The Power Couple Behind the Kinus Hashluchim Banquet

By COLlive reporter

Ronen Peled Hadad has been overseeing the production of large-scale events for the last 30 years. He has worked with media companies, known artists and large firms.

The event that had the most personal impact on him is the gala banquet of the International Kinus Hashluchim.

Born to a warm Israeli family that kept tradition, he was attracted to stage theatre from a young age. He performed at school plays and dancing classes.

While serving in the Israel Defense Forces, he was assigned to various army orchestras. He later started learning theater, acting and directing at the Tel Aviv University.

He first met Nirit in grade 3 at elementary school. And at the age of 26, he married her and together they opened a production company. “We first lived in Tel Aviv and worked around the clock,” he recalled. “This was in the 90s when the world experienced a tremendous technological breakthrough.”

He quickly became one of Israel’s youngest and most successful producers. But despite the success, he felt an emptiness from within which was coupled with the pain of losing his father at a younger age.

Ronen Peled started meeting therapists and healers and attending new age and spiritual sessions. The transformation came when he had a car accident with Rabbi Menachem Noyman, the Shliach in Even Yeshiva where he lived. They connected and Peled started his transformation into a baal teshuva.

After learning Torah and Chassidus and growing in keeping Mitzvos, his wife gifted him a ticket to New York for his 40th birthday and he discovered a new world. He spent time listening to the preeminent Chassidus scholar Rabbi Yoel Kahn OBM, Mashpia Rabbi Shloma Zarchi and librarian Rabbi Berel Levine.

On a trip back from the Rebbe‘s Ohel, he caught a ride with Rabbi Elkana Shmotkin, Director of the JEM organization. He was soon connected with Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky at Merkos L’inyonei Chinch.

Then he was hired to produce the banquets of the Kinus Hashluchim and Kinus Hashluchos. “Thanks to my Shliach and the Kinus, I built a strong and deep connection to the Rebbe and Chabad,” he says today, as he sports a beard and head-covering.

As he prepares Sunday’s gala banquet of the Kinus, he took a moment to publically thank his wife and business partner for their work together and her support.

“We have been working together for 25 years, 14 years of which we have been partners in producing the banquet of the International Kinus Hashluchim,” he wrote on Facebook.

“It is important for me to recognize the good and thank my wife Nirit today for the marvelous journey we are on together.”

He said that “it really isn’t simple when a spouse decides to become a baal teshuva and the couple still chooses to live together with love and real respect to one another.”

He included the thanksgiving bracha of Hagomel, thanking Hashem for his life and privilege of living as a Jew.

His post received many positive messages. One of them was from Mrs. Sarale Goldshmid, Chabad Shlucha in Ko Samui, Thailand. “You are both special people that we can learn a lot from,” she wrote. “We merited to work with you and hope to work together again soon. Wishing you much success with producing the Kinus and all other projects.”