Kinus Gathers Shluchim of Europe and Muslim Countries

By Mendel Super – Chabad.org

A regional Kinus Hashluchim drew Chabad Shluchim and Shluchos from relatively small Jewish communities in 40 countries from Africa to the Middle East as well as smaller European Jewish communities like Bucharest, Romania, and Dublin, Ireland, among dozens of others.

The conference also drew participants from Muslim-majority countries including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Nigeria.

The conference comes almost 75 years after Chabad was founded in Morocco in 1950, when the Rebbe—Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory—at the behest of his father-in-law and predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, of righteous memory, sent Rabbi Michoel Lipsker to Morocco, where he and his wife served the historic Jewish community and he established a yeshivah in Meknes.

Several months later, they were joined by Rabbi Shlomo and Pesia Matusof, who were sent to direct Chabad activities throughout Morocco. Over the years, they were joined by several additional Chabad rabbinic couples, including Rabbi Nissan and Rachel Pinson, to Casablanca in 1953. They were later assigned to Tunisia, where Mrs. Pinson, 95, still directs Chabad-Lubavitch of Tunisia today.

The early Moroccan emissaries, Yiddish-speaking young men and women, many of whom survived Stalinist Russia, were from a vastly different culture and background than the Sephardic, French- and Arabic-speaking Moroccan Jews. Yet, they established and led day schools for boys and girls and yeshivas and seminaries to train the next generation of leaders, some of which went on to lead Moroccan Jewish communities in Morocco and around the world.

The conference was hosted by Moroccan-born Rabbi Levi Banon and his U.S.-born wife, Chana Banon, who have served as emissaries at Chabad-Lubavitch of Morocco since 2009, when Mrs. Raizel Raskin, director of Chabad-Lubavitch of Morocco, appointed them to lead the next generation of Moroccan Jewry.

Throughout the three-day conference the emissaries discussed the opportunities and challenges of serving in communities with limited access to Jewish services, from kosher food to mikvahs to Jewish schools.

The conference included a prayer for the Morrocan monarch, King Mohammed VI; remarks by the Morrocoan-born Rabbi David Banon, a prominent rabbi and dayan in the Jewish community in Montreal, Canada, and Serge Bardugo, president of Morocco’s Jewish communities and the members of Morocco’s rabbinical court.

The last decade has seen Chabad’s presence expand across the general region, with centers being established in Angola, the Canary Islands, Ghana, Iceland, Ivory Coast, Malta, Montenegro, Rwanda, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates and Zambia.

“Choosing Morocco as the location of this year’s conference highlights Chabad’s ongoing commitment to Jewish life in the Middle East and North Africa, especially in communities with smaller Jewish populations,” says Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice-chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the educational arm of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. “It is thanks to the vision of the Rebbe that Chabad is the most vibrant Jewish movement today, with the dedicated emissaries who give up so much of themselves to benefit others.”

Rabbi Mendy Chitrik, a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in Istanbul, Turkey, rabbi of Istanbul’s Ashkenazic community and chairman of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States, just returned from a visit to Djerba, Tunisia, where he had gone immediately following the attack on the Djerba Jewish community on Lag BaOmer, one of the few rabbis to visit on the ground and strengthen the community. “Rabbis coming together in a Muslim country for the purpose of strengthening Jewish life is an important indication of the future of Jewish life in the region.”