of the Torah with joy, unity, and gratitude. One of the central preparations this year is the Shavuot Food Distribution, ensuring that every family can celebrate Yom Tov with dignity. | ||
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