Students Get Chabad Insider Tour

By COLlive Reporter
Photos: Levi Percia

A group of students from Brandeis University, members of the Hornstein Jewish Professional Leadership program, accompanied by their professor Dr. Mark Rosen, visited Crown Heights on Monday, gaining a firsthand look at Chabad Headquarters and meeting its leadership.

The students, who are currently working towards double Masters degrees in Jewish professional leadership, got a behind-the-scenes look at Lubavitch World Headquarters on Eastern Parkway, Merkos Suite 302, the Chabad.org offices and the Shluchim Office, and heard about the inner workings of Chabad-Lubavitch and the Shluchim network from key people in the organization.

The tour, which is held annually in Crown Heights, is coordinated by Mrs. Batya Lisker – executive assistant to Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky at Lubavitch World Headquarters. Lisker has been accompanying these students, of the best and the brightest, for a few years now, and is always impressed with these young students who show great interest in learning about Chabad’s global network and its impact.

“While meeting the students, we get to know each of them on a personal level,” she says. “Our message is that the quintessential principle of Chabad is that every single Jew is precious. All that we gain for ourselves is of very limited value and it is in service to others where the real treasures lies, a treasure multiplied by the number of lives we touch.”

And it seems that the admiration is mutual, as seen by the response from the students who attended.

Student Dina Shvetsov said she was “deeply inspired by the presence and involvement of the highly intellectual and powerful women” she met, after hearing from Mrs. Batya Lisker and Mrs. Baila Olidort – Director of Communications at Lubavitch Headquarters, who spoke to the students about the dramatic transformation to the American Jewish experience and beyond, that Chabad, under the Rebbe’s leadership, has achieved in the last half century.

The group also heard from Rabbi Motti Seligson of Chabad.org, Rabbi Moishe Pinson of the Shluchim Office, and Rabbi Yossi Gordon – Executive Director of Chabad on Campus.

The day culminated in a dinner held at Mendy’s Restaurant, where the students heard from Doobie Lisker, who recently returned from running a Yeshiva in the Congo and is very involved in the “Chabad Peace Corps” – having been sent on Merkos Shlichus to far flung places like Ukraine, Brazil and the Caribbean. The young Lisker spoke about Chabad’s outreach efforts to every corner of the globe – even traveling to the end of the world for just one Jewish person.

Inspiring anecdotes and messages were shared by Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz of Lubavitch World Headquarters and Rabbi Levi Shmotkin, Director of Young Jewish Professionals in New York.

“I appreciated the opportunity to visit Chabad’s headquarters, because we got to experience the tremendous variety of outreach groups operating together to support the mission,” said student Noah Zaves. “As a marketing professional, there’s a lot to learn from Chabad’s style of coordinated messaging.”

The students were greatly inspired by the visit, says Lisker, and asked many questions along the way. “This is an opportunity to share our vision with a new generation of leaders,” she says. “We want to engage passionate people in our common goals for a brighter Jewish future.”