If you’ve visited a Chabad center anywhere between Kinshasa and Kathmandu in recent years, chances are you might have crossed paths with Max Chiswick, a globetrotting adventurer, blogger, humanitarian and professional poker player who touched Jewish communities in 76 countries. Chiswick, who tragically passed away at age 39 on Jan. 7, 2025 (7 Tevet, 5785), was a renaissance man who combined his passion for travel with a deep connection to Judaism, particularly enjoying the global network of Chabad-Lubavitch centers that became his spiritual anchors around the world. Chiswick visited at least 36 Chabad centers across the globe .
Born in London in 1985 to Peter and Ellen Chiswick, Max moved with his family to the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Buffalo Grove when he was a little more than a year old. The Chiswicks were a traditional family, and had a strong and proud Jewish identity, hosting Passover seders and Chanukah parties. Max’s passion for Judaism began early in life.
A precocious child, Max stood out for his extraordinary curiosity, determination and willingness to stand out from the crowd. At 16, he was selected for NASA’s summer program in Virginia, where he found kinship among fellow tech enthusiasts. After earning an electrical engineering degree from Northwestern University, he made aliyah to Israel, earning a master’s degree at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa.
“Whatever he was working on, he always wanted to do it well,” said his father, Peter. “I don’t know if you’d call him a perfectionist, but he was never satisfied and was always exploring new ideas and ways of doing things.”
Chiswick was passionate about math and statistics, and found a career as a professional online poker player. He turned out to be very good at the game and used his winnings to fund his nomadic lifestyle. But it was his relationship with Chabad, with which he first connected during his time as an undergraduate at Northwestern, that would become one of the defining features of his life.
“Chabad wasn’t just something he was interested in; it was a passion that shaped who he was,” recalled Suzy Weiss, a longtime friend of Chiswick’s. “The first time I met Max, he asked me: ‘When are we going to the Ohel [the resting place of the Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory]? That was Max in a nutshell—deeply connected to his Judaism and Chabad. He also biked the length of Africa from Cairo to Cape Town, visiting Chabad centers along the way. In total, he visited 76 countries, traveling for 13 months straight from 2017 to 2018. During Covid Chiswick traveled to Africa to observe elephants and gorillas in their natural habitat, where he lived for two months at the Sangha Lodge on the Dzanga-Sangha Special Reserve in the Central African Republic.
“He never settled too long in one place because of his natural curiosity and desire to learn more about the world he lived in,” his father explained. “He loved Africa—he visited the continent 12 times—going on safaris, watching elephants and gorillas, and connecting with the people. It was where he was happy.”
When stranded in Laos after losing his visa, it was a Chabad rabbi who helped him navigate the bureaucracy through his connections to secure the visa for him.
“Max always felt connected with Chabad; it gave him a sense of place and home wherever he went. No matter where he was around the world, whenever he walked into a Chabad, he felt accepted and free to express himself there. Especially on his solo travels, Chabad was how he found community and connected to Judaism,” Lisa said.
Rabbi Yosef Moscowitz shared how Chiswick proudly wore the kippah he gifted him on his journeys across the world, and how after the Oct. 7 terror attack in Israel he made a commitment to wear tefillin regularly. He received his first pair through a drive organized by Rabbi Avromy Super, the Chabad emissary to St. Lucia, and Dan and JJ Eleff of Dan’s Deals and committed to putting on tefillin every day of 2025. His friend, Suzy Weiss, said she hoped people would be inspired to take on this mitzvah in his memory.
“Max was deeply spiritual, yet completely unpretentious,” she said. “And he loved doing mitzvahs.”
Chiswick had a keen interest in art, making sure to support artists with disabilities and sought out their work, valuing the unique perspectives they brought to their craft. In what turned out, tragically, to be his last adventure, in December he traveled to Senegal for their annual art week.
“He was such a sweet and lovely man,” said Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, executive director of Chabad of Central Africa. “He reached out to me and my son-in-law often, asking for recommendations of places to see and people across Africa he could visit.”
It was while traveling through Senegal that Chiswick contracted malaria, though he didn’t realize it at the time. He returned to Israel, where he checked in to a hospital after feeling unwell, and passed away in the beginning of January. But it wasn’t only in exotic locales that Chiswick searched for adventure and wisdom. Whether at his Chicago-area Chabad or at 770 Eastern Parkway, the synagogue at Chabad World Headquarters in Brooklyn which he’d frequent for farbrengens on the last day of Passover, the joyous days of Sukkot or other times of the year, he was always searching and studying.
“Every time Max came to the neighborhood, he would always come to stop in to visit and learn Torah,” said Rabbi Yossi Eliav, director of Chabad of Clinton Hill & Pratt Institute, who met Max in 770 one Purim. “He would check in from wherever he was traveling. He was a very special person that cared deeply about Torah and being Jewish.”
“He lived an extraordinary life and gave so much to so many, but was extremely modest,” Lisa remembered. “He touched so many lives and left his mark on the entire world.”
