CROWN HEIGHTS — Have you heard the one about the 5,000 rabbis who come to Crown Heights?
It’s no joke.
This weekend, the neighborhood will play host to 5,200 Hasidic rabbis for the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, a gathering of men who live and work as shluchim, or emissaries, of the Lubavitch Jewish community in 86 countries around the world.
The annual gathering — which began in 1983 with just 65 attendees, according to event organizers — is a four-day, jam-packed convention, filled with lectures, workshops, a group photo in front of the Lubavitch headquarter on Eastern Parkway and, of course, prayer services.
But the visit isn’t just about learning or networking, many in the community said. Just as important for the rabbis — who found and lead new Jewish communities in distant places like Indonesia, South Africa and Argentina — is the chance to visit with loved ones … and stock up on kosher baby food and gefilte fish, perhaps.
“This is their one great opportunity to get together, recharge, spend time with friends and family, buy all those supplies that they’ve been living without,” said Detty Leverton, who will host 11 rabbis in her seven-bedroom Union Street home for the weekend, something she and her family have been doing for more than a decade during the convention, or “kinus.”
“We actually look forward to doing it every year,” she said. “It’s an exciting part of living here in Crown Heights.”
Detty Leverton sits on a spare bed made up for one of 11 rabbis she plans to host at her Union Street home this weekend during the annual Chabad-Lubavitch conference of emissaries. (Photo credit: DNAinfo/Rachel Holliday Smith)
In the area’s main shopping district on Kingston Avenue on Wednesday, every other store had a sign welcoming the emissaries — or advertising a shluchim discount, or “kinus special.”
At Sterling Electronics, emissaries will get a free gift with every $25 purchase, the manager said. He expects special 24-hour lamps designed for Shabbat will be popular over the weekend.
Down the block at Sunshine Pharmacy, kosher vitamins, baby products and Crest whitening strips fly off the shelves during kinus, staff said, often bought in bulk and shipped all over the world.
“Someone came in and bought nine big cases of baby formula,” said manager Beila Levin as she stocked shelves the day before the convention began. “We gave him a very big discount."
Manager Beila Levin at Sunshine Pharmacy on Kingston Avenue stocks shelves the day before the convention began on Nov. 5. The store plans to give free protein shakes to event attendees and always gets bulks orders during the convention for kosher products, like baby formula and vitamins, from rabbis living abroad.
“The way we feel welcomed when we come here is something that’s very difficult to explain in words,” said Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, an emissary in Beijing, China, who was raised in England but completed his rabbinical studies in Crown Heights. “It’s the atmosphere and the welcome … that really gives us the strength and encouragement to continue doing what we do.”
He's especially partial to products from Raskin’s Fish Market, which he carried home in suitcases packed with lots of ice, he said.
Event organizers said they help a few dozen rabbis without a place to stay find a bed for the weekend, but hardly anyone has to stay in a hotel; families all over the neighborhood offer spare rooms, often to complete strangers.
Longtime Crown Heights resident David Junik has six people staying with him, which means his four teenage children will make do with beds in the computer room, he said.
“They understand that it’s an important job,” he said. “In our community, when you grow up, you strive to want to be an emissary.”
Plus, he said, the convention brings “a certain life” to the neighborhood.
“It’s a whole buzz,” he said.
Attendees of this year's emissary convention roll suitcases down Kingston Avenue next to a sign welcoming the attendees to the event, which runs through Nov. 8.
Shlomo Raskin, proprietor of Raskin’s who has three sisters living abroad as emissaries, put it another way: “The whole community is alive.”
And making room for 5,200 rabbis doesn’t feel like a chore, hostess Leverton said. In fact, she said, “it’s a pleasure.”
“It’s like if your own siblings were coming, you know? You don’t blink,” she said.
The International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries takes Nov. 5-8 at the Bedford-Union Armory in Crown Heights.
