Young Couple Who ‘Met at Chabad’ Tell Their Story

A Jewish marriage story has sprouted forth from the Chabad Young Professionals International Annual Encounters Weekend in Crown Heights. After just a few years of bringing young adults together from across the globe and promoting shidduchim along the way, Liran and Leah Fraiman relate their CYP Encounter meetup story with shining faces.

Their beautiful union is just one example of the work being done by CYP’s Met @Chabad program, educating, promoting, and facilitating shidduchim for today’s young Jewish population.

Liran and Leah’s marriage is a realization of a long and storied vision around these annual weekends for young adults. When the original Pegisha Shabbatons began in the 1960s, they made an immediate impact, storming through campuses across the United States and bringing droves of young adults to the Rebbe. There are countless stories of inspiration and hundreds, if not thousands, of baalei teshuvah who turned their lives around from these weekends.

A lesser-known detail about these famous weekends is the attention given to facilitating Jewish marriages. While the first few years of Pegishah were for young men only, towards the end of the 60s, it was also opened for young women.

Rabbi Kasriel Kastel, program director at Lubavitch Youth Organization, who has been involved with Pegishah since then, relates: “Shortly after the decision to invite boys and girls to the Pegishah, Rabbi Hodakov called me in with a clear message: if the weekend is going to be mixed, you have a responsibility to make sure a shadchan is available. “And so it was. We invested significant resources so that there should be professional shadchanim available to promote marriage and provide guidance at each Pegishah.”

The CYP Encounter weekend has taken this dream of sparking Jewish marriages to the next level. The Shabbaton features a whole slew of programming based on the Met@Chabad method, including insightful dating workshops, a values-based speed-dating event, and a team of Met@Chabad trained Shluchim shadchanim. Indeed, tangible results are born—as Liran and Leah can personally testify. After all, were it not for the Encounter, only Hashem knows how they would have met.

Liran comes from Toronto while Leah hails from Montreal—not exactly a hop, skip and a jump from each other. “I wasn’t planning on coming to the CYP Encounter at all, as I hadn’t even heard of it myself,” says Leah. “I was trying to get together with a longtime friend from Los Angeles, and we figured that we’d meet up in New York City for the weekend. While we were at it, we were looking for a Jewish event to attend, and we found the CYP Encounter simply by Googling it. My friend told me that she was familiar with CYP and they do great things, so we decided to join—and boy am I glad we did!”

“I joined the Encounter at the advice of my local CYP Shliach, Rabbi Shmuel Neft, and it was really an amazing experience,” relates Liran. “It was Friday night right after candle lighting when everyone was mingling around, and I was standing off to the side with another friend of mine. I noticed Leah at the other edge of the room right off the bat, and I just felt that I must talk to her. I’m naturally on the more timid side, so my Rabbi helped me out; we walked over to where she was standing, and he introduced me to her. We started talking, and we felt an immediate connection. The conversation was smooth, and we talked the whole night.

“We continued connecting over the course of the weekend, and by the time it was over, we knew that we had something special going and that we must continue seeing each other. As they say, the rest is history, and here we are; less than a year later, thank G-d, we’re happily married.”

“We are thrilled to see the Fraimans start their life together,” said Rabbi Beryl Frankel, director of Met @Chabad and CYP International. “To see the years of work and so many resources bring such tangible results is nothing short of exhilarating. IYH, there will be many more!”

The Fraimans are now firmly entrenched in the young adult community in Montreal, co-directed by Rabbi Getzy Markowitz and his wife Shaina. Leah and Liran proudly volunteer at The Family Store, a supplemented grocery store for low-income families and all those in need in the greater Montreal Jewish community. Each week, the couple who met at a CYP event roll up their sleeves at yet another CYP event, packing boxes and checking out groceries for those in need.

“Many years ago, the Rebbe envisioned young Jewish adults getting together in Crown Heights, being inspired, and meeting one another to create vibrant Jewish families,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, Chairman of CYP International and Vice-Chairman of Merkos L’inyonei Chinuch. “Leah and Liran and the work of Met @Chabad are a testimony to that vision.”

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