Years ago, my wife and I were set to go on shlichus to Sumy, Ukraine, a small city near the Russian border. When we arrived, my family stayed by the shluchim in Kharkov while I went to Sumy to search for an apartment. One night, I walked to my hotel room feeling very down. I had been there for two weeks already, but I had not yet found a suitable place for us to live. Was this all one big mistake?The town square was mostly deserted. Over and over again, I replayed the events of the past two weeks in my mind. Packing up our apartment in California and shi
Chances are that when you think Louisville, baseball bats or bourbon are the first things that come to mind. But for locals like me who were born and bred in the city bearing the name of France’s King Louis XVI, Louisville Kentucky means home.Surprisingly enough, Louisville’s Jewish community had three kosher slaughterhouses in 1900, but all of them closed down over the next few decades. Despite those realities, there were four congregations here, including an Orthodox shul, which was here when the Rebbe sent my parents on shlichus in 1985, as
Most shluchim you meet may have grown up in Chabad homes, but I did not. My father was a special yid, a man who referred to himself as “a Jew without labels,” and I attended Litvishe yeshivas throughout my formative years. My older brothers became Lubavitcher Chasidim, and attending the Rebbe’s farbrengens ultimately led me down a similar path - the energy in the room, the holiness in the air and the light that seemed to surround the Rebbe just drew me in. The concept of shlichus intrigued me, particularly campus shlichus which I i
Living in California, Chicago or New York I don’t think I ever imagined that one day my family and I would be busy traveling the country’s 19th largest state, bringing Torah to North Dakota’s 1,000 Jewish residents. But life is full of surprises and I have definitely encountered more than my fair share since I arrived in Fargo in 2010.The seeds for my life here were actually sown two years earlier. When Chabad shluchim Rabbi Gavriel and Rivky Holzberg were murdered in a horrific terror attack, I was studying accounting at the time, and
