The 4,500 Jewish teenagers from all over the world — from Australia to Slovakia to Singapore to Brazil to France to Los Angeles — who had come to Brooklyn for a weekend of inspiration and learning through the Chabad movement, intended to return home on Sunday. A blizzard that paralyzed the city, shutting airports and leading officials to ban cars from the streets, required a sudden change in plans.
Instead, young people who had never seen snow before had friendly snowball fights outside 770 Eastern Parkway, world headquarters of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, and competed in teams to see who could shovel the most snow off Crown Heights sidewalks and crosswalks on Monday.
Two feet of heavy snow had fallen on New York City. Local Lubavitchers, who had opened their homes to the teens, extended their stays, and thousands more meals were quickly organized to feed the 2,000 stranded teens, who ate in shifts at Beth Rivkah, the neighborhood’s girls school.
The rest of the visiting teens managed to depart just ahead of the airport shutdowns.
They had come for the 18th annual CTeen Shabbaton, which began with just 18 teens in the living room of Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky’s parents, the rabbi and chairman of CTeen International, told JNS.
CTeen runs year-round programming worldwide, in addition to the Shabbaton. The unexpected extension has added about $500,000 in expenses to the already-budgeted $4 million event, Kotlarsky told JNS.
What had been planned to last from Thursday to Sunday night had to be quickly extended to last a week. “It’s turned into a full-on retreat experience,” the rabbi said.
To cover the unplanned costs, “I opened my prayerbook and am calling our donors,” added Kotlarsky, who has several leadership roles at Chabad’s central office, including organizing the enormous annual Crown Heights gathering of thousands of emissaries.
The CTeen program included a Times Square takeover after Shabbat ended on Saturday night, with Israeli musicians and thousands of Jewish teens singing and dancing.
It concluded at the Nassau Coliseum — more than 100 buses were rented to convey the kids to the arena — which drew 8,000 people, including locals.
Teens from Sydney, who experienced the Bondi Beach Chanukah attack, were honored, as were teens who did exceptional things. “We highlighted teens who had faced challenges without compromising their identity,” Avi Winner, a CTeen spokesman, told JNS.
One of those who was happily and temporarily stuck in Crown Heights was Jaxson Ignelzi, 15, of Port St. Lucie, Fla. He is one of just four Jewish kids in his public high school of 4,000 students, he told JNS.
Being Jewish there can feel isolating, Ignelzi said, and he has faced antisemitism multiple times in the past year. At a parade supporting Palestinians in the town, which may be best known as the home of the spring training camp for the New York Mets, he and friends played music loudly by Jewish rapper Nissim Black as they drove by.
Parade participants yelled “Get out of here, dirty Jews,” at them, Ignelzi told JNS. “I felt hurt.”
There are more Jews in the high school that Deena Cohen, 15, attends in Sydney, but it feels to her like there are few in her area who share her religion. The terrorist shooting at a Bondi Beach park on the first night of Chanukah last year, in which 15 people were killed and 40 injured, shook her deeply.
“In Australia, the Jewish community feels so small,” Cohen told JNS, as she spent time on a cold, snowy day at the Jewish Children’s Museum in Crown Heights.
After the Bondi attack, “I realized antisemitism is so real and so hard,” she said. “I am such a small part of the world. Why are they all targeting us?”
“Coming on the CTeen Shabbaton, I realize there are so many of us. They’ve taught me such strength and how to deal with this hate,” she added. “It really helps me stay strong.”