From Feb. 8-13, some 4,000 shluchos, Chabad women emissaries, from more than 100 countries gathered in and around the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn for the annual Kinus HaShluchos, whose agenda included workshops, speeches and Shabbat gatherings. It may well be the largest Jewish women-only gathering in the world.
Speaking at a banquet in a New Jersey convention center, Israeli broadcast journalist Sivan Rahav-Meir, a keynote speaker, said that ballroom was “the most influential room in the world.” Among the women Chabad emissaries whose work she cited, one hosted a Passover seder in Nepal for 2,500 people, and a Ukrainian emissary served her community amid war.
But most Chabad women leaders make a difference to their communities under the radar without visible impact, Rahav-Meir said. “Believe in the power of every Jew,” she told those assembled.
The kinus (Hebrew for “gathering” or “conference”) for women marks the anniversary of the 1988 passing, at age 86, of Chaya Mushka Schneerson, wife of the Lubavitcher rebbe. The gathering follows her yahrzeit on the Hebrew calendar, the 22nd of Shevat.
Miriam Moskovitz, who co-founded a Chabad in Kharkov, Ukraine, with husband Moshe, spoke at the banquet about coming to the country’s second-largest city when it was still behind the iron curtain.
“There was no time to think or feel. We were in action mode,” she told the shluchos.
Attendees told JNS about how much the gathering impacts them as Jews and leaders.
Behind each woman attending is a community, Dalia Sanoff, an emissary in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., told JNS. She grew up secular in Tel Aviv, but now is “part of the impact of the Rebbe’s army.”
For Brochie Altabe, in town from Nice, France, kinus affords the opportunity to visit with her sisters, who are also emissaries. “I feel like I am a part of this, that we are all here for the same goal,” she told JNS.
Being a part of a gathering with so many other women, who are also working to further the rebbe’s goal of preparing the world for the messianic era, Altabe felt that realization must be close.
“It can’t be too far away,” she said. “It’s happening. Let’s go. Let’s push a little more.”
Chabad also hosts a Kinus HaShluchim, for male emissaries, in the late fall. Beyond the banquet, the gathering for women also included programming for daughters of emissaries, who are themselves young shluchos. Attendees from remote communities, including Ivory Coast and Tasmania, report that programming is particularly helpful to them.
Italian native Zeldi Fradkin, who is now an emissary in Coronado, Calif., put it succinctly. “[Attending kinus] revamps my soul.”