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Rabbi Shimon Lazaroff is the current Texas Regional Director for Texas Friends of Chabad Lubavitch, Inc. (a.k.a. Head Shliach [1] for Chabad Lubavitch of Texas) and member of the board and executive committee of Agudas Chasidei Chabad. With the direction of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, he established Chabad Lubavitch in Texas upon his arrival with his family in 1972.
Lazaroff was born in the former Soviet Union where his grandfather, Shimon Lazaroff, was the Hasidic Chief Rabbi of Leningrad. Rabbi Lazaroff received his early education in Paris, France. He later studied at the Chabad Talmudical Academy in Lod, Israel. While in Israel, he began to be active in Youth Leadership work. Arriving in this country in 1958, he attended the Central Lubavitcher Yeshiva Tomchei Temimim at 770 Eastern Parkway in New York City. During the summer seasons he traveled as a special delegate of the Lubavitch Youth Organizations to all parts of the United States doing missionary work, including Missouri and Washington State. In 1962 he was chosen as emissary to Europe to encourage orthodox Judaism in Jewish communities and on college campuses. This work took him to various parts of France, Scandinavia and England. He received his ordination from the Central Lubavitcher Yeshiva, after performing well in Talmudic studies, Rabbinical literature and Chabad Chassidic philosophy. Following two years of post-graduate work, he was ordained as Rabbinical judge. He was active, prior to his arrival in Texas, in religious outreach on many college campuses as part of the Lubavitch Youth Organization's College and University Council's activity for Jewish college youth, and occupied administrative posts in Lubavitch run youth groups and camps.
From 1967-1972, he resided in Detroit, Michigan, where he was spiritual leader and executive director of the Gan Israel Camping Network for the Midwestern United States. [2]
Arriving in Houston, Texas, in 1972, Rabbi Shimon Lazaroff and Rebbetzin Chiena Lazaroff (née Schapiro), have facilitated expansive growth of Chabad branches and activities in Texas. [3] In Houston since Rabbi Lazaroff’s arrival, in particular, there has been an increase in the number of orthodox and Hassidic Jewish families. Outreach to non-Orthodox Jews continues as a core part of the Lubavitch philosophy. [4]
Rabbi Lazaroff is director of the Chabad Lubavitch Center in Houston, the central campus of Texas Lubavitch activities. Chabad Lubavitch Center includes a synagogue, Torah Day School of Houston, Camp Gan Israel, Chabad Hebrew School, Community Collel and Mikveh Taharas Yisroel. At the Thirtieth Anniversary Founders' Dinner, Lazaroff announced a plan to expand the facility with a significant building renovation project. [5]
Lazaroff is Rav Hamachsir of Mehadrin Kashrus of Texas created for local community members and out-of-town visitors who seek adherence to a Hassidic standard of adherence to kosher laws in local kosher establishments. [6]
To date he has supervised the establishment of Chabad Houses in Houston, Arlington, College Station, Dallas-Fort Worth, El Paso, Pearland, Plano, San Antonio and Austin. These centers provide the Jewish communities with Jewish Day Schools, Jewish educational resources, holiday awareness, Hebrew schools, day camps, mikvehs and prison chaplaincy programs for outreach to prisoners. [7]
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known to many as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or simply the Rebbe, was an Orthodox rabbi and the most recent Rebbe of the Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He is considered one of the most influential Jewish leaders of the 20th century.
Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, Habad and Chabad-Lubavitch, is an Orthodox Jewish Hasidic dynasty. Chabad is one of the world's best-known Hasidic movements, particularly for its outreach activities. It is one of the largest Hasidic groups and Jewish religious organizations in the world. Unlike most Haredi groups, which are self-segregating, Chabad operates mainly in the wider world and caters to secularized Jews.
Beth Rivkah, formally known as Associated Beth Rivkah Schools, is a private girls' school system affiliated with the Chabad Lubavitch Hasidic movement.
Kehot Publication Society is the publishing division of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Yeshivah College, officially Yeshivas Oholei Yosef Yitzchok Lubavitch, is an independent Orthodox Jewish comprehensive single-sex primary and secondary Jewish day school for boys, located in the Melbourne suburb of St Kilda East, in Victoria, Australia.
