By Sivan Rahav-Meir – Yedioth Aharonot
These words were written from New York as the International Conference of Chabad Women Emissaries (“Kinus Hashluchos”) was drawing to a close. Out of the 6,500 women serving as shluchos around the world, it felt, without exaggeration, that I’d spoken with more than 500 of them. Here are seven of the most powerful moments:
1. Searching for a void
Friday afternoon. A massive Shabbos candle-lighting. “Only once a year do I see women who look like me,” says the shlucha from the Caribbean, embracing her friend, the shlucha from Taiwan.
Who else is standing beside me? Rivka Hecht, Chabad’s shlucha in Tel Aviv, speaks about the real Tel Aviv, so different from its media image. A few years ago, she hesitantly opened a Chabad preschool there. Today, her campus includes nearly 200 children, with a waiting list.
Next to her stands a new immigrant from the United States, one of the founders of “Or Chabad,” a new agricultural community near Be’er Sheva. The new pioneers of the Negev are starry-eyed American chassidim.
Not far away is Rochel Lazaroff, shlucha to the Texas Medical Center, the largest in the world with some 150,000 patients and visitors treated there at any given moment. She speaks of Jews from across the globe who come for complex surgeries and require countless forms of support. On Shabbos, they are all at her table.
“Recently, we hosted a deeply emotional conversation between an American Satmar chossid and an Israeli who defines himself as a left-wing atheist. I won’t say it’s convenient, but they’ve both been staying for months, and I think their friendship will only deepen.”
Beside her stands Shira Litzman, mother of a child with autism, who recently opened an innovative school for children with special needs in Kiryat Malachi. “For years I was embarrassed,” she says. “Until I realized this was a gift, and that I needed to help others.”
I begin to understand. It is as if each woman here searches for a void in the world, or takes the unique “package” she has been given, and turns it into a mission.
2. Facing hate
Friday night dinner. A table of Chabad shluchosa serving on American Ivy League campuses: Berkeley, Stanford, Columbia, and more. They discuss which campus is more progressive, more pro-Hamas, more unhinged.
They stress that it is a minority—but a loud one, capable of setting the tone.
“At our campus,” one says, “students hide their Magen David necklaces under their shirts and only take them out when they arrive at the Chabad House.”
Another raises the stakes: “Our students hide them in their pockets and wear them only inside Chabad.”
A third adds: “On our campus, students ask to be addressed in plural pronouns. They constantly change gender and identity. Only one thing doesn’t change: their hatred of Israel. We had a truly discouraging week recently. We brought Israeli reservists to speak, and there were protests. I cried.
“Later, I took my children to the park, and a student I didn’t know approached me. She made sure no one could hear and whispered: ‘You’re the only family here living traditionally, as parents with children, boundaries and mitzvos. I watch you and I learn. Many people here think as I do.'”
3. Regards from Sydney
Sunday evening. The central gathering – the banquet. Last year, mothers of Israeli hostages stood on stage in tearful prayer and hope. This year, some of them attend as guests, smiling.
On stage this year were the heroines of Australia, following the devastating attack at Bondi Beach in Sydney. Chaya Dadon, a 14-year-old shlucha, was shot while shielding children with her body. She walks onto the stage, no longer on crutches, and the entire hall rises in applause at the end of her powerful speech.
The Australian delegation is especially large this year. A woman from Sydney approaches me.
“You’re from Israel?” She embraces me warmly and won’t let go.
“Thank you. You sent us Hatzalah. You sent us the doctors from Sheba. I will never forget it.”
I consider telling her I had nothing to do with that. But she hugs me again, and then I realize—perhaps I do. So, know this: somewhere in Australia, there is a woman hugging every Israeli she meets and saying thank you.
4. Waking up Jews
Organized buses take us back from the main event. I fall asleep on the ride. When we arrive, someone gently wakes me with a whisper and a soft tap on the shoulder. We step off together.
“I’m Chani Engel,” she says. “An shlucha in Tamarac, Florida. A city of retirees, most of whom grew up far from Judaism.” She tells me about bar mitzvahs for men in their seventies and even about adult circumcisions.
“How would you define your mission?” I ask.
She smiles. “Basically, we do for them exactly what I just did for you. They’re asleep, and we wake them gently.”
5. An honest tear
Monday morning. They travel to the Ohel, the resting place of the Rebbe, to pray, carrying notes and names from their communities. I imagine prayers rising from Sderot and Kiryat Shmona, from Ukraine and Russia, from Morocco and Alaska.
And what about their own prayers?
A shlucha in a very well-known location shares quietly:
“We’ve been married more than a decade. We have one child. Infertility treatments haven’t been simple. At the same time, we built an empire: a thriving Chabad House helping tens of thousands.
“On our last visit to Israel, the leading specialist told us we must remain there for at least a year or two of treatment, because the medicine isn’t advanced where we live, but we decided to continue our work there. You understand what I’m praying for here.”
She wipes away a tear.
“That I won’t have to choose.”
6. Chabad on Mars
After several days here, one begins to adopt a global, expansive, almost condescending perspective toward the “small” storms of the daily news cycle. But then I return from the macro to the micro; I slip into a private workshop on marriage.
A shlucha from the Far East asks candidly: “How is it that when an Israeli backpacker walks into my home with muddy shoes, messy bags, and lots of noise, I greet him with a warm smile, even if I just finished mopping the floor, but when my husband comes home slightly late, I get angry and yell?”
The room erupts in laughter and identification.
A woman beside me says, “That’s the story. You can be a Chabad shlucha on Mars. But after all the public work, each of us has her primary mission, our inner one. The love of Israel we feel for those farthest away—we must also feel for those closest to us.”
7. Everyone’s a shlucha
And one final moment: the group photo. The New York Police Department closes Eastern Parkway, the main street of Crown Heights, where the Lubavitcher Rebbe once worked.
A photographer on a crane gives instructions: “Squeeze in, stop chatting.”
One of the organizers invites me to join. “Are you a shlucha?” she asks.
“No,” I reply.
She answers, “Maybe not officially. But never say that. Every person is a shlucha.”
Yes, that, too, I learned here this past week.
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