Chabad of the South Shore officially opened on the ground floor of a commercial building at 7900 Taschereau Blvd. in Brossard, Que., on Aug. 29, before an overflow crowd of well-wishers. Rabbi Zalman Samama, who is originally from Strasbourg, France, and his wife Sterna, a Montreal native, moved to the South Shore seven years ago and began operating out of their modest home. It was Chabad’s first permanent presence in the area.

French President Emmanuel Macron attended a pre-Rosh Hashanah ceremony at the Great Synagogue of Paris last night, the first time that a sitting president has done so. Macron, who was presented with several varieties of honey as a gift in honour of the Jewish New Year, did not speak at the Tuesday evening program, since France has a strict separation between state and religion, the French news agency AFP reported.

Israel closed the only pedestrian crossing with Gaza after rioting Palestinians damaged its infrastructure. The Israeli military announced its closure of the Erez crossing on Wednesday morning following clashes the previous day between hundreds of Palestinians and Israeli soldiers left several Palestinians injured.

The Israeli theatre company Gesher is bringing its production of The Dybbuk to Toronto this month for its North American premiere. The play has become a canonical piece of Hebrew and Yiddish theatre. “It’s one of the most important and classic Hebrew plays, I felt that it’s time to get back to it, and to enter through a new door to this play,” said Roee Chen, the playwright for this production. “We  [Jews] didn’t have theatre for 2,000 years, it was forbidden and we started very late. Now we have to create our own classics, our own platform.”