We were there alone, a young couple in our twenties. How would we know how to comfort families in crisis?
You might say reaching out to other Jews is my family’s business. I come from a line of Chabad shluchim, and our mission has always been to serve other Jews with ahavas Yisrael.
My father was the very first Chabad shaliach in Houston. I’m the oldest in my family — I was five years old when we made the long drive in 1972 from Oak Park, Michigan, to Houston. In those days there was no frum community in Houston to speak of. In school, I was one of the only boys with a yarmulke.
From the age of five, my parents sent me to summer camp in New York where my uncle was the director, so that I could be nurtured by a more Yiddishe environment. At age 11, I was sent to Brooklyn to live with my grandparents to go to yeshivah. By then, my parents had started the Torah Day School, which continues to provide a Torah education to this day. (There were seven kids in the first class, and five of them were my brothers and sisters.)
After I married my wife, Rochel, a Montreal native, I learned for a year in kollel in Crown Heights, and then we moved to Houston and taught in the day school for a year. After that, we decided to start outreach at Rice University and move near Houston’s Medical Center, which today is the largest medical center in the world. We weren’t sure how we were going to provide support to people with medical issues — we were there alone, a young couple in our twenties. How would we know how to comfort families in crisis?
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