Lubavitch Laptops

Rabbi Avi Shlomo talks with a local Jew on the Greek island of Rhodes.

by Sharon Udasin

They may be in Thessaloniki or in the foothills of the Himalayas, but emissaries-to-be in the Rebbe’s Army — as befits the high tech-savvy Chabad movement — are online all the while.

This summer in Chabad’s long-running “Roving Rabbis” program, in which rabbis-in-training are dispatched to far-flung locales to help out local emissaries, they are also assigned to blog about their experiences of the movement’s flagship site, chabad.org.

The posts tell riveting stories of survival during the Holocaust and simple ones of Jews living life far off the beaten path.

This year, in the program’s 64th summer of operation, 400 rabbis and students visited 34 countries worldwide, as well as regions of America. Their goals? Cater to the specific needs of local Jewish communities, no matter how small or how secular.

“The impact these visits have had upon the lives of hundreds of thousands worldwide are legend,” said Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, chairman of the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. “The yeshiva students are full of youthful vigor and enthusiasm, a deeply ingrained sense of mission and lots of love for fellow man.”

Walking through the ancient streets of Ioannina, a city in northwest Greece, Rabbi Laima Barber, 24, suddenly felt the piercing stare of an elderly woman, who began pointing at him and yelling desperately, “Israel, Israel?”  Continue reading…