CHABAD PRESENCE AT UK UNIVERSITIES DOUBLES
(04/10/2008) - At the start of the UK academic term, six new Chabad representative couples are greeting students at freshers' fairs at some of the country's top universities. The expansion more than doubles Chabad on Campus UK’s previous scope. An anonymous donor who had become fond of Chabad during his years at Oxford University is funding the initiative.
The new Chabad representatives are located at Bristol University, Imperial College London, Nottingham University, University of Edinburgh, and a cluster of universities in south London: Kingston, Roehampton, Surrey, Goldsmiths, and Royal Holloway, Greenwich, St. Georges Medical School and Wimbledon School of Art.
To date, Jewish students at Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, Brighton, Sussex, Leeds Universities, and University of London in Bloomsbury have benefited from campus Chabad representatives, but, says Rabbi Eli Brackman, Chairman of Chabad on Campus UK and director of Chabad at Oxford University, the time is ripe for growth.
“What we are doing is crucial for the future and continuity of Jewish life on UK campuses and Anglo-Jewry,” said Rabbi Brackman.
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GREAT NATIONAL EXAM RESULTS FOR LUBAVITCH SCHOOL
(20/08/2008) - The girls of the Lubavitch Senior Girls School again achieved exceptional results in the GCSE exams taken at the end of Years 10 and 11, and the GCE Advanced and Advanced Supplementary Level, taken at the end of Year 11 and the one year Sixth Form. 12 pupils in year 11 sat an average of 7 GCSEs, and 9 pupils in year 10 took 2 or 3 subjects. A girl in Year 10, who commutes for 2 and a half hours daily, attained 3 A*s.Continued...
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SEDRA VAYELECH - SHABBAT OF REPENTANCE
THE SEDRA TELLS US ABOUT THE COMPLETION OF THE FIRST full Scroll of the Torah. G-d transmitted to Moses the concluding passage of the Torah Scroll and he wrote it down. As always, it was a kind of Divine dictation. According to our Sages, Moses did not write things which he had thought up in his own head. However great and wise Moses was, the Torah is not his creation. His true greatness is that he was able to receive the Torah from G-d, and faithfully transmit it to the Jewish people.
The Sedra tells us that, having completed the Torah Scroll, Moses gave it to the Levites. They would look after it. The Scroll was placed in the Holy of Holies, together with the Golden Ark containing the Tablets of the Ten Commandments.
Now, there is a great difference between the Torah Scroll and the Tablets with the Ten Commandments. The Sages tell us that the Tablets were actually made of sapphire stone. The letters of the Ten Commandments were engraved on them in a wondrous way: the engraved letters went all the way through the stone. While this itself was mysterious, there was something even more remarkable about the Tablets and the Golden Ark in which they were kept.
The Sages tell us that “the space of the Ark was beyond measure”. The Ark was a kind of chest made of wood completely overlaid with gold. The Torah describes precisely how it should be made and what its measurements should be. It was housed in the Holy of Holies. Yet somehow, it did not take up any room. If you took a measuring tape into the Holy of Holies and started measuring from the walls to the sides of the Ark, you would find that the Ark seemed to take up no space at all.
The Golden Ark and the Tablets of the Ten Commandments inside it were in a sense beyond this world. They were something miraculous, beyond reason and ordinary understanding.
By contrast, the Torah Scroll was a real, normal object, albeit a very sacred object. The Scroll written by Moses was just like the Torah Scroll in the synagogue today. This is certainly very holy, but it is also part of our everyday world.
The juxtaposition of the Tablets and the Torah Scroll in the Holy of Holies is telling us something about the nature of holiness. The goal is that the holy should illuminate and inspire the ordinary, daily world. In the Holy of Holies itself, the first step towards the ordinary world was the parchment Torah Scroll.
Indeed, it is the Torah Scroll which has succeeded in carrying the holiness of Jewish teaching to us throughout the centuries, all over the globe.
This also relates to the time when we read this Sedra: the Shabbat before Yom Kippur (commencing Wednesday evening). Yom Kippur is like the Holy of Holies in our lives. Temporarily like angels, we do not eat. We read in the Yom Kippur Machzor (prayer-book) about the High Priest entering the Holy of Holies. In a sense, each one of us is like the High Priest going into the Holy of Holies in our own heart.
Yet, as in the case of the Holy of Holies in the Temple, the goal is that the sense of holiness of that special day should permeate and inspire us throughout the year.
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