Shana Tova From 25 Rabbis

By COLlive reporter

Allan Sheff says he will never forget when Rabbi Leibel Fine, co-director of Chabad Dollard in Canada, came to his doorstep with a shofar in hand.

“It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and I wasn’t feeling well and hadn’t been able to attend synagogue,” Sheff, an insurance broker in Montreal, recalled to Chabad.org.

“That afternoon there was a knock at the door, and there was Leibel, who’d recently arrived with his wife, Chana, to establish a Chabad House,” he said.

“I heard you weren’t in shul,” the rabbi told him, “so I came to blow shofar for you.”

Sheff was deeply moved. “It was a very special moment that really personifies why Chabad is so unique,” he says. The two have become close over the years since that first visit and Sheff says that he now regards Fine as an “adopted son.”

For his part, Rabbi Fine says that what he did for Sheff is exactly what his counterparts throughout Montreal and the world have been doing for decades.

Chabad Shluchim have been working to ensure that every single Jew has the opportunity to hear the shofar, the central observance of the holiday of Rosh Hashanah, which begins on the evening of Sunday, Sept. 13, and lasting until the evening of Tuesday, Sept. 15.

Lubavitch Youth Organization of Montreal, established in 1955 by the Rebbe to oversee Chabad centers in the province of Quebec, has built a special website www.ShofarMontreal.com to publicize the 24 locations where the shofar will be sounded.

The website features an interactive map of all Chabad centers in the area, offering the home-bound to contact the one nearest to their home to arrange for a rabbi to visit and sound the shofar.

A social media video shows 25 Chabad Shluchim from across the island and beyond wishing community members a happy and sweet new year. One of them appears as a puppet…