Rimma Alexeeva, 63, visited the Ohel for the first time on Sunday as part of the four-day International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Female Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchos) in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Photo: Bassie Vorovitch)

Back in California, Woman Reflects on First Visit to Rebbe’s Ohel

by Carin M. Smilk – Chabad.org

Rimma Alexeeva is back home in San Carlos, Calif., which sits halfway between San Francisco to the north and San Jose to the south. She returned to 60-degree weather, which by Sunday is expected to reach nearly 70. It’s a far cry from last week, when she trudged through the slush and snow in New York City, wearing borrowed black boots and a white parka, necessary items for the drudge of a Northeast winter.

Soon, it will be Shabbat, when she will spend time with the older of her two sons and his family, who frequent the Richmond Torah Center-Chabad in San Francisco, co-directed by Rabbi Aaron and Sara Hecht.

And she plans to tell them about all the experiences she had as part of the guest program of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Women Emissaries (Kinus Hashluchos), which she attended for the first time.

There, the 63-year-old preschool teacher took part in classes, lectures, tours, prayer, meals and more while getting a good glimpse of the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., where the programming took place.

It was a chance for Alexeeva, a native of the former Soviet Union, to soak in Jewish practice, observing a lifestyle very different from her own.

“I never observed any Jewish traditions in Moscow, except eating matzah onPassover,” she said, pausing for the just the right words to tell her story. “So now I am discovering, learning, reading. I don’t have to hide my religion.”

‘A Quiet Place’

She said about four years ago, her older son met Rabbi Hecht, and the whole family started digging into their Jewish roots. She went to some classes at the Chabad center, including studying a bit of Tanya. Her 14-year-old granddaughter, especially, took learning to heart and now attends a Jewish school. She even drafted a handwritten note for Alexeeva to bring to the Ohel in Queens, N.Y.—the resting place of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, and his father-in-law, the Previous Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory.

On Sunday, she and two busloads of women visited the sacred space.

They arrived in the early afternoon and quickly got to work drafting personal notes to be left at the Ohel (Hebrew for “tent”). Alexeeva clutched her granddaughter’s crumpled message as she jotted down her own private thoughts.

“It was a quiet place, a special place,” she said of the Ohel. “I was moved by it, as I was by all of the emotional stories the women had told about themselves” over four days of conference activities.

As the group moved pens across paper, they heard an inspiring talk by Rabbi Moshe Herson, head Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in New Jersey and dean of the Rabbinical College of America in Morristown, N.J. Then they stood and made their way outside to the resting place. Alexeeva blended into a sea of women crowded together for introspection, and the chance to voice their wishes and prayers asking the tzaddikim (“righteous men”) to petition G‑d on their behalf.

Was it what she expected?

“I only had a vague notion of the Ohel, from pictures,” she said.

Now, it’s real. And now, she wants to return, this time with her granddaughter. Until then, she’ll try and describe it, emphasizing its spirituality.

“I’m so proud to be Jewish,” uttered the grandmother of three. “I always knew I was Jewish, but now I feel Jewish. I am discovering what that means. And I never want to stop.”