Dear Friends,
Tonight as I prepare to enjoy the Shabbos meal with my three sons, my wife and daughter will be missing from our table as they are away for Shabbos. Along with myself, thousands of my colleagues who are Chabad Shluchim around the world are also manning the home fortress by themselves, as our wives and sometimes daughters join together with thousands of others like themselves for an International Conference that is taking place in NY.
The conference which is dedicated to Chabad Shluchot (Emissaries) and Rebbitzens from around the world is a four day event that is full of workshops, resources, socializing & networking time, and plenty of inspiring and motivating speakers and moments. Shayna co-directs the Chabad Center of Sudbury, and along with taking care of our family and teaching in Boston, helps develop Chabad of Sudbury’s programs, classes, and all of its children’s programs from Hebrew School to Camp and the Matzah Bakery and Holiday celebrations.
For four days she will mingle with others who are doing the same job at reaching out to every Jew in the planet from Thailand and Russia to Brazil and Israel. Like Shayna, the three thousand or so women who Shayna will be spending the weekend with at workshops, sessions, lectures and so much more, are at the forefront of Jewish life around the world and helping each and every Jew have easy and positive access to their Judaism.
Of course, the one weekend that my wife is out of town is when my son had an accident in school and ended up in the emergency room, but we are on the mend, and G-d willing Shayna will come back to a healthy happy family, and will be full of inspiration and new ideas that she will be able to bring to our beautiful community here in Sudbury.
Interestingly, in this week’s Torah Portion we read about the giving of the Ten Commandments at Mount Sinai. There is a very interesting Midrash that explains the giving of the Torah and states that the Torah’s main ideas were actually given to the women before the men and only after the women received the main ideas at Mount Sinai, was the Torah then given to the men. This Midrash is not about simply being polite, rather the commentaries explain that spiritually the women were on a higher level than their male counterparts and therefore it was the natural order of events that occured. It was thanks to the women that the people held onto their faith in Egypt and in multiple instances in the Jewish people’s first journey in the desert, the women proved themselves to be more spiritually in tune with what G-d wanted from them and the Jewish people, and thus in turn when it came to the giving of the Torah, it was given to the women first.
My hat (the black one) goes off to Shayna and her friends and I wish them a wonderful and inspiring weekend and Shabbat and hopefully next week we can a hear a write up from Shayna herself.
If you would like to watch the main event and banquet of the conference on Sunday afternoon click here.
Good Shabbos
Yisroel