August 27, 2004/Elul 10 5763, Vol. 55, No. 49
Reigniting sparks of JudaismChabad student rabbis travel across Arizona to teach Torah
LEISAH NAMM
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 Student rabbi Menachem Wolf, right, helps a 13-year-old boy in Kingman with the prayer for putting on tefillin. Photo courtesy of Moshe Laufer |
In Rio Rico, a small town north of Nogales, in the last house on a paved road, an 84-year-old man greets two visitors to his home. They hang a mezuzah on his doorway and he puts tefillin on for the first time since his bar mitzvah. This brings back memories of his childhood in Brooklyn, N.Y., and he is inspired to sing Jewish songs with the two men, including about 30 rounds of "Avinu Malkeinu," a prayer from the High Holiday liturgy.
These are two experiences in particular that stand out in Moshe Laufer's mind when he thinks about his summer vacation.
Laufer, of Providence, R.I., and his travel partner Menachem Wolf of Chicago, both 23, are rabbinical students at 770 Yeshiva in Crown Heights in Brooklyn N.Y. This summer, the pair joined about 260 other rabbinical students in Merkos Shlichut, nicknamed the "Lubavitch Peace Corps," and visited Jewish individuals and communities in homes, offices or even hotel lobbies to teach them about tefillin, mezuzot and other Jewish traditions.
The program was established nearly 60 years ago by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe. The students travel in pairs and are sent to locations all over the globe. Chabad of Arizona has sponsored this program in Arizona each summer for more than 25 years and it has led to ongoing relationships with Jews in Kingman, Sedona and Yuma, says Rabbi Zalman Levertov, director and founder of Chabad of Arizona.
Many Chabad houses around the world were formed because of this program, notes Laufer. "Students found communities which had such a demand for Yiddishkeit, for Judaism, and (it led) to sending a permanent Chabad rabbi."
Last summer, Laufer visited Jews in Ontario, Canada, and Wolf traveled through communities in Washington state.
This year from July 15-Aug. 9, the two student rabbis visited Pine, Strawberry, Payson, Sierra Vista, Nogales, Casa Grande, Yuma, Kingman and Flagstaff.
Typically, the first few hours of their first day in each city were spent making phone calls to schedule appointments, Wolf says. In some cities, they had contact information from Levertov. "From there we worked through the White Pages," Laufer says. "Cohen, Levy, Greenberg, Goldberg ... We told them we were student rabbis visiting the city and we wanted to hear and share with them. Most people were very positive" and many people said "thank you for coming and just reminding me that I'm a Jew," he says.
Laufer says he "was expecting people to say 'we're not interested,' " but he estimates that in the two days they were in each city, they met with about five-10 people, sometimes from 7 a.m.-midnight. "We could've spent at least a week" in each city, he says.
In Payson, a phone book search turned up Edward and Bernice Greenberg, former members of Temple Emanuel of Tempe who have lived in Payson for about five years.
The Greenbergs met with Laufer and Wolf at the Holiday Inn where the student rabbis were staying and Bernice Greenberg says she was "very impressed" by them. "They were very warm," she says. "They wanted to know about our lives and what was going on with us."
After that meeting, the Greenbergs ran ads in the Payson Roundup, calling for Jewish families in the area to contact them. About two weeks after the student rabbis' visit, nearly 25 people gathered in the Greenbergs' home to meet each other. Laufer and Wolf returned to Payson for the gathering, along with Levertov. "The people who came here for the get-together were really impressed," Greenberg says. "They were thrilled - they didn't realize how many other Jewish families there were here. ... If you talk to every single one, each one thought that they were the only Jewish family here."
Plans are now in the works for a monthly class in the area, led by Levertov or another Chabad representative, she says.
One of the participants of the Greenberg gathering was John Romanowski, another transplant from the Valley, a former member of Temple Beth Israel in Phoenix who moved to Payson four years ago.
His wife first saw Laufer and Wolf when they walked into the bank where she works and she suggested they visit her husband at his office at the Foxworth-Galbraith Lumber Company.
"I invited them in, they introduced themselves as Moshe and Menachem and they just want to know if I know of any other Jewish people in town and what it's like living here," John Romanowski recalls.
During the nearly two-hour visit, Romanowski put tefillin on for the first time. "They were very open and very giving of their knowledge in showing me how to do it," he says. "It was powerful and moving to be doing something that not only they did but that Jewish men have been doing throughout the ages."
Romanowski went home that evening and took out his great-grandfather's tefillin. "(I) looked at it and thought how when he came to this country in the late 1800s ... that I was doing the same thing that he had done and probably his father had done and that his father before him had done. It was a very powerful experience," he says. "It was probably the single most enlightening or awe-inspiring moment that I've had in a very long time."
Romanowski is grateful that the student rabbis introduced him to other Jews in the area. "The act of them bringing together the community was great ... It's lonely being the only Jew in Payson and I'm not that anymore."
In Flagstaff, the student rabbis visited Burt Gershater in his office in a wellness center. In addition to affixing a mezuzah to his office doorway, they helped him lay tefillin for the first time. "It was wonderful to do something that I always ascribed to other Jews," he says. "I felt connected in a way that was very important for me." He says that the visit rekindled his connection to his faith and to God.
"It's like the Hanukkah candles, where the shamesh lights the other ones," he says. "I think it's always good to have people come around and spread the light."
The rabbis put up about 50 mezuzot during their tour of Arizona. "We actually ran out," Laufer says. "We had to overnight more."
Kelli Waxman, a board member of Heichal Baoranim in Flagstaff who received a visit at her ranch from the student rabbis, says it was "nice to see the dedication to one's religion."
"They came across as genuinely interested in being nonjudgmental and trying to take a person where they're at and see if there was any kind of information they could help them with if they wanted to be connected," she says. "It was a very positive experience."
Rabbi Mendy Levertov coordinated this year's program. Call Chabad of Arizona, 602-944-2753.
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