Rabbi Berel Lazar, right, with congregants at an unfinished synagogue in Sevatopol, Crimea, July 14, 2014. (Cnaan Liphshiz)
MOSCOW (JTA) – Rabbi Berel Lazar’s mother was eager for grandchildren. So she gave her 25-year-old son an ultimatum: He could return to his beloved Jewish outreach work in Russia if — and only if — he got married.
His yeshiva classmates jokingly said he was already wed, “to the idea of going to Russia,” said Lazar, the son of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in Milan, Italy.
A few months after his mother put her foot down in 1989, Lazar wed his American-born wife, Channa, and the …read more
Source: JTA
