By COLlive reporter
Please welcome the Shluchim of Kazakhstan!
10 relatively new faces will be seen at the International Kinus Hashluchim convention which will be taking place virtually this year due to the Covid pandemic.
Joining for the first time in years will be Kazakhstan’s Head Shliach and Chief Rabbi Yeshaya Cohen, along with his colleagues in the former Central Asian country in Eastern Europe.
This new development was achieved thanks to the recent achdus agreement reached between Rabbi Cohen and Russia’s Head Shliach and Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar.
The agreement put an end to 2 decades of disconnect between the leaders of both Jewish communities and its announcement this month was welcomed by many.
Under the agreement, Rabbi Cohen will accept the authority of Rabbi Lazar as Head Shliach of the former Soviet Union, while Rabbi Cohen will be reinstated as the Head Shliach of Kazakhstan and the director of its Chabad institutions.
This past week, Rabbi Lazar participated in a Zoom video conference with Rabbi Cohen and the Shluchim in Kazakhstan.
Kazakhstan was the last of the Soviet republics to declare independence during the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Rabbi Cohen and his wife arrived there in the spring of 5754 (1994) where the only shul would be open for 2 hours a week.
Today there are 10 Shluchim families operating 8 Chabad centers and leading Jewish communities in Almaty, Karaganda, Kostanay, Nur-Sultan (Astana), Pavlodar, Shymkent and Ust Kamenogorsk.
Rabbi Cohen estimates that there are 30,000 Jews living in the Republic of Kazakhstan which is the ninth-largest country in the world. Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, father of the Rebbe, a renowned Kabbalist and chief rabbi of Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipro, Ukraine) is buried in Almaty.
A source at Lubavitch World Headquarters told COLlive.com that the names of the Kazakhstan Shluchim will be added this week to the Global Directory of Chabad centers that appear on the institutional websites such as Chabad.org and Lubavitch.com.
