JULY 4 • 2024 | 13
J
N

OUR COMMUNITY

WIKIMEDIA

 The Rebbe’s charge in Michigan 
has led to fleets of welcoming Shabbat 
dinners and weekly services, preschools 
and day schools and traveling sukkah 
mobiles, intergenerational programs for 
the elderly, work on college campuses 
and in prisons, Friendship Circle, The 
Shul, adult education programs and 
Torah study, Shemtov says. Royal Oak’s 
Purim event this year drew 500, while 
over 3,000 gathered for Chanukah 
in Detroit. And after Oct. 7, Chabad 
launched a mezuzah campaign and 
affixed over 1,000 mezuzahs statewide.
 
MISSION: REACH EVERY JEW
Their mission to reach and empower 
every Jewish person happens one 
Jew at a time, Shemtov says. Audelia 
Szulman, who lives in Detroit, found 
her community at Chabad of Greater 
Downtown Detroit, she explains, 
where co-directors Rabbi Yisrael 
Pinson and Devorah Leah Pinson 
have made her feel at home. Born 
in France, she came to Michigan to 
pursue a master’s degree in aerospace 
engineering in Ann Arbor and then 
moved to Detroit, where she got 
involved with the Chabad this past fall. 
 
 
 
 She says Chabad has helped her 
reconnect with what she believes and 
to understand her identity. “I feel like 
I just opened up a new part of who 
I am,
” she says. “I’ve never been that 
into my religion, but in these times, 
especially now, I was like, ‘this is my 
home away from home.
’”
From Downtown Chabad’s Rabbi 
Pinson delivering a challah, candles 
and a copy of Shabbat blessings to her 
home to the way Devorah Leah Pinson 
grabbed her hand and introduced her 
around at her first event, she says she’s 
found Chabad warm and welcoming. 
“I would say it’s just a sense that you 

matter,
” she explains. “Even if you can’t 
The Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem 
Mendel Schneersohn
continued on page 14

