The Chabad House in Kathmandu, Nepal, which hosts thousands of Israeli backpackers every year, said on Sunday it is being forced to abruptly relocate amid growing pressure from its landlord.
In a Facebook post, Chani Lifshitz said that she and her husband, Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz, were “told explicitly: Leave. Now,” after months of “another request from the landlord, another demand, another restriction, another decree.”
At first, she wrote, “we were asked to remove all the Hebrew signs — so it wouldn’t be seen that there was a Jewish presence here, so [the landlord] wouldn’t be suspected by Iran of being a spy.”
At the same time, said Lifshitz, the landlord raised the rent repeatedly until it reached a point that was “impossible to meet.” It was becoming clear, she said, that “they don’t want this place to be a home for Jews,” and that their presence was “unnecessary and disruptive.”
The entire experience, she said, came with “a clear feeling of antisemitism, one that could no longer be ignored.”
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Once they were kicked out, she said, they packed everything into a large storage space and are now looking for new locations where they can reopen.
Chabad’s Kathmandu emissary Chani Lipshitz, November 2014. (Hadas Parush/Flash90)
Despite being in “a crisis,” Lifshitz wrote, “we are not abandoning the mission. We are here. And we’re staying here in Kathmandu.”
Since they opened the Chabad of Nepal some 25 years ago, the couple and their six kids have hosted countless travelers for Jewish holidays, including more than 2,000 people at what has been called the largest Passover Seder in the world. Their experiences have served as inspiration for the Israeli show “Kathmandu,” which can be seen on Netflix in Israel.
In September, when Nepal was engulfed by deadly protests, the Chabad house provided shelter to hundreds of visiting Israelis and Jews.
Chabad outposts around the world — often a country’s most visible Jewish target — have repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic attacks, including last month in Sydney, Australia, when 15 people were gunned down at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration.
Zev Stub contributed to this report.
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