Kfar Chabad (House of the Rebbe)

The settlement of Kfar Chabad, southeast of Tel Aviv, was founded in 1948 by Lubavitcher Hasidim. It is the centre of the Chabad movement in Israel. The most important building in the village is a reconstruction of the headquarters of the worldwide Lubavitcher movement in New York (770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, Crown Heights), an address at which both of the last Rebbes of Chabad Hasidism lived. It was constructed because the Lubavitcher Hasidim attach a hidden mystical and messianic meaning to the particulars of the life of their last Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994. In expectation of his impending entry into the Holy Land as the messianic king, his followers reproduced his home, to which they often refer as Beis Moshiach (Messiah's house), as accurately as possible.

House of the Rebbe in Kfar Chabad, colour photograph, 1991, photographer: Matthias Morgenstern; source: in private ownership.