The Dominican Republic recently played host to a rather rare meeting — the Caribbean Conference of major Jewish organization Chabad.
The conference brought together the Rabbis of 12 Jewish congregations around the wider Caribbean region, including Rabbis from Puerto Rico, the United States Virgin Islands, Cancun and Playa del Carmen, St. Maarten, Aruba, St. Barth, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Grenada and the local Rabbi in the Dominican Republic.
The group was joined by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, Chabad-Lubavitch HQ.
While the Caribbean once had a significant population of Jews in the colonial period, largely from the Iberian peninsula, for several centuries the region’s population dwindled.
In recent years, though, Chabad, which sends “shluchim” to re-cultivate Jewish communities around the world, has expanded in the Caribbean, also proving a boon for many Jewish visitors to the region.
