Laos – A Chabad House has opened in Laos, making it the 92nd country with a permanent Chabad presence.
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The two-story villa in the city of Luang Prabang contains a large dining facility, synagogue, lounges and a garden with a pond. It is located near guesthouses that are frequented by Israeli travelers, mostly backpackers who tour the Far East after their army service.
The Chabad House already runs a kosher restaurant, holds weekly prayer services, Torah classes and Shabbat celebrations for about 50 people, according to Chabad.org. It put together a last-minute prayer service with a minyan for an ex-pat Englishman who needed to say Kaddish for his father.
Rabbi Sholom and Tamar Glitzenstein, the new Chabad emissaries in Laos, arrived at the beginning of the year to set up the Chabad House, where they also live.
Chabad’s Roving Rabbis have visited Laos before for summers and for major holidays.
The rabbi served as an intern in Bankok, Thailand before getting married and agreeing to serve in Laos.
The couple has brought people in through social media and also through visiting tourist hot spots to personally reach Jewish travelers.
“When people come here, they are open to new experiences—open to learning and growth. We’re here to help them reach the potential they have pent up in their souls, just waiting to be tapped,” Tamar Glitzenstein told Chabad.org.
Amazing. Chabad is awesome
Amazing indeed ! Only Chabad and Cocoa Cola are international to this extent !!!
I waiting for a Chabad House in Iceland. When ?
Great! So now we all can rationalize for ourselves a heter to go to yet another inappropriate tourist destination, because we can always drop by the Chabad house. You want to rationalize a trip to Disneyland or Jackson Hole or Easter Island or Kathmandu? There’s a Chabad house ready to be your excuse and justification. This level of infrastructure investment isn’t justified by outreach to any local Jewish population; it’s an element of the tourist trade, and only serves to contribute to encouraging Jewish tourism there.
When you get stranded in Jackson Hole, you know where to get Kosher food, don’t you? When your kids go backpacking across the world & get robbed in Peru or need a clean bed in Slovakia or need a kosher re-hab; or are in jail…they know who will arrange it all & help.
But you won’t show Hakoret HaTov with a decent donation, will you? Because takers are haters. You’ll continue to publicly, if anonymously, attack Chabad because we aren’t rigid and we help every Jew, regardless of ethnicity or color of their yarmulke (even if they don’t wear one at all).
I am so sick & tired of of reading the trash talk.