14 to right:
A Mr 1,976 photo of current emissaries,
Leah Potter; Shainy ieiiTarten, Chan/ Engel,
Chani Katz, Thippr illistmlovin and EstieCireenbog
Rabbi Levy and Doba Weber get ready for a taxi ride
with their son Mendy in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Miriam Lustig of Brooklyn, Miriam Silberberg of best
Bloomfield and_Pessy Chaiken of Cleveland take a
break from work at Chabad day camp in Germany to
visit a remnant of the Berlin Will in 1999:
Nechoma Goldman watches children
light Chaftuka candles.
Rabbi Baruch Myers leads a program
in a Slovakiailsukka.

Leg a C V

in communities around the world.

meet up with them.
"We met Chabad rabbis in
Barcelona and Florence," recalls
Kenny Birnholtz of Sylvan Lake, a
University of Michigan student who
backpacked through Europe last sum-
mer. "In Florence, we had Shabbat
dinner with 70 other people in a
cramped apartment, but in Barcelona
there was only one other couple there.
Both rabbis and their families were so
welcoming and hospitable."
Lubavitch children are involved in
outreach from a very young age, says
Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, a spokesman
for the Central Organization for
Jewish Education in New York, the
Lubavitch world headquarters.
"They are reaching out to people to
help bring them the beauty, traditions
and practices of Yiddishkeit
Judaism]," he says. "It may be going
to a school and giving a child a color-
ing book about Passover observances,
or stopping someone in Kroger and
giving her Shabbat candles — or visit-
ing a nursing home or a hospital and
helping a man put on tefillin [phylac-
teries].
"While the practical mitzvah cam-
paigns of Lubavitch often serve later as
catalysts to increased observance, the
individual mitzvah, encouraged on the

street corner, at that moment, is an
end and an entire world unto itself,"
says Rabbi Shmotkin.
By the time Chabad emissaries
approach marriage, like 21-year-old
Miriam Silberberg of West Bloomfield,
most of the young people are ready to
establish or join Chabad House leader-
ship.
"It's like clockwork," says her father,
Rabbi Silberberg.
"My parents are shluchim [emis-
saries], so everything in my home is
really a preparationior shlichus [emis-
sary Work]," Miriam says.
Although she has spent several sum-
mers as a counselor at Chabad camps,
including working last year at a Berlin
day camp, Miriam says her entire life
has been planned toward reaching this
step.
She is engaged to marry Rabbi
Dovid Labkowski from New York next
month. "It is a very strong priority for
us to go on shlichus," Miriam says. .
"Basically, I've envisioned all my life to
do it."
Following their wedding, they plan
to live in Crown Heights, N.Y., where
Rabbi Labkowski will learn for a year
or two. Then they will decide where to
go to do emissary work, as did
Miriam's close friend Doba Weber.

Other Side Of The World

"The Webers are exotic shlicot on many
levels," Rabbi Silberberg says of their
choice to move to Bangkok.
Aside from being far from home in
a very foreign land, he notes,
"Thailand is filled with pagans. Tens
of thousands of Israeli veterans go
there after terms of service to live it
up. The last thing people there want
to see are the Lubavitch with a mitz-
vah mobile and candles for Shabbat."
In some towns, emissaries find them-
selves without a religious movement. For
the Webers, there is at least a semblance
of a Jewish community. They joined two
other Lubavitch couples: one Israeli and
one American.
Doba Weber describes their lives as
divided between the Bangkok commu-
nity of 400 Jews where they spend their
weekdays, and the town of Chiang Mai,
where they go for Shabbat to stay in a
town of only 30 Jews.
With an average of 50,000 Jewish
tourists, mostly Israeli, as well as busi-
ness travelers passing through each town
anminlly, the Webers are able to provide
Many spiritual and educational
resources. They typically host 50-60
guests for meals each Shabbat.
The Webers also have provided
other outreach programming, includ-

ing a yeshiva founded by the rabbi
that offers short-term study sessions.
He also arranges private classes in
homes or offices.
This year they started a clay camp:
"We had a total of 22 kids from the
local Jewish families at all levels of affilia-
tion," Doba Weber says. The staff
included two young Lubavitch girls
from New York.
Doba Weber's mother, Chaya
Devorah Bergstein, has been a shaliach
(emissary) in the Detroit area for 24
years with her husband Rabbi Chaim
Bergstein of the Bais Chabad of
Farmington Hills. Chaya Bergstein
recalls with great pride the first days
her daughter and son-in-law spent in
Bangkok. She says they arrived just in
time to host 50 guests for Purim.
"One Israeli man told her it was the
first time he heard the megilla [scroll
of Esther] read since he was in pre-
school," she says. 'And he had to go to
Thailand to hear it."
Doba is not the Bergsteins' first child
to become an emissaty. "But she defi-
nitely went the farthest," says her moth-
er. The couple decided on Thailand after
Rabbi Weber spent time there while a
student.
The Bergsteins have not yet made the
LEGACY on page 10

8/18
2000

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