Summer Is Conference Season for Chabad Emissaries

by Mussi Sharfstein – Lubavitch.com

Summer is conference season for Chabad emissaries. Whether they serve college students, teenagers, the elderly, the ill, or the professionals, a tailor-made conference provides them with tools to hone their skills, network with colleagues, and swap ideas.

In Schools

North America Educators Convention

Over two-hundred teachers and principals met up June 8-9 at the eighteenth Educators Convention in Danbury, CT, to bone up on their pedagogical skills. Veteran and new educators enjoyed a series of workshops including one that explored a growing dilemma: when should teachers insert themselves into students’ domestic problems?

On Campus

Over 1,000 rabbis and rebbetzins (and their kids!) representing large universities and small campuses from the U.S. and abroad will be convening for a four-day Chabad on Campus International conference, beginning July 1, at the Crowne Plaza in Stamford, CT.

Sessions will cover topics like how to build positive relationships with university administration, fundraise, and deal with personal challenges. Plus a Krav Maga course to put some muscle into the fight against anti-Semitism on campus.

For Young Professionals

Around seventy-five emissaries who interact mostly with the twenties and thirties age groups are expected at the Chabad Young Professionals conference in Brooklyn, on July 1-2. The conference will explore relevant topics like fundraising, Jewish wedding laws, how to introduce the mitzvah of mikvah, and mental health.

At Hospitals

The second annual “Chicken Soup for the Rabbi on Call” conference will take place in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, on July 5. Grief counselors and rabbinic authorities on medical Torah law will counsel over sixty hospital rabbis about the situations that chaplains can expect to encounter. Organizing the event was Chabad on Call, who last year introduced a cultural sensitivity course for chaplains to present to medical staff in order to help the staff understand their patients’ Jewish practices.

How does one help people say goodbye to their loved ones? What are the halachic implications for ending life support? Rabbis on call at medical centers want to know.

AND NOT ONLY FOR EMISSARIES . . .

Global Summit for Young Jewish Professionals

Young Jewish Professionals from cities across the world will tour the former Soviet Union, tracing the footsteps of refuseniks who kept Judaism alive under Soviet rule at great personal risk. Selected from among fifty nominees, twenty-six participants completed a rigorous application process before joining the program. Nominated as “ambassadors” of their communities, the participants joined a four-month course led by renowned experts in leadership. The course examined themes of Jewish leadership and will culminate in the Moscow Global Summit on June 16-23. The ambassadors are expected to use the leadership skills gained and the vision developed to lead and engage their compatriots in Jewish life.