“Every Jew Has His Own Chabad Shliach”

By COLlive reporter
Photos: Mordehai Lubecki

Chabad Shluchim from across the French city of Paris gathered for the 25th annual Kinus Hashluchim held at the Beth Chaya Mushka school in Paris.

Organized by Beth Lubavitch and Head Shliach Rabbi Mendel Azimov, the gathering was held on Beis Iyar, the birthday of the Rebbe Maharash.

It also marked the day that Rabbi Shmuel and Bassie Azimov OBM arrived in Paris shortly after their marriage in 1968 as Shluchim of the Rebbe, leading to a Jewish transformation with continued effects today.

Throughout the day, Shluchim attended lectures and joined discussion groups about different areas of their responsibility as rabbis and communal and education leaders.

At the gala banquet that concluded the Kinus, Shluchim heard from guest speaker Rabbi Dovid Weitman, Director of Beit Chabad Morumbi and a prominent Jewish leader in S. Paulo, Brazil.

Rabbi Dovid Weitman – Shliach to S. Paulo, Brazil:

A second guest speaker was Yonathan Arfi, President of the Representative Council of the French Jewish institutions (CRIF) and Vice President of the World Jewish Congress.

Arfi, a father of 3 and entrepreneur, was raised in a traditionalist Sephardic Jewish family from Algeria and Morocco. He is the nephew of Olympic French swimmer and Holocaust survivor Alfred Nakache, nicknamed the “swimmer of Auschwitz.”

The turn of the 2000s and the wave of anti-Semitism during the Second Intifada made Arfi a Jewish activist committed against antisemitism. He chaired the UEJF from 2003 to 2005, notably denouncing the antisemitism and launching a program to combat racist and antisemitic prejudices in schools.

Speaking at the Kinus, Arfi acknowledged his acquaintances such as Rabbi Azimov and Rabbi Chaim Nisenbaum, as well as “my dear rav” Rabbi Ezer Cohen, the Chabad Shliach in Versailles.

“It’s well known that every Jew has his own Shliach and mine is fantastic,” he said. “I want to salute his stubbornness in instilling in me some Torah values, probably not enough for his taste, nor even for mine, but which made it possible to grow the Jew that I also am and that I am became,” he said.

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