Two hundred and fifty Jewish young professionals arrived in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, NY last week for a weekend dubbed "Encounter: Crown Heights."

He wouldn’t be the Chabad rabbi if he didn’t remember to offer the Jewish minister a mezuzah for her door.

Zachary Shapiro, 10, looked out from the stage to his family in the crowd. His hand hovered over the buzzer. The questions came fast, and he was ready: What are the names of the Hebrew months of the year in sequence? What blessing do you recite over freshly squeezed orange juice? What are Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith?

The kosher restaurant, which is open for dinner once a month at Chabad of Poway, is an opportunity for individuals with special needs to learn life skills. Through being responsible for its management, the hosts are taught skills for greeting, serving, cooking,and clearing.

For the first time in the Princeton Club’s history, a kosher caterer took full charge of the facility, serving a kosher sit-down dinner for 130 guests. Although previously one could order individual kosher meals, and the Webbs had organized kosher buffets there for a few years, the December gala broke precedent.

The kosher restaurant, which is open for dinner once a month at Chabad of Poway, is an opportunity for individuals with special needs to learn life skills. Through being responsible for its management, the hosts are taught skills for greeting, serving, cooking,and clearing.

In the 1970s and ‘80s, many segments of American Jewry led protests and rallies under the banner, “Let My People Go,” agitating to bring Russian Jews out of the former Soviet Union. Where do these Russian transplants and their children and grandchildren figure today in the American Jewish community?

“It’s been a festival here all month leading up to the opening,” Raizy Zaklas, Chabad’s representative to Zagreb, Croatia told me Wednesday morning. She and her husband, Rabbi Pini Zaklas, were preparing for the formal inauguration of Zagreb’s new mikvah, the first in seventy years. Aromas were wafting out of Chabad’s kitchen, where a chef was preparing food for a crowd. Raizy was wrapping up a private Torah class with a local woman, and the rabbi was greeting guests who had come from abroad for the occasion.

Zachary Shapiro, 10, looked out from the stage to his family in the crowd. His hand hovered over the buzzer. The questions came fast, and he was ready: What are the names of the Hebrew months of the year in sequence? What blessing do you recite over freshly squeezed orange juice? What are Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles of Faith?

Center City, Philadelphia is home to some of the oldest synagogues in the United States, like the first Ashkenazic congregation established in the Western Hemisphere in 1795. One of these historic synagogues, the 100-year-old Vilna shul, known for its warm, inclusive services, is renovating its vintage sanctuary and moving weekly prayer services to the third floor to allow a new women’s mikvah to be built in its place.