Chabad Lubavitch of Israel

The national structure of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Zionist state within the 1949 armistice lines (the Green Line)

Chabad Lubavitch of Israel
Type	National network of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement; led by Agudat Chasidei Chabad in the Holy Land, with Tzeirei Agudat Chabad as its executive arm
Founded	1941 (Agudat Chasidei Chabad); 5711, i.e. 1950–51 (Tzeirei Agudat Chabad)
Headquarters	Beit Shazar, Kfar Chabad
Key people	Menachem Mendel Schneerson; Yosef Yitzchak Aharonov

Chabad Lubavitch of Israel is the national network of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in the Zionist entity ("Israel"). This page covers its structure and activity inside the 1949 armistice lines, known as the Green Line. Chabad institutions in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which the Zionist state has occupied since 1967, are covered in Chabad in occupied Palestine.

The movement's Israeli website says that Chabad in the Zionist state is headed by Agudat Chasidei Chabad in the Holy Land (Agudat Chasidei Chabad b'Artzeinu HaKedosha), a registered association founded in 1941, under the British Mandate, by the sixth Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn. It says that in the Hebrew year 5711 (1950–51) the seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, told the association to set up Tzeirei Agudat Chabad (Tzach) as its "executive arm", and that Tzach became the central body for outreach, education and welfare work in the country. Tzach's head offices, registered as "Tzeirei Agudat Chabad – HaMerkaz", are at Beit Shazar in Kfar Chabad.

Structure

The Lubavitch.com directory lists the Tzach headquarters at Beit Shazar with 38 named rabbis, the first being Joseph (Yosef Yitzchak) Aharonov. It lists departments including Tzeirei Chabad Tourism, the Chabad Terror Victims Project, a Judaica store and Machon Lubavitch.

Other Chabad bodies in the country with their own pages include Colel Chabad and Nachlat Har Chabad.

Size

On 10 November 2026 the Lubavitch.com directory listed 826 institutions in 323 localities under "Israel". Of these, 62 entries are in 52 localities in the occupied West Bank and Golan Heights, including Beitar Illit (five entries), Efrat (three), Hebron, Modi'in Illit and Ma'ale Adumim (two each), and Katzrin, Hispin and Ani'am in the Golan. The directory lists 91 entries under Jerusalem without dividing the city. Judged by their street addresses or neighbourhoods, 26 of them are in East Jerusalem, which has been occupied since 1967. They are in the Old City and its Jewish Quarter (eight), Pisgat Ze'ev (four), Gilo (four), French Hill (three), Har Homa and East Talpiot (two each), and Neve Ya'akov, Ramot and Ramat Eshkol (one each). These neighbourhoods are among the 11 East Jerusalem settlement locations listed by the European Union's heads of mission in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Another 51 entries are in neighbourhoods inside the Green Line, and 14 could not be placed. Some of those 14 have no address, and others are in areas on or near the line, such as Abu Tor and Mount Zion. Altogether, at least 88 of the 826 entries (62 in the West Bank and Golan and 26 in East Jerusalem) are in territory occupied since 1967. About 724 are inside the Green Line: 673 outside Jerusalem and 51 in West Jerusalem.

Kfar Chabad

Kfar Chabad, about five miles south of Tel Aviv, was founded in 1949. A Lubavitch.com history says it was established on the instructions of Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn for Chabad refugees from the Soviet Union, who had been living in displaced persons camps in Germany and France. It says they "put down their roots in an abandoned Arab town named Safiriyya". It calls Kfar Chabad, with a population of over 7,000, "the capital of Chabad in Israel". The Palestinian heritage site Our Palestine records that al-Safiriyya, a village in the Jaffa district with about 3,070 inhabitants in 1944–45, was occupied on 20 May 1948 and mostly destroyed that September. It lists Kfar Chabad, founded in 1949, among the settlements built on the village's land.

On 11 April 1956 a fedayeen squad that had entered the Zionist state from Egypt attacked the village's vocational school, killing five children and a teacher. Lubavitch.com says the Rebbe sent ten rabbinic students from New York to stay with the residents, and that "not one person left Kfar Chabad".

