South Korea, Taiwan on Chabad’s Summer Itinerary

Before the ink dried on a free trade deal between U.S. and South Korea, a first-time ever import arrived in Seoul: two young Chabad rabbis. They came to find Jews and help them reconnect with their heritage. The same factors that powered the economic diplomacy are what attract businesspeople from around the world, Jewish ex-pats and travelers among them.

And where there are Jews, there’s Chabad – especially in the summer.

Since about 1946, young Chabad rabbis have spent their summer breaks on “Merkos Shlichus,” traveling off the beaten path to reach and teach Jews in the hinterlands. This year, 330 newly ordained rabbis and rabbis-in-training, mostly in their twenties, traveled off to 160 locations around the globe. Their suitcases are filled with Jewish prayer books, mezuzah scrolls, and guides to Jewish rituals for beginners. They’ve rented cars and Mapquest-ed their routes. They may look the part of itinerant rabbis, but as Chabad’s worldwide scope has evolved so has their mission.

“This program is truly illustrative of Chabad-Lubavitch in action at its most basic level,” says Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Vice Chairman of the Lubavitch educational division. “It’s about finding Jewish people in real spiritual wastelands, and connecting with them in a way that opens up a whole new world for them.”

Each summer, international Jewish outreach bites an estimated half-million dollar hunk out of the budget of Merkos Linyunei Chinuch, Chabad-Lubavitch’s education division. Actual costs are many more times that. Individual Chabad representatives lay out their own funds to cover expenses that exceed the grants from headquarters. Furthermore, if the 330 rabbis were not an all-volunteer force, the cost of the program would climb into the multimillion-dollar range.

The economic burden is willingly endured, if only because of people like Joel Evans of Sun Valley, Idaho. Last summer, Schneur Lifshitz and Moshe Silberstein came across Joel on their journey through the resort town. Joel revealed that he had never had a bar mitzvah. Schneur and Moshe gathered a quorum and a Torah, and hosted Joel’s belated Jewish milestone. Schneur, a point man for the Merkos Shlichus program whose traveling-rabbi stints have taken him to Nigeria, Turkey, Bosnia, Estonia, Grenada, Germany, and Russia, returned to Sun Valley this year.

Article Continued: Lubavitch.com