Chabad Baby is ‘First of 2015’

By COLlive reporter

Thursday, January 1, 2015 was both a happy and a sad day. For one Jewish family, it was also a birth day.

At exactly 12:07 AM, Rabbi Sholom and Rivka Galperin welcomed a baby boy at Windsor Regional Hospital Metropolitan Campus in the southernmost city in Canada.

The maternity ward on New Year’s Eve was nearly as hectic as Times Square, The Windsor Star reported. The Galperin baby was the first to be born in 2015 in the Southern Ontario region.

Just one minute after the Galperin baby was born, another woman gave birth to a baby girl. By noon, yet another 5 babies had been born, the paper said.

“People in the hospital were jumping up in joy that they delivered the first baby of 2015,” Rabbi Galperin, Director of the Chabad Jewish Centre in Windsor, told COLlive.com.

But the day, the 10th of Teves, was also a fast and mourning day in the Jewish world in remembrance of the siege of Jerusalem and as the “general kaddish day” for the victims of the Holocaust.

“It was difficult fasting today,” added the father, who commutes daily to the neighboring Detroit, where his children study at the Chabad institutions there.

The other Galperin children, three girls aged 9, 6, and 4, and a boy aged 2, were born in the U.S., the newspaper noted. The newborn is the first born in Canada and weighs in at 7 pounds and 4 ounces.

Rabbi Galperin serves at Congregation Shaarey Zedek, working with community members as well as serving the Jewish students at the University of Windsor.

“I’ve been telling people that we come from a year that had its negativities and the first thing that happens, is a new boy is born. With that happy news, we can effect change in the world.”

The first baby of 2015 was feted with a bag of gifts from the hospital and a basket of goodies from a local support group for mothers.

The Galperins will name their son in 8 days’ time after the boy is circumcised, the paper said. “We try to find a name of a grandparent or a holy rabbi. He will have a Hebrew name.”