Mission. Each and every one of us, wherever we are, is a soldier with a singular purpose and mission
ON my most recent trip to the US, I went to check out what was happening in Wisconsin — no, not the drama of the National Republican Convention, but rather, two weeks prior, at an event in honor of 3 Tammuz, the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s 30th yahrtzeit. In contrast to all the political news and commentary that’s come out of Milwaukee, I have my own insights to share, things you won’t read about in the media.
Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin, today the executive director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin, had been sent with his wife, back in 1968, to Wisconsin — one of the early pioneers of the Lubavitch emissaries network, which today has over 4,000 shluchim. While Milwaukee had an active Orthodox community, the rest of the state was pretty much of a religious backwater, yet with his trademark dynamism, Rabbi Shmotkin began to build the dozens of chinuch and chesed institutions within ten centers throughout the state, with numerous dedicated shluchim who make up today’s empire.
His sons include Rabbi Zalman, founder of the Chabad.org website; Rabbi Elkanah, founder of the Jewish Educational Media (JEM) Foundation; and Rabbi Menachem Mendel, executive vice president for Lubavitch of Wisconsin and the shaliach through whom I was able to see all this hard work up close.
On the first day of my visit, I had the zechut to have lunch at the home of the elder Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin, who had been very close to the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and also to the previous Rebbe, the Rebbe Rayatz. When discussing the situation in Israel and the world, he gave his own deep interpretation. “The problem,” he said, “is that the physical world and Elokus, G-dliness, feel like two separate entities. And the more powerful and promising the gashmiyus becomes, the more difficult it is to reconcile with ruchniyus. We need to resolve this conflict by filling the world with Elokus — and this is the goal of chassidus.”
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