Crown Heights is hosting one of the largest rabbinical gatherings in the world this week. The 43rd International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, known in Hebrew as the Kinus Hashluchim, opened on Wednesday and runs through Monday, November 9, according to Chabad.org, the movement's own news site.

About 6,500 rabbis are attending. They are the emissaries Chabad-Lubavitch sends out to run synagogues, schools, campus centers and community programs, and they arrive from more than 100 countries and from every U.S. state. Chabad.org puts its network at more than 6,000 emissary couples worldwide.

Why Crown Heights

Crown Heights is the world headquarters of Chabad-Lubavitch, centered on 770 Eastern Parkway, and the conference has been held in the neighborhood every fall for more than four decades. For five days the emissaries attend workshops and sessions, compare notes on running their communities and set goals for the year ahead. Chabad.org describes the week as a working conference as much as a reunion: many participants leave with practical resolutions for their own communities.

The schedule

  • Through the week: workshops and programs for emissaries, plus time for colleagues who work thousands of miles apart to meet in person.
  • Friday: a visit to the Ohel in Queens, the resting place of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, where participants pray for their families, communities and home countries.
  • Shabbat: the emissaries spend the Sabbath together in Crown Heights.
  • Sunday morning: the conference's traditional group photograph, which Chabad.org compares to a class reunion picture.
  • Sunday evening: a gala banquet closes the main program.

One emissary