From preschools to colleges, Chabad is there

The numbers are staggering: 4,202 shluchim (emissary) couples working around the world; 94,650 students interacting with Chabad-Lubavitch on campus annually; 37 million unique visitors per year to Chabad.org. 

Chabad is not just a sect of Judaism anymore, but “a force throughout the entire world,” said Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author of “Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History,” a recently published biography of Chabad’s seventh leader.

On Nov. 23, more than 4,000 people attended the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries in Brooklyn. Since Schneerson’s passing 20 years ago, there has been a 236-percent growth in the number of shluchim. Chabad emissaries are in 80 countries and 49 out of 50 U.S. states (only South Dakota does not have an emissary). In the last year, new emissaries moved to Jamaica, Aruba, and the Caiman Islands.

“The Rebbe’s goal was to reach every Jewish community and I think he has succeeded to an astonishing effect,” Telushkin told said.

In America, an aspect of Chabad’s growth has been the significant participation of Jews across denominations and levels of affiliation in the Chabad movement’s institutions, particularly in its schools. 

When Stacey Aviva Solomon’s son, Eli, was only a few months old, she enrolled him in a local Conservative Jewish preschool for three days per week, and then into a Chabad preschool for one day per week out of convenience. She never thought she would switch him to the Chabad House Center of Kansas City’s preschool full-time.

“It was all about proximity to start with,” she said. “But we continued with the program because of the amazing teachers and the high-quality of what we got.”