Chabad Lubavitch of China
| Chabad-Lubavitch in China | |
|---|---|
| Type | Network of Chabad houses |
| Logo | |
| Founded | |
| Founder(s) | |
| Dissolved | |
| Registration ID | |
| Status | |
| Headquarters | Hong Kong; Shanghai; Beijing |
| Location | |
| Area served | Hong Kong, mainland China |
| Services | |
| Registration | |
| Key people | |
| Website | |
| Remarks | |
Chabad-Lubavitch in China is the network of Chabad-Lubavitch houses serving expatriate Jews in Hong Kong and on the mainland. The permanent mission began when Mordechai Avtzon and Goldie Avtzon were sent to Hong Kong in 1986–87, then a British colony. Mainland houses opened after China–Israel relations normalised in 1992, starting with Shalom Greenberg and Dina Greenberg in Shanghai in 1998. The communities are almost entirely foreign: business travellers, embassy staff, teachers and students. Chinese law does not treat Judaism as a religion available to Chinese citizens, and at least one house has been told not to host them.[1][2][3]
Before the houses
Shanghai already had a Jewish history that the current shluchim use as a founding story. Baghdadi merchants arrived under the treaty-port system, Russian Jews came south through Harbin, and in the late 1930s European refugees entered on a boat ticket, including holders of Sugihara visas. Greenberg has put the 1945–46 population at 20,000 to 30,000, and has said that by the early 1960s none remained. The Mir yeshiva sat out the war in Shanghai. A group of Tomchei Tmimim students, put at 46 by Shimon Freundlich, studied there and later resettled in Montreal. The city’s wartime chief rabbi was Meir Ashkenazi. Chabad publishing in Chinese is traced by Greenberg to the Rebbe’s interest in translation. None of that is a continuous institution. The postwar community dispersed after 1949. The houses on this page are a 1980s–2000s restart for expats.[3][4][5]
How the network was built
Mordechai Avtzon visited Hong Kong as a student in 1985. He and Goldie Avtzon settled the next year. The house’s own page dates the start to 1987. There was no permanent Chabad post in an Asian port. Kosher food arrived in suitcases. Within a few years the house was running a daily minyan, kashrut, a preschool that became a day school, and holiday programmes. Avtzon then seeded the mainland. In 2006 he asked Shalom Chazan and Henny Chazan to open Shenzhen. Hong Kong reverted to Chinese sovereignty in 1997. The houses stayed.[1][2][6]
Shanghai was the first mainland post. In 1998 a report at Chabad headquarters said the local Jews wanted a permanent rabbi. Greenberg, Israeli, and Dina Greenberg, from Cleveland and herself from a shluchim family, moved that year. He has put the starting population at 200 to 300 expats. By 2018 Dina Greenberg was speaking of more than 2,000, three centres, and seders planned for 600. A $1 million gift for the building, which Greenberg attributes to a visit to the Rebbe’s Ohel, bought the Shanghai house.[7][5]
Beijing followed in September 2001, Shimon Freundlich and Dini Freundlich arriving with two daughters. Ganeinu preschool opened in August 2003. The Rohr Family Foundation paid a substantial part of the $1.8 million Rohr Family Chabad Community Centre, opened around 2006, with a mikveh described as the first in China since the war. Later houses track the trade fairs: Guangzhou and Foshan in the Pearl River factories, Yiwu in the small-commodities market, Shenzhen for the electronics corridor, Chengdu inland.[4][8][9]
Timeline
| Year | Event |
|---|---|
| 1941–45 | Tomchei Tmimim students and the Mir yeshiva in wartime Shanghai. Not a surviving institution |
| 1985 | Mordechai Avtzon visits Hong Kong |
| 1986–87 | Chabad Lubavitch of Hong Kong opened by the Avtzons. Sources differ on the year |
| 1997 | Hong Kong returns to Chinese sovereignty |
| 1998 | Shalom Greenberg and Dina Greenberg open Shanghai |
| 2001 | Shimon Freundlich arrives in Beijing, 3 September |
| 2003 | Ganeinu preschool opens in Beijing |
| 2005 | Chabad Lubavitch of Kowloon on the Hong Kong house’s own dating. A 2019 report dates a Kowloon centre to 2008 |
| 2006 | Shalom Chazan and Henny Chazan open Shenzhen at Avtzon’s request. Rohr centre and mikveh in Beijing. Avraham Greenberg in Shanghai from this year |
| 2008 | Chabad of Lantau / Discovery Bay |
| 2017 | Yisroel Lieberman and Menucha Lieberman co-directing Kowloon |
| 2018 | Gadi Louzoun and Avigail Louzoun arrive in Foshan |
| 2020–22 | COVID closures and the Shanghai lockdown. Communities shrink to hundreds |
