NY Shluchim’s United Meeting

By COLlive reporter

A mourning Shliach was honored by his friends and colleagues at a Farbrengen in Brooklyn, NY, and responded by expressing his faith and strength.

“The unity that you show is what helps us keep going every day,” Rabbi Zalman Wolowik told a group of New York area Shluchim at a gathering Sunday in the Jewish Children’s Museum.

Rabbi Shmuel Butman, Director of Lubavitch Youth Organization, presented him with a plaque of a photo of the Rebbe and of his 9 year-old son Levi Yitzchak, who passed away this year.

In the opening of his remarks, Wolowik said: “It is 58 days since our lives have changed.”

Echoing a call by Rabbi Moshe Pesach Goldman to increase Torah classes in Chabad Houses, Wolowik said: “I’ve seen that in times of trouble, the ones that learn come though best.”

Policy and goals were not discussed at this gathering of Shluchim. The occasion was the second of Iyar, the birthday of the fourth Lubavitcher Rebbe and the day Lubavitch Youth was founded, overseeing the Shluchim network in New York.

Speakers included Flatbush Shliach Rabbi Yossi Vigler, Program Director of LYO Rabbi Kasriel Kastel, and SUNY Stony Brook Shliach Rabbi Adam Stein.

If some privately pondered the lack of youthfulness of this organization – the average age of its leaders is well above 60 – a remark from the Rebbe was quoted.

“Youth is not measured by the passport,” Rabbi Butman said, quoting the Rebbe. “The Rebbe said that the youth of Tzach is in the spirits of the members.”

Guest speaker of the evening was the ever-youthful Rabbi Hershel Fogelman, one of the elderly Shluchim sent by the Previous Rebbe to Worcester, Massachusetts.

He recalled attending a Farbrengen with the current Lubavitcher Rebbe before he assumed leadership of the movment. “The Rebbe said: We began with Shabbos parties and with time we will conquer the whole world.”

Looking at the 110 young and old Shluchim gathered in the hall, Fogelman added: “We are living today in a world that was conquered by Lubavitch. Africa, Asia and everywhere else. It was a profound world that the Rebbe envisioned.”