Hundreds Attend Second Annual Friends of Shluchim Breakfast

Aaron Weingarten, Yossi Jacobson wow crowd

Friends of Shluchim, the umbrella foundation supporting the Shluchim Office and its programs, held its second yearly fundraising event yesterday morning. The gala breakfast at Crown Heights’ Jewish Children’s Museum drew over 200 supporters and well wishers.

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Notables including Agudas Chassidei Chabad chairman Rabbi Avrohom Shemtov mingled at the reception with the sizable crowd, which included a large contingent of members of Congregation Beis Shmuel, a high-profile synagogue co-founded by Moshe Pinson, director of the Shluchim Office’s Tzeirei Hashluchim Department. Chinuch Yaldei Hashluchim director Moshe Shemtov was also on hand to greet guests.

Attendees enjoyed a gourmet breakfast, after which Master of Ceremonies Mendel Duchman, who had flown in from Los Angles that morning for the event, introduced 12-year-old Chaya Mushka Freundlich, daughter of Rabbi Shimon and Dini Freundlich, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s representatives to Beijing, China. Ms. Freundlich shared her personal thoughts on shlichus and her appreciation for the Shluchim Office’s numerous programs preventing isolation among shluchim’s children.

Honoree Aaron Weingarten, a Long Island-based real estate and investment magnate, took the podium to express his love for Lubavitch and their work. “I go to work in the morning so that I can better support the shluchim,” he concluded, to the event’s only standing ovation.

Rabbi Shmuel Gniwish, representing his Montreal, Canada-based family, then rose to accept the breakfast’s second award, this one for their endowment of a shluchim free-loan fund.

Rising-star speaker Yossi Jacobson, son of late Algemeiner Journal editor and publisher Gershon Jacobson, then took the stand to deliver a stirring keynote address on the wrenching sacrifices made by shluchim parents, conveying with humor and heart the tough decisions shluchim face and how Shluchim Office youth programs mitigate said. A tribute to the late Rabbi Mendel Shemtov, benefactor of several shluchim youth-related programs and unassuming community activist, featured prominently in Jacobson’s address as well, as he acknowledged the presence of Shemtov’s wife, Sarah, and her family.

A 20-minute film on the Shluchim Office’s shluchim youth initiatives followed Jacobson’s speech.

The event closed with Mr. Kasriel Shemtov, son of Rabbi Mendel Shemtov, announcing his family’s commitment to continue their patriarch’s philanthropy, followed by Shluchim Office director Gedalya Shemtov unveiling the impending completion of the Shluchim Office center at 816 Eastern Parkway.

The Shluchim Office, under the auspices of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch, has served shluchim’s needs since its founding in 1986.