| 2026 | Shmulik Amar and Menoucha Rachel Amar arrive in Foshan to run the school. Yiwu mikveh appeal |
Houses
Chabad Lubavitch of Hong Kong
The trunk. Mordechai Avtzon and Goldie Avtzon, co-directors. Daily minyan, kashrut, preschool and day school, holiday programmes, visitors. The house claims to have turned Hong Kong into the Jewish hub for the region and to have branched into Kowloon and Lantau. A 2024 rededication of an Afghan Torah scroll put the served population at more than 2,000, from Israel, France, Afghanistan and the United States.[1][10]
Chabad Lubavitch of Kowloon
Opened for travellers who did not want to cross to Hong Kong Island. The house’s page says 2005. A 2019 account says the Kowloon centre dates from 2008 and has been co-directed since 2017 by Yisroel Lieberman and Menucha Lieberman. Minyan, classes, hospitality.[1][2]
Chabad of Lantau Discovery Bay
Opened in 2008 for families on the outlying island. Kosher meals, children’s programmes, holidays. A later pair of shluchim was announced for Discovery Bay. Longer page to follow.[1]
Chabad Lubavitch of Shanghai
Shalom Greenberg and Dina Greenberg from 1998. Three centres by 2018: the Shanghai Jewish Center, the Shanghai Intown Jewish Center and the Chabad Jewish Center of Pudong. Synagogue, mikveh, kosher kitchen staffed by local Chinese workers, Friday nights of 50 to 100, festivals several times that. Avraham Greenberg has been a Shanghai shliach since 2006. Greenberg has described SARS and COVID as the hard years. In Passover 2022 he was the only Chabad emissary left in the city during the lockdown. His brother had left in July 2021 and could not return.[7][3][11]
Chabad Lubavitch of Beijing
Shimon Freundlich and Dini Freundlich from 3 September 2001. Ganeinu International School, opened 2003 as a preschool, and the MAC (Menorah Academy of the Capital) middle school are departments of the house. The Rohr Family Chabad Community Centre is the other department: classrooms, industrial kitchen, kosher restaurant, teacher flats, and the mikveh. Freundlich has written for China Daily and given interviews to state outlets, including a September 2025 piece on the eightieth anniversary of the end of the war with Japan, framed as thanks for wartime refuge.[4][8][9]
Chabad Lubavitch of Shenzhen
Shekou, south of the city, since 2006. Shalom Chazan and Henny Chazan, sent by Avtzon. Avremi Raskin and Mushka Raskin are on the team. Minyan, meals, mikveh by appointment. The house’s own count is about ten Chabad centres in China.[6]
Chabad of Shenzhen Downtown
Separate from Shekou. Co-directors Shneor Zalman Cheruty and Dina Cheruty. Address filed on the Chabad directory as Gongdian Nanyuan, Bao’an South Street. Services listed include a synagogue, kosher meals, preschool, a free-loan fund and prison visits.[12]
Chabad Lubavitch of Foshan
Gadi Louzoun and Avigail Louzoun arrived in 2018 after the local Jews asked for a house of their own rather than the Guangzhou minyan, an hour away. Factory and trading expats from Israel, Europe, the United States and South America. In April 2026 Shmulik Amar and Menoucha Rachel Amar arrived to run what Chabad.org called China’s only Jewish school, then on three classes, plus a CTeen and a rabbinical training programme.[13][14]
Chabad Lubavitch of Guangzhou
The Pearl River factory city. Foshan’s shluchim describe a Guangzhou shul that the Foshan traders found too far. A named current shliach is not in the sources used here. Page to follow.[13]
Chabad Lubavitch of Yiwu
The commodities market in Zhejiang. Shalom Weisfish is the shliach. In 2026 the house was raising money for what it called the first mikveh in the province. The nearest existing mikveh was put at four hours away.[15]
Chabad Lubavitch of Chengdu
Inland, Sichuan. Dovi Henig is the shliach. A January 2026 interview covered the early COVID period in the city where the pandemic was first identified outside Wuhan reporting. Page to follow.[16]
Leading shluchim
| Name | Post | From | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mordechai Avtzon and Goldie Avtzon | Hong Kong | 1986–87 | First Far East post. Sent Shenzhen |
| Shalom Greenberg and Dina Greenberg | Shanghai | 1998 | Head shliach. Three centres |
| Avraham Greenberg | Shanghai | 2006 | In the city through the 2022 lockdown |
| Shimon Freundlich and Dini Freundlich | Beijing | 2001 | Rohr centre, Ganeinu, state-media articles |
| Shalom Chazan and Henny Chazan | Shenzhen, Shekou | 2006 | Sent by Avtzon |
| Shneor Zalman Cheruty and Dina Cheruty | Shenzhen Downtown | — | Separate house |
| Yisroel Lieberman and Menucha Lieberman | Kowloon | 2017 | Co-directors |
