Thousands celebrate Chabad’s global outreach

At the first International Conference of Shluchim — the annual gathering of Chabad rabbis and lay leaders — it took about seven minutes for all the representatives to introduce themselves at the culminating banquet.

On Sunday night, the roll call was a little different; it took more than that amount of time for the program’s emcee, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, to announce the 72 countries that were represented by the banquet’s nearly 4,000 attendees.

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“A messenger of one is as the (sender) himself,” announced Kotlarsky, whose presence on stage was duplicated on 12 large screens throughout the ballroom of the Garden State Exhibit Center, in Somerset, this year’s location of the ever-expanding banquet.

Kotlarsky wondered aloud what motivates a man to move from Anytown, USA, to Laos, Russia, or other places “which I can’t even pronounce.”

Why, Kotlarsky asked, do leaders around the world seek to emulate the efforts of the Chabad shluchim, or emissaries?

“The answer is simple: because the shaliach represents the Rebbe and the Rebbe had love for every Jew, and that love showed for every Jew,” Kotlarsky said, adding that it is the same motivation that brought the thousands of rabbis and lay leaders to the conference. “Because when shluchim get together and come away encouraged, they come away with ideas to reach another Jew and another Jew and another Jew.”

“The Rebbe,” The late Rabbi Menachem M. Schneersohn, was the inspiration and director of efforts to reach out to every Jew, regardless of level of observance or location. To Schneersohn, there was “no such thing as a small Jew,” and he famously once referred to Jews living in the Far East as living in the “East that is not near,” so as to avoid classifying the Jews there as “far away.”

As the attendees then sang the song “Anim Zemiros” along to a video of Schneersohn singing the song, Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky, of the Chabad Jewish Center of Monroe Township, saw his grandfather in the video sitting near Schneersohn, and the intergenerational connection for these emissaries was apparent. Zaklikovsky was sitting with his father, Rabbi Moshe Zaklikovsky, and his father-in-law, Rabbi Avrohom Altein.

“So many shluchim, and here you have your shluchim who never saw the Rebbe at all, and they’re giving up a life of comfort to go out to communities to energize these communities,” Altein said.

Altein, who is a shaliach in Winnipeg, Canada, said that something that has truth, and isn’t artificial, not only will stand the test of time itself, but will cause “the ripple effect,” and spread — in this case, through these emissaries.

A shaliach, Altein said, must secure funds within his new community — he does not leave with a limitless monetary support system.

“All he has is inspiration,” Altein said. “It’s an amazing thing.”

And these emissaries have the ability to pass that inspiration on like the flame from one candle to another, according to Rabbi Ari Sollish. Sollish, who recently became a shaliach in Atlanta, Ga., spoke to the crowd about the challenges of being such a messenger in modern times.

But the power to overcome those challenges and positively impact the lives of Jews everywhere cannot be understated, Sollish said.

Sollish recounted one story about how the game of Chess was invented. According to this theory, 15th-century Indian mathematician Sessa ibn Daher invented the game to cure King Shehran’s boredom. So impressed was the king, that he asked Sessa to choose his reward.

Sessa’s request was that the king place one grain of wheat on the first square of the chessboard, and double it on each square. The total grains of wheat came to 18 quintillion, which is about 700,000 million tons.
“Sessa had taught the power of exponential growth,” Sollish said. “As a shaliach, exponential growth is not a mathematical theory or philosophy, but the reality of what we are and what we can accomplish.”

Kotlarsky then returned to the microphone to introduce the night’s honoree, Shmuel Rohr. Rohr and his family, as Kotlarsky explained, have become the biggest benefactors of Chabad in the world.

Kotlarsky said that when Schneersohn turned 70, he asked about TIME magazine’s annual Man of the Year award. Was it someone, Schneersohn asked according to Kotlarsky, who was not a mensch last year, became a mensch this year, and next year will once again not be a mensch?

“There is a gentleman here tonight who is always a mensch,” Kotlarsky said, introducing Rohr to a prolonged standing ovation.

Rohr told of his difficulty in grasping just how he came to be among all these Chassidim. He was reminded of the young lawyer who marched into the Supreme Court with a legal demand, and when asked by the judge how he got there, replied that he had taken a taxi.

Rohr, with a sincere but humble smile throughout his address, spoke about the work of the shluchim in places no one would have believed could support such a strong and proud Jewish community, as in Greece, where around Hanukkah time there is a giant menorah in the city center, “of course celebrating the Jewish victory over the Greeks.”

Or in Russia and the Former Soviet Union, where “the miracle continues to unfold before our very eyes.”

Even the sheer number of Chabad centers in American universities, like Wisconsin, or states to finally this year experience this shlichus, like West Virginia and Montana, were, to Rohr, clear evidence of the quality and quantity of the work being done by these emissaries.