The Rebbe and the Zionist entity ("Israel")

Norton Mezvinsky and Joshua Kolb write that Menachem Mendel Schneerson, like the two Rebbes before him, "remained essentially opposed to major aspects of political Zionism" and distinguished between the land of Israel and the Zionist state. Even so, he decided that Chabad should be "actively involved in Israeli society". In practice this meant that Chabad men would serve in the army and that the movement would run outreach and welfare programmes across Israeli society. In 2011 Rabbi Menachem Brod of Kfar Chabad put the movement's position in these terms: "if Zionism is about loving the land, about national security, settling the land, then Chabad definitely supports those important activities".

After the 1967 war, Mezvinsky and Kolb write, the Rebbe pressed Israeli politicians and officers to increase Jewish settlement in the territories the Zionist state had occupied, and "argued vociferously against returning any captured land". In 1972 he sent two hundred emissaries to the Egyptian front and the Golan Heights to persuade soldiers to put on tefillin. He was so dismayed by the return of Sinai to Egypt under the 1979 Camp David agreement that he stopped meeting top Israeli leaders. His position on the occupied territories is set out in more detail in Chabad in occupied Palestine.

The Rebbe also campaigned for decades to change the Zionist state's Law of Return so that only conversions carried out according to Orthodox Jewish law would be recognised. Joseph Telushkin, a sympathetic biographer, writes that the campaign peaked in 1988–89, when some American Jewish federations threatened to stop fundraising for the United Jewish Appeal if the Knesset passed the change. He adds that it "temporarily eroded" Chabad's popularity among American Jews.

Elections

In the 1996 election campaign, two years after the Rebbe's death, thousands of his Israeli followers demonstrated at road junctions for Benjamin Netanyahu with the slogan "Netanyahu is good for the Jews". Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky say that they "played an important role in Netanyahu's election victory". The same followers later strongly criticised Netanyahu for meeting Yasser Arafat and signing the Hebron agreement, but they continued to prefer his government overall. Colin Shindler attributes the slogan to the Rebbe himself, although the Rebbe had died in 1994. He also writes that at the 1999 election "the rebbe significantly refused to endorse Netanyahu", because the Likud leader "had negotiated away parts of the Land of Israel".

The army

Chabad work with soldiers has continued during the war in Gaza. In January 2024 Israel National News reported that a project run by Tze'irei Chabad printed a copy of the Tanya with Israeli soldiers on the outskirts of Khan Yunis in Gaza. The soldiers also put a mezuzah on a doorpost and were offered tefillin.

Funding and the Aharonov conviction

According to the indictment summarised by Arutz Sheva, Tzeirei Agudat Chabad is funded by donations from inside the Zionist state and abroad and by grants from the state budget.

Conviction

On 29 November 2015 the Tel Aviv District Court sentenced Yosef Yitzchak Aharonov, former chairman of Tzeirei Agudat Chabad, to 24 months in prison, less 16 days already spent in custody, a 12-month suspended sentence and a fine of 1.5 million shekels. The sentence followed a plea agreement under which he had been convicted of obtaining property by fraud in aggravated circumstances, fraud and breach of trust in a corporation, false entries in corporate documents, and using fraud and deceit to evade tax.

The indictment's account

Arutz Sheva summarised the indictment as follows. Between 1999 and 2007 Aharonov ran the association's finances on two levels: one open, and one hidden from its comptroller, its auditor, the Registrar of Associations and the state authorities. According to the indictment, he opened a private bank account in the name of "Chabad Chernobyl Children", told donors abroad to pay into it, and had donations recorded as loans or not recorded at all. It also alleged that he drew an undeclared monthly salary from the association while serving on its board. The indictment put the sum he received at about 3.5 million shekels and said he helped employees hide income and receive Education Ministry support unlawfully. These are the indictment's allegations; the court records the conviction under the plea agreement. In court Aharonov said that "even if I sinned, I did not do it for my own house".

See also

• Chabad in occupied Palestine
• Tzeirei Agudat Chabad
• Agudat Chasidei Chabad in the Holy Land
• Kfar Chabad
• Nachlat Har Chabad
• Colel Chabad
• Chabad Terror Victims Project
• Yosef Yitzchak Aharonov
• Chabad and Israeli backpackers