By COLlive reporter
2 Lubavitcher chassidim have been featured on the 50 most influential list of the Forward website and praised for their important work that has wider implications than the community they serve.
The first is Rabbi Eli Cohen:
Crown Heights, with its fraught history of black-Jewish tensions that erupted in riots 30 years ago, has this year seen a spike in violent attacks against the visibly Orthodox. Starting this summer, Rabbi Eli Cohen, executive director of the neighborhood’s Jewish community council, teamed up with a prominent black activist, Geoffrey Davis, to meet with more than 1,000 students, from pre-school through high school.
Some of the conversations focused on gentrification, and pernicious stereotypes that can drive racial tension. In some auditoriums, the discussions centered on bullying, depression and the forms of violence the students are exposed to. “We didn’t want to lecture to them, we wanted to really get a sense of what they were feeling,” said Cohen, who is 64. “We were role-modeling the relationship between the two of us,” he added. “That itself was a very powerful message.”
Breakfast: A pastry.
What’s the last thing you listened to on your phone? A Hasidic story.
Earliest Jewish memory: My father explaining Shabbos to BBC TV (around 1960)
Hero: All the work we do in the community is inspired by the vision of the Lubavitcher Rebbe.
2019 memory: I went with Geoffrey Davis to do a reading of his book to pre-schoolers in East Flatbush. We sat down with the kids on the carpet in their reading corner. A little girl pointed at my beard and said, “I’m scared of you.” The teacher calmed her, and we began reading. After we had spent a few minutes with the children, the little girl stroked my jacket sleeve and told us she wasn’t scared any more.
What is your favorite thing about being Jewish? We have such amazing teachings to share with the world. Whenever I speak in a secular setting, I try to include something meaningful from the Torah and it is almost always well received.
What app can you not live without? The spreadsheet of family birthdays.
Weekend ritual: Sitting at the Shabbat table with children and grandchildren.
The second Lubavitcher profiled was Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein:
On April 27, 2019, a white nationalist entered the Chabad of Poway synagogue with guns blazing, killing congregant Lori Gilbert-Kaye and wounding three others, including Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, who lost a finger. Despite being shot, Goldstein, 57, continued with his sermon, telling the community “Am Yisroel Chai.” Goldstein’s messages of Jewish pride and calls for “random acts of goodness” – recorded from his hospital bed, and then again at the White House and the United Nations – inspired Jews around the world.
Goldstein, who retired from the Poway Chabad after the shooting, did not respond to our questionnaire, but here are some things to know about him.
How did Goldstein grow his congregation? Goldstein was 24 when he established Chabad of Poway in 1986, one of the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s hundreds of emissaries bringing religious life to Jews around the world. He quickly established himself, and eventually built a 20,000-square-foot facility, complete with a preschool, Hebrew school, senior center, library, mikveh and a 770-seat sanctuary.
What about the broader community? He was also a chaplain for the county sheriff.
What’s he doing now? He decided to retire in November, but has been grooming family members for years to step into his shoes. One son, Rabbi Mendel Goldstein, took over Chabad’s synagogue and school, while another, Rabbi Shuie Goldstein, took over teen programming and the Friendship Circle for children with special needs. The Los Angeles Times reported that Goldstein’s dream was to set up a new project that would bring about “a billion good deeds.”
