Fire rips Chabad center where founding rabbi buried

A large blaze late Friday night destroyed a visitor’s center near the grave of Shneur Zalman (the Alter Rebbe), founder of the Chabad Chassidic movement, in Hadiach, Ukraine. Initial indications are that an electrical fault may have started the fire. No injuries were reported.

“We are in total shock,” Chabad emissary Rabbi Shneur Zalman Deitsch said. “The damage is incomprehensible. This is very painful.” He said a group of Jewish visitors from Kyiv staying at the site over Shabbat managed to save the four Torah scrolls from the blaze.

The complex is considered the second-largest Jewish pilgrimage and prayer site in Ukraine, after the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in the city of Uman.

The Ukrainian city’s Jewish population was murdered during the Holocaust, and after World War II Communist rulers obstructed access to the rabbi’s grave, In the early 1990s, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, instructed Chabad emissaries to restore the grave, and it once again became a major pilgrimage site.