The Gan Israel Camping Network is a group of Chabad-Lubavitch summer camps. The network claims a total enrolment of over 100,000 children.
Rabbi Menachem Shmuel David Raichik was an Orthodox rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement, and the pioneer of Chabad's activities in Los Angeles, California. Raichik served as a shaliach for the sixth and seventh Lubavitcher Rebbes.
The Rebbe the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference is a book by Rabbi Dr. David Berger on the topic of Chabad messianism and the mainstream orthodox Jewish reaction to that trend. Rabbi Berger addresses the Chabad-Messianic question, regarding a dead Messiah, from a halachic perspective. The book is written as a historical narrative of Berger's encounter with Chabad messianism from the time of the death of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson in 1994 through the book's publication in 2001. The narrative is interlaced with Dr. Berger's published articles, written correspondences, and transcribed public lectures, in which he passionately appeals to both the leadership of the Orthodox and Chabad communities for an appropriate response to Chabad-Lubavitch messianism.
Messianism in Chabad refers to the contested beliefs among members of the Chabad-Lubavitch community—a group within Hasidic Judaism—regarding the Jewish messiah. Many in the Chabad community believe that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the deceased seventh Rebbe of the Chabad-Lubavitch dynasty, is the Jewish messiah. The issue remains controversial within both the Chabad movement and the broader Jewish community.
A Chabad house is a centre for disseminating traditional Judaism by the Chabad movement. Chabad houses are run by a Chabad Shaliach (emissary), and Shalucha and their family. They are located in cities and on or near college campuses.
Orthodox Jewish outreach, often referred to as Kiruv or Qiruv, is the collective work or movement of Orthodox Judaism that reaches out to non-observant Jews to encourage belief in God and life according to Orthodox Jewish law. The process of a Jew becoming more observant of Orthodox Judaism is called teshuva making the "returnee" a baal teshuva. Orthodox Jewish outreach has worked to enhance the rise of the baal teshuva movement.
Abraham Shemtov is a Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi and a shaliach ("emissary") of the Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson.
Jacob Immanuel Schochet was a Swiss-born Canadian rabbi who wrote on Hasidism. He was a member of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Torah Day School of Houston is a Jewish Day School in Houston established in 1977 by the Texas Regional Headquarters of the Chabad Lubavitch. It offers a Jewish education to grades K-8 in addition to its Early Childhood Center for children ages eighteen months through four years old.
Gavriel Noach Holtzberg (Hebrew: גבריאל נח הולצברג; June 9, 1979 – November 26, 2008 was an Israeli American Orthodox rabbi and the Chabad emissary to Mumbai, India, where he and his wife Rivka ran the Mumbai Chabad House. He was also a religious leader and community builder for the local Jewish Indian community, and led the Friday-night Shabbat services at the Knesset Eliyahoo synagogue. Holtzberg and his wife were murdered during the 2008 Mumbai attacks perpetrated by Islamic militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba.
Aaron L. Raskin is an American Chabad Lubavitch rabbi and writer. He serves as spiritual leader of Congregation B'nai Avraham, an Orthodox synagogue in Brooklyn Heights, New York, and dean of Brooklyn Heights Jewish Academy.
Kosher Jesus (2012) is a book by the Orthodox Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, focusing on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. The book examines the rabbinic origins of the teachings of Jesus within the context of Second Temple Judaism in the 1st century and the New Testament, and compares scholarly views on the historical figure of Jesus with the theological ideals expressed by the Jewish writers of early rabbinic literature.
The Jewish community of Houston, Texas has grown and thrived since the 1800s. As of 2008 Jews lived in many Houston neighborhoods and Meyerland is the center of the Jewish community in the area.
Ezra Binyomin Schochet is an Orthodox rabbi and Lubavitcher Hasid who serves as Rosh Yeshiva (dean) of Yeshiva Ohr Elchonon Chabad/West Coast Talmudical Seminary in Los Angeles, California, US.
Yosef Yitzchak Kazen, also known as Y.Y. Kazen, was an American Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic rabbi. He is known for creating and running Chabad.org in 1988, before the World Wide Web existed.
