Asia’s Jewish Transformation Celebrated at 25th Anniversary Dinner

Dinner used to mean hotel rooms and canned meals for Benjamin Fishoff.

“I remember the days I used to take out of my briefcase tuna fish and a little bit of cold cuts bought in New York,” he told the crowd of 220 gathered at the S. Regis Hotel in New York Wednesday night. “The world changed 25 years ago.”

That’s when the first Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries, Rabbi Mordechai and Goldie Avtzon, arrived on the continent, welcoming travelers to their home in Hong Kong, and making Jewish resources available to their growing community. Today, more than 30 families at 26 Chabad Houses work around the clock serving Israeli backpackers, local Jews, and throngs of businessmen and tourists from India to China, Japan, Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Nepal. Between them, they offer among their services everything from crisis relief to Hebrew school and Bar Mitzvah classes, as well as adult education.

“You can’t imagine what you do for people,” Fishoff said. “You bring us together.”

The night was part of a larger celebration of Chabad’s quarter century of service in Asia that began last month when hundreds gathered at the Aberdeen Marina Club in Hong Kong, home city of Chabad of Asia’s headquarters.

Attendees shared stories about how Chabad Houses throughout the continent touched their lives and honored those who made it all possible. People mingled over elegant hors d’oeuvres such as sushi, duck rolls, carved meat, dumplings and fried rice. Later, they moved into a ballroom and filled 21 tables sporting tall orchid centerpieces. Seated under candelabra chandeliers, they faced a podium flanked by two large video screens that played videos highlighting the honorees.

With life clocking along at such a busy pace, “we need time to pause and reflect, to appreciate what we have and understand how it came to us so we can formulate an appropriate response,” Avtzon, director of Chabad of Asia, related. “So for us, the event was primarily an opportunity to reconnect and say thank you.”

The rabbi noted that collective efforts made the expansion of Jewish life in Asia possible, and praised the vital role lay leaders play in the process. He added that he hoped attendees went away seeing the larger picture and understanding that if everybody does their part, everything is possible.

“A person is not molded by the place he’s in, but has the opportunity of influencing the environment,” he said, speaking of the sense of family that he hopes he, his wife, and their seven children have helped bring so that people can have meaningful and positive Jewish experiences while away from home.

Avtzon set out for Hong Kong when Jewish leaders regarded the then-British protectorate as “very far” away, Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Washington, D.C., director of American Friends of Lubavitch, said. “There was no Skype, there was no e-mail, there weren’t the other things that are so instant and connected.”

But today, Asia looks much different from a Jewish perspective.

Continued at Chabad.org – Changing a Continent