June 30, 2021
(RNS) — The Shul of Bal Harbour is less than a mile from the Champlain Towers condo building that partially collapsed last week in Surfside, Florida. And the residents of the building — not only the Jewish ones — almost certainly had come in contact with the bustling Chabad-Lubavitch congregation on Collins Avenue.
The synagogue, which takes up nearly an entire city block, is led by entrepreneurial Rabbi Sholom Lipskar, now 74. He founded it 40 years ago and is largely credited with its outsize stature in the beachside community.