Chabad on ‘Top Rabbis’ Lists

By COLlive reporter

The Forward newspaper has asked its readers from around the United states to submit their pick as the most inspiring rabbi they have met.

Out of the many names that have been received, the editors of the English-Yiddish weekly have chosen 36 spiritual leaders of Jewish communities from across the spectrum.

“I did not expect to receive a deluge of heartfelt responses so compelling that it was difficult to select the 36 profiled here,” noted Editor in Chief Jane Eisner.

“American Jews, regardless of denomination, geography or gender, harbor a deep longing for spiritual leadership — and respond to it not only in synagogue, but in classrooms, Hillels and hospices. They yearn for rabbis who touch the soul and create community.”

One Chabad Shliach has made it on the 2013 list of America’s Most Inspiring Rabbis: Rabbi Yosef Wolvovsky, 37, Director of the Benet Rothstein Chabad Jewish Center in Glastonbury, Connecticut.

Here is the description that David Burstein, one of his community members has written about him:

“Rabbi Yosef Wolvovsky’s energy and motivation have created a community committed to the beauty of traditional Judaism. Originally numbering hardly a minyan of individuals, today it’s not unusual to find 60 or 70 at a community function.

“The rabbi’s followers come from a wide range of backgrounds and represent points of view that can be challenging and provocative. His classes on the weekly parsha, holidays or traditional Jewish concepts entertain a wide range of views but are always dominated by his particular insight — revealing and powerful.

“Open-hearted and confident in his faith, open-minded and inspiring in his teaching and transformative in his community, he applies Torah wisdom to the modern world.”

TOPPING THE ANNUAL LIST

American’s Top 50 Rabbis list for 2013, initiated by the now closed Newsweek magazine and published today by the Daily Beast website, has once again given a high ranking to a Chabad official.

Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, Chairman of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch – Chabad’s education and social services arm, was placed at number 4 in the list. In 2012, he was at number 2.

Here is what their description about him:

“A member of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson‘s inner circle, Yehuda Krinsky, 79, now leads the movement that Schneerson transformed into a brand built on boundless outreach: Chabad-Lubavitch sends its emissaries, or schluchim, to Columbia, Congo, China, and thousands of points in between. This past year the organization opened centers in such unlikely locations as North Dakota and Malta.

Of late, Chabad has been particularly active in setting up new early-childhood centers (it runs some 1,000 preschools around the world, about a third of them in America), and developing programming and infrastructure to serve American college students and young professionals.

But Chabad remains embroiled in a dispute with the Russian government over the contents of the Schneerson’s library. Earlier this year, a U.S. district court judge ordered Russia to pay $50,000 a day that it refuses to return the Rebbe’s books and manuscripts. The U.S. Department of Justice has said that such sanctions run counter to American foreign-policy interests.

And a Russia-based Chabad spokesman told The Jewish Daily Forward that the Chabad lawyers should consider a compromise proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin.