CHABAD SHLUCHIM WORLDWIDE SHARE THEIR STORIES FROM THE FRONTLINES.
I grew up in a 165 acre retreat center in a forest 40 miles west of Portland. I first learned about Chanukah when I was five, and had no clue there was more to Judaism until we moved to Portland when I was 11. We moved into a large house owned by one of my mother’s associates. They celebrated Shabbos with a candlelit dinner every Friday night. I loved it, and we continued the tradition for many years.
When I went off to college, a theater conservatory for me, I made sure to bring candlesticks with me (a pair I’d just received for my birthday). Eventually, I ran out of candles, and popped into the local Hillel for a refill. “Join us for Shabbat!” they urged.
“No, thanks. I do it on my own,” I replied. However, I did come the following week. A little while later, Hillel and Chabad on Campus co-hosted a Shabbos with guest speaker Bentzion Kravitz, an anti-missionary activist. His topic, “Missionary Impossible,” was riveting, the food was delicious, and the company enjoyable, but the Friday night davening touched my soul like nothing else.
Enchanted, I returned for davening the next morning. Before I knew it, I was hooked. Chassidus spoke to my neshama, and slowly, my weekly visits to the Chabad house grew into a much larger commitment. A Chabad rabbi there was instrumental in enrolling me in the Ivy League Torah Study Program in the Catskills that summer. Although I had big plans, after everyone else in the program left, I found myself wanting to stay. I joined the Hadar Hatorah summer program, and officially became a yeshiva bochur.
I grew up in a Reform home in Omaha, Nebraska. Compared to my husband’s upbringing, I was quite knowledgeable! We didn’t necessarily celebrate every Shabbos and Yom Tov, and definitely not according to Halacha, but I’d learned about them.
My belief in G-d remained superficial until my senior year of high school, when my mother suffered an aneurysm. The helplessness was overwhelming, and I leaned on prayer for support. It made me question everything - what even was the meaning of life? What was my purpose in this world? Yearning for answers and a relationship with G-d, I visited our temple religiously.
That summer, I visited Israel. Seeing Judaism come alive, and especially, seeing young men and women my age living a Torah-true life, showed me there was more to Judaism than the four walls of my temple. I was lucky that one of the madrichim was a baal teshuva, and I plied him endlessly with questions. His answers made so much sense! My search for meaning had led me to all kinds of religious dogmas. For the first time, I felt an active interest in finding the answers in my own backyard.
That fall, I attended Brandeis University, a majority Jewish university. I connected with the Orthodox community, and deepened my Jewish education. I enrolled in a semester of Hebrew U, and attended a seminary in Israel, which inspired me to start keeping Shabbos and kashrus.
I backpacked through Europe that summer. In Paris, I met the Azimov family.
“You have a Chabad soul,” Mrs. Azimov told me. “You should learn Tanya!”
When I returned to Brandeis for my senior year, I found a Chabad rabbi nearby, and asked him to teach a Tanya shiur on campus. Mrs. Azimov was right! Chassidus opened doors I’d never dreamed existed! Soon afterwards, I attended Machon Alte, a Chabad baalas teshuva seminary in Tzefas.
Our daughter is now a madricha in Machon Alte, a heartwarmingly full circle.
Both of us had been exposed to Torah-true Yiddishkeit in college. When we discussed what type of future we envisioned, we were in complete agreement that a college campus shlichus would suit us perfectly. In the early 2000’s, campus shlichus wasn’t a popular option. Most shluchim opted for more stable communities, in which they could build ties with the potential to last longer than four years. But we felt strongly that we could make a significant impact on college students, since we identified so closely with their thoughts and struggles.
When we visited the Shluchim office, they showed us a list of available places. Over 120 locations were waiting for a shliach, but only one was a college campus.
The next hurdle was meeting and getting approved by Rabbi Menachem Schmidt, a shliach in nearby Philadelphia. We met at the half-way point - a rest stop somewhere along the New Jersey Turnpike. With the sound of cars and trucks zooming by behind us, Rabbi Schmidt explained what had inspired him to search for campus shluchim. A girl wanted to attend Penn State, and she wanted to continue the close relationship with Chabad with which she’d grown up. Her father had been calling every week to ask Rabbi Schmidt when Penn State would receive shluchim. He invited us to check out the campus ourselves and see if it was a good match.
We should’ve known that summer vacation wouldn’t be the greatest time to visit a college campus. The isolation and emptiness made us feel like we were in the middle of nowhere! We wrote all our doubts and questions in a letter to the Rebbe and placed it in a volume of Igros Kodesh. The letter on that page was an answer to a university professor, explaining what a great opportunity he had to teach Jewish students about Yiddishkeit by inviting them for Shabbos, and influencing them as much as possible.
We had our answer.
We thought we’d be able to settle into a hotel while we searched for a suitable home and Chabad center. When we checked in, we were shocked to hear every hotel room in the area had been booked solid for months, in some ways, my unconventional childhood perfectly prepared me for shlichus. When I was a toddler, my parents traveled cross country in a school-bus-turned-motor-home, from Boston to Oregon.
Rabbi Nosson and Sarah Meretsky, Chabad of Penn State University, State College, PA
