Chabad Lubavitch of Romania

Chabad-Lubavitch in Romania: the Bucharest mission founded in 1999 by Rabbi Naftali and Risha Deutsch at the Yeshua Tova synagogue, its kindergarten and day school, kosher services, work with Israeli students in Cluj-Napoca, and centres in Cluj-Napoca and Brașov

Chabad Lubavitch of Romania
Type	Jewish religious organisation (Chabad-Lubavitch)
Founded	1999
Founder(s)	Naftali and Risha Deutsch
Headquarters	Bucharest
Location	Bucharest, Cluj-Napoca and Brașov
Area served	Romania
Services	Synagogue, kindergarten and day school, kosher restaurant and shop, ritual bath (mikveh), youth and student programmes
Key people	Naftali Deutsch (head emissary); Dovber Orgad (Cluj-Napoca); Yitzchak Raskin (Brașov)
Website	https://www.chabadromania.com
Remarks	Listed by Chabad headquarters as "Chabad Lyubavitsh of Romania"

Chabad Lubavitch of Romania is the Chabad-Lubavitch network in Romania. It was founded in Bucharest in 1999 by Rabbi Naftali Deutsch and his wife, Risha, who still lead it. It runs a synagogue, a kindergarten and day school, a kosher restaurant and shop, and youth programmes in Bucharest, and has centres in Cluj-Napoca and Brașov.

Deutsch has said that the Federation of Jewish Communities in Romania focuses on Romanian-born Jews, while Chabad's services are also aimed at Jews who have come to Romania from abroad.

History

In an interview with Chabad.org, the movement's main website, marking 20 years of the mission, Deutsch said that he, who was born in Jerusalem, and his wife, from Kfar Chabad in Israel, came to Romania as newlyweds in 1999. At that time, he said, the Jewish community was made up almost entirely of local-born Jews, Holocaust survivors and their descendants. He put Romania's Jewish population at about 10,000, some 4,000 of them in Bucharest. He said that a few years later Jews from Israel, the United States, the United Kingdom and France began coming to Romania to study and do business.

Deutsch said that shortly after arriving he became rabbi of what he described as the oldest synagogue in Bucharest, about 200 years old, where services were then held once a week; they are now held daily. Chabad calls the synagogue Yeshua Tova (Ieshua Tova).

Chabad founded a nursery and kindergarten in 2002, and added a day school in 2007. According to Deutsch, the school had 70 pupils at the time of the interview, taught in Romanian, Hebrew and English, and Chabad lobbied parliament to change the law so that the kindergarten could take children from the age of three months. He said that the kindergarten was started with money from the Rohr family, and that Chabad later opened a kosher restaurant and shop in Bucharest. Chabad's kosher restaurant website calls them the Or Avner Kindergarten and School. Chabad's Romanian website now calls them the Green School & Kindergarten.

Students and centres outside Bucharest

Chabad.org reported in December 2014 that Rabbi Dovber Orgad and his wife, Fraidy, had arrived in Romania that August to work with Israeli medical students, and quoted Deutsch as saying that work with students in Cluj and Iași had been part of Chabad's activity from the start. In the 20th-anniversary interview Deutsch said that the Orgads had moved from Bucharest to Cluj-Napoca to set up a Chabad centre there, and that Rabbi Yitzchak and Devorah Raskin had joined to lead youth activities in Bucharest. He said that Chabad sends pairs of rabbinic students to lead services in smaller communities for Passover and the High Holidays.

Chabad headquarters lists three centres in Romania:

• Bucharest: Naftali and Risha Deutsch, with Yitzchak and Dvora Lea Raskin, in Sector 1 (postcode district 010352);
• Cluj-Napoca: Dovber and Fraidy Orgad;
• Brașov: Yitzchak and Dvora Lea Raskin.

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch
• Chabad Lubavitch of Moldova
• Chabad Lubavitch of Hungary
• Chabad Lubavitch of Bulgaria