The longtime Chabad House in Nepal, in the capital of Kathmandu, has been forced to relocate amid growing pressure from its landlord, who demanded that the Jewish center remove all Hebrew signs, the Chabad Rabbi said on Sunday.
The Chabad House, which serves thousands of Israeli and other Jewish travelers each year, has been in place at the site for the last two decades.
“We came under a lot of pressure from the landlord, who started by demanding about a month and a half ago that we remove any Hebrew sign or signs connected to Judaism and Israel, due to concern that he would be identified by Iran with Israelis or Israel,” Rabbi Chezky Lifshitz told JNS in an interview from Nepal.
Next, the Nepalese landlord raised the rent on the property to such an extent that he made it clear that he just wanted them out, the rabbi said.
It was becoming clear, Chani Lifshitz, co-director of the center, said in a Facebook post, 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 wrote, left them with “a clear feeling of antisemitism— one that could no longer be ignored.”
Last week, the Chabad House in Kathmandu packed up and vacated the property. The Lifshitzes held Shabbat services at a city hotel until they can move into their new location.
Lifshitz, 52, who has served as an emissary with his wife and their six children in Nepal since 1999, said he wasn’t surprised that a wave of global antisemitism had reached as far as South Asia.
“In Nepal, nothing surprises me,” he said.
He noted that sporadic antisemitic incidents have been carried out mostly by European tourists, including a Swede last Passover. Chabad of Nepal is known to host one of the largest Passover seders in the world, attracting as many as 2,000 people.
‘Come out bigger and stronger’
In the meantime, Lifshitz, also a trained pilot who has made helicopter rescues over the years, said they were examining several sites for the next Chabad House in the city, pledging to have a new home for Jewish travelers and visitors soon.
“We will come out of this bigger and stronger,” he said.
Last September, the Chabad House provided shelter to hundreds of Israeli tourists amid violent, nationwide unrest that broke out after the government banned social-media platforms.
In 2015, survivors of a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that rocked Nepal came to the Jewish center to seek shelter, food and water. Nearly 9,000 people died, and nearly 22,000 were injured from the initial quake and its aftershocks across Nepal, India, China and Bangladesh. Chabad later helped acquire tents for the hundreds of thousands of Nepalese who became homeless as a result.
More than 3,500 Chabad Houses operate in over 100 cities around the world.