| Gadi Louzoun and Avigail Louzoun | Foshan | 2018 | Asked by the local traders |
| Shmulik Amar and Menoucha Rachel Amar | Foshan school | 2026 | Three classes |
| Shalom Weisfish | Yiwu | — | Mikveh appeal |
| Dovi Henig | Chengdu | — | COVID-period post |
Projects
The standing services are the minyan, Shabbat meals, kosher meat and kitchens, mikvehs in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing and Shenzhen, and schools. Beijing’s Ganeinu and MAC and Foshan’s three-class school are the teaching arms. Chabad.org in 2026 called the Foshan school China’s only Jewish school, which sits awkwardly beside the Beijing academies and the Hong Kong day school. They may mean the only mainland school still running classes after COVID. Visitor programmes, bar mitzvah preparation, and festival hospitality for traders who stay a week are the rest of the work. Yiwu’s unfinished mikveh is the current building project.[14][8][15]
Constraints and controversies
The houses operate in a state that registers and restricts religious bodies. Gadi Louzoun has described the arrangement in Foshan: an official forbade the house to host or welcome Chinese citizens, and allowed services for Israelis and tourists. He said the understanding let the house work without further interference, and that the shluchim assume what they do is reported.[13]
COVID thinned the communities. Freundlich said in March 2020 that shutdowns across “13 Chabad houses in China and Hong Kong” had left no community member infected. That is his claim, not an independent count, and the figure of 13 is higher than the houses listed on this page. Shanghai’s Jewish population, put at about 3,000 before the pandemic, fell to several hundred. The April 2022 city lockdown left Avraham Greenberg as the only emissary in the city. Seders were held by household or by video.[17][11]
Freundlich’s China Daily article of September 2025 thanks the Chinese state for wartime shelter and ties the Mir and Tomchei Tmimim stories to that thanks. It is a political placement as well as a history lesson.[4]
A separate Douyin account run from Texas by Matt Trusch, a former China resident active at Houston Chabad houses and not a China shliach, drew antisemitic comments under videos that used the usual stereotypes of Jewish business skill. It is evidence of the audience, not of a house.[18]
See also
- Jewish communal and Zionist organisations in China
- Chabad-Lubavitch
- Chabad Lubavitch of Hong Kong
- Chabad Lubavitch of Shanghai
- Chabad Lubavitch of Beijing
- Mordechai Avtzon
- Shalom Greenberg
- Shimon Freundlich
- Chabad Lubavitch of Taiwan
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 About Chabad of Hong Kong, Chabad of Hong Kong.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 New Shluchim Arrive As Colony Descends Into Crisis, Anash.org, 19 November 2019.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 In Shanghai, preparing for Yom Kippur, Jews feel safe, The Jerusalem Post, 1 October 2025.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 Chabad shaliach in Beijing publishes article in China Daily, Yeshiva World, 3 September 2025.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 Shluchim Melaveh Malka traced history of Chabad in Shanghai, Anash.org, 5 May 2025.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 About Chabad of Shenzhen, Chabad of Shenzhen.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Molly Resnick, ‘There Are Jews In China?’, The Jewish Press, 4 July 2018.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 Jewish School Opens in Beijing, Lubavitch.com, 28 August 2003.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 A New Center for Beijing’s Jewish Community, Lubavitch.com, 1 May 2006.
- ↑ An Heirloom Torah’s Journey, CrownHeights.info, 27 February 2024.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Shanghai Passover, The Jerusalem Post, 11 April 2023.
- ↑ Chabad of Shenzhen Downtown, Chabad.org directory.
- ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 Made in China, VINnews, 25 May 2023.
- ↑ 14.0 14.1 New Chabad Couple to Manage China’s Only Jewish School, Chabad.org, 16 April 2026.
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 The nearest mikvah to Yiwu is 4 hours away, Israel National News, 9 July 2026.
- ↑ Rabbi Dovi Henig from China, Teef Teef, 7 January 2026.
- ↑ Cnaan Liphshiz, China rabbi says synagogue shutdowns shielded congregants, The Jerusalem Post, 21 March 2020.
- ↑ This American rabbi fights Jewish stereotypes via China’s version of TikTok, JTA, 2 August 2022.