* Translated by Janine Muller Sherr
Pictured below are the Chabad women emissaries gathered at their annual conference in New York. The NYPD (New York City Police Department) closed off the road so that thousands of women who oversee huge organizations of Torah, education, and chesed — hubs of activity on behalf of the Jewish people — could pose for a group photo. When the conference ended, each woman headed back to her post in Australia, the Ukraine, Tel Aviv, Thailand, or wherever she is stationed across the globe.
This week’s Torah portion of Terumah describes the building of the mishkan (sanctuary), the spiritual center of the nation of Israel in the desert. God instructed the people, before they arrived in Israel, to construct a mishkan that would accompany them throughout their 40-year journey.
The Lubavicher Rebbe understood this as God’s calling to each one of us in every time and place: Wherever you go, build a mishkan, act as an emissary, and add light to your surroundings. Don’t wait until reaching your final destination. We are told to build a mishkan specifically in the desert to teach us that regardless of our circumstances, wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, it is our task to spread Torah and mitzvot, to draw people close and to strengthen them, and thus to find our mission in that particular place.
Thank you to all the exceptional Chabad sheluchos (emissaries) for establishing “sanctuaries” throughout the world with so much love and devotion. And thank you for teaching that each one of us is a shaliach, responsible for impacting our environment and transforming our own home into a sanctuary, and by so doing, hastening the building of the real mishkan and the arrival of the final redemption.