“I’m so proud to stand before you; you, who are the crown of the Jewish community, who are saving cities, countries, and entire continents,” Rohr said.

After announcing that Chabad Web sites get 5.2 million hits a month, Kotlarsky performed the roll call, acknowledging all 72 countries, and every U.S. state, with a shaliach.

Singing and dancing followed this roll call. At first, the men at each table put their arms around each other and danced in a circle circumnavigating their own table.

After a minute or so, the circles began melding seamlessly into one another, until, perhaps to represent the unbreakable bond between all the attendees that persists across thousands of miles and countless languages, all nearly 4,000 people were connected to each other, each person with their hands on the shoulders of the person in front of them — on the shoulders of giants — undaunted by a snag in the carpet or a stray chair in their path.

There are 10,000 Jews in Kazan, Russia. Rabbi Yitzchak Gorelik is a shaliach there, and, sitting at his table after the dancing stopped, tried to explain, in a combination of broken English and fluent Russian and Hebrew, why he made sure to be at the convention, and especially the banquet.

“I feel this is,” he began, and then picked up a cell phone and pretended to plug headphones into the battery, “my charge. This is my energy to work, to live.”

Sitting next to him was Rabbi Mendy Zaklas, of Bryansk, Russia, who echoed his friend’s sentiment.

“This convention gives us power for shlichus,” Zaklas said.

Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, an Australian-born shaliach in Thailand, delivered the keynote address.

Kantor said that when he found out he would be the shaliach to Thailand, he wondered if he was in it for the wrong reasons. After all, he thought, don’t corporations and countries send emissaries and diplomats?

There seemed to be a lot of success and honor inherent in the task.

Kantor then told the crowd of his first Sukkot in Thailand, alone, with his family, “frustrated, fed up, and very lonely.”

But then came the moment of awareness, of the blessing of being a poor rabbi in a city so far from his native culture and familiarity.

“I realized that if I was an ‘expat’ or a diplomat, we would have looked for another job ASAP,” Kantor said. “Shluchim are not motivated by personal careers, but by the mission. That night, we received the gift of truly becoming shluchim.”

It is that regard for “the mission,” for making sure the right thing gets done without seeking praise or compensation, that is the true nature of a successful shaliach, Kantor said.

For example, he told a story about a 60-year-old Israeli man who had never, despite receiving many invitations and overtures over the years, put on tefillin. The man finally agreed to don the leather straps.

“I though to myself, how many miles and smiles contributed to this significant mitzvah,” Kantor said. “If you are dedicated to the mission, then what’s important is getting the mission done, not who gets credit for it.”

Kantor told another story of how, after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, he found out his Chabad center’s bank account had been frozen. He called the bank to find out why, and was told that all the assets in the account were frozen because, within days after the tsunami, the account had received thousands of dollars.

Kantor said other Chabad Web sites had directed their donors to give to Kantor’s Chabad tsunami relief efforts.

“The donations just started pouring in, and it looked suspicious to the bank,” Kantor said.

Such selflessness is in the true nature of every successful shaliach, he said, and is “the key to our tomorrow and the conduit for our blessings.”

But, he said, in addition to the selflessness, another character trait is absolutely vital to the success of each shaliach: simcha — pure joy.

“Because it’s only through simcha, with our smiles and joy and our song, that we march on to victory,” Kantor said.

Born in Israel, Rabbi Mendi Sudakevich has been a shaliach in the Shibuya borough of Tokyo for six years.

Sudakevich said the nature of the community is constantly changing, as more and more Jews come out of the woodwork. There are currently about 2,000 Jews in Tokyo, mainly expatriates and mixed marriages, he said.

But there is a kindergarten and a shul, holiday celebrations and Jewish educational programs there now, with all the members of the community — parents and children alike — pitching in.
“There’s already a sense of a feeling of a community now,” Sudakevich said. “Everyone together is building the atmosphere.”

Sudakevich said that after a Sukkot gathering, two families decided to walk home together from the Chabad sukkah. With each passing street and building, after every block, the two families were still walking together. Finally, one family reached their building, and watched as the other family began to climb the steps and enter the building.

Although they had not known it until that moment, the two families were neighbors.

The attendees bensched together, and then were thanked for their work and their participation in the banquet, and bid goodnight and good luck.

Before filing out of the hall, Zaklikovsky took one more look around the room, at the thousands that attended the convention on behalf of all the Jews that have been found and reached throughout the world, as well as those who have not yet been reached.

It is the latter that are not only not to be excluded, but are, in fact, the inspiration for these emissaries’ life’s work.

“The whole world Jewry is represented in this room,” Zaklikovsky said.