They Don’t Do Shlichus to Live

By Yisroel Besser – Contributing Editor, Mishpacha Magazine
Photos by Bentzi Sasson

My job involves going to conventions, conferences, and retreats. Over the years, I’ve heard speeches about so many different ideals – all valuable, all true and all under the banner of “k’vod Shamayim.”

Representing a magazine that aims to feel-and share-the pulse of authentic Yiddishkeit, it’s a privilege to tap into so much passion, from so many various organizations and individuals doing Hashem’s work.

Still, there are only so many times you can clap for a speech and still mean it, only so many tricks a caterer can do with grilled chicken: seen one dinner, seen ’em all.

Until this week. Tuesday’s event at the Hilton Hotel in Stamford, CT – the banquet marking the culmination of the 11th annual Chabad on Campus Conference – was unique in so many ways.

For starters there was steak, not chicken.

Also, everyone – and I mean everyone – cared about the cause; it wasn’t a social obligation, though friendship flowed, and it wasn’t out of a sense of duty, though the focus of the shluchim around me was military-like. It was authentic, in every way.

I learned that campus shluchim are referred to as the ‘marines’ of shlichus, since they operate with exceptional challenges not faced by community shluchim. What isn’t often highlighted on COLlive.com is that there is no infrastructure that communities tend to have – schools or stores – and even harder, no steady nucleus of people.

As one shliach told me, “it’s a struggle to create a steady minyan, and then expand it, and then finally, when people actually come and daven… they leave and new students replace them.”

Of course, not having dedicated locals makes fund-raising that much harder. “We have a community of people who have nothing and want nothing,” said a shliach, “but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.”

It appears that the one thing the students have over the more settled householders is youthful zeal and enthusiasm and an intense drive for truth; and with that, they’ve infected the shlichim. Everyone around me, even those with graying hair, seems young. Everyone believes in their own good fortune, convinced that their job, and role in life, is ‘the greatest.’

I asked a young shliach who was describing his difficulty with funding what he does on a month when he can’t meet his budget. He shrugged. What about if there were several months and couldn’t meet the expense of feeding tens, even hundreds of students? He shrugged again. ‘I would take a job, and work as many hours a day as I needed to to keep being able to do what I’m doing, and the rest of the time I would do shlichus.’

They don’t do shlichus to live; they live to do shlichus.

The nuances of the night- the way they clapped when their wives were thanked, the sheer exuberance of the dancing, the joy in each other’s accomplishments – made it a night well-spent for me.

Did I mention they had steak?