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East Coast Jews Reach out to Local Community

The Reno Gazette-Journal
Jewish day school teacher Shaina Gershovitz jokes with Bassi Cunin while explaining the Torah to students at Gan Sierra. Other students include Shaina Guzman, Sammy Wax, Talia Guzman, Hana Salcido and teacher Mira Lapine.

Reno, NV — Three young women from New York want to make Jews in Northern Nevada aware of Judaism.

Mira Lapine, Rochel Litzman and Shaina Gershovitz are part of the effort in the Jewish Orthodox movement of Chabad to send emissaries, called shlichus, around the world.

Orthodox Judaism holds a strict interpretation and practice of Jewish teachings, laws and ethics.

They were assigned for one school year to the Chabad of Northern Nevada, where their primary responsibility is to teach at the Gan Sierra Preschool.

It is the fifth year that women have come to Reno, said Sarah Cunin, rebbitzin and director of the school.

“I’m very biased,” she said. “I think all Chabad girls are fabulous. They are dedicated to ideals of goodness.”

A secondary goal for the women is to spread Judaism to the community.

“This is remote Judaism,” Litzman said of Reno. “There isn’t an established Jewish community. It’s still in the making.”

They said they differ from Christian missionaries because they do not proselytize.

“We’re just trying to find our own people,” Litzman said. “All we want to do is bring out their soul in them and give them what is rightfully theirs. We’re just out to reach other Jews.”

Chabad is a branch of Hasidic Judaism and one of the largest Jewish Orthodox movements. It was founded in the late 1700s by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, Russia.

In the 1950s, the seventh leader of Chabad, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, sent thousands of emissaries around the world to try to connect Jews with their Judaism.

Today, there are 2,700 Chabad centers worldwide, Cunin said.

“When I was a girl, I went to the north shore of Australia,” she said.

The women said they grew up in religious homes with parents who immersed themselves in practicing Judaism.

Before coming to Reno, the women said they spent a year in intensive Judaic study.

Litzman, 20, and Lapine, 19, attended Seminary Chaya Mushka in Safed, Israel. Gershovitz, of Brooklyn, said she attended a seminary in New York.

Litzman said they are bursting with energy to reach Jews as young women who are “proactive, passionate and never satiated spiritually.”

“We’ll do anything it takes, as long as we don’t compromise our religion,” she said. “We take this animalistic concept of desire — I want more — and we implement it in our goals. We will not be satiated until the Messiah comes.”

The women are planning a Wild West Purim party on March 4 at Chabad’s new headquarters at 1175 W. Moana Lane.

The next phase in their lives will be to transfer their energy into marriages.

Gershovitz said she will return to New York.

Lapine wants to continue working with children but not necessarily back in her hometown of Brooklyn.

“I believe there are ways to channel excitement and not, God forbid, stifle it but incorporate it into life,” Litzman said. “It will be just as we do now but in a different setting. It will be as a mother of children, God willing.”

Above, Rochel Litzman, right, uses a quilt as a time capsule as part of her instruction of Chana and Rochel Cunin on Thursday at Gan Sierra Preschool at Chabad of Northern Nevada. Below, Shaina Gershovitz jokes with Bassi Cunin while explaining the Torah to students at Gan Sierra. Other students include Shaina Guzman, Sammy Wax, Talia Guzman and Hana Salcido and teacher Mira Lapine.

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