{"id":220922,"date":"2026-01-05T03:01:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-05T03:01:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/220922\/"},"modified":"2026-01-05T03:01:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-05T03:01:10","slug":"chabad-house-in-kathmandu-says-it-was-evicted-due-to-clear-antisemitism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/220922\/","title":{"rendered":"Chabad House in Kathmandu says it was evicted due to ‘clear antisemitism’"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

In a Facebook post, Chani Lifshitz said that she and her husband, Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz, were \u201ctold explicitly: Leave. Now,\u201d after months of \u201canother request from the landlord, another demand, another restriction, another decree.\u201d<\/p>\n

At first, she wrote, \u201cwe were asked to remove all the Hebrew signs \u2014 so it wouldn\u2019t be seen that there was a Jewish presence here, so [the landlord] wouldn\u2019t be suspected by Iran of being a spy.\u201d<\/p>\n

At the same time, said Lifshitz, the landlord raised the rent repeatedly until it reached a point that was \u201cimpossible to meet.\u201d It was becoming clear, she said, that \u201cthey don\u2019t want this place to be a home for Jews,\u201d and that their presence was \u201cunnecessary and disruptive.\u201d<\/p>\n

The entire experience, she said, came with \u201ca clear feeling of antisemitism, one that could no longer be ignored.\u201d<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\t\"\"<\/a>
\n\t\tChabad\u2019s Kathmandu emissary Chani Lipshitz, November 2014. (Hadas Parush\/Flash90)<\/p>\n

Despite being in \u201ca crisis,\u201d Lifshitz wrote, \u201cwe are not abandoning the mission. We are here. And we\u2019re staying here in Kathmandu.\u201d<\/p>\n

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 \u201cKathmandu,\u201d which can be seen on Netflix in Israel.<\/p>\n

In September, when Nepal was engulfed by deadly protests, the Chabad house provided shelter<\/a> to hundreds of visiting Israelis and Jews.<\/p>\n

Chabad outposts around the world \u2014 often a country\u2019s most visible Jewish target \u2014 have repeatedly been subjected to antisemitic attacks, including last month in Sydney, Australia, when 15 people were gunned down at a Chabad Hanukkah celebration.<\/p>\n

Zev Stub contributed to this report.<\/p>\n


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\t\t\tAlready a member? Sign in to stop seeing this<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chabad House in Kathmandu, Nepal, which hosts thousands of Israeli backpackers every year, said on Sunday it…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":220923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-220922","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220922","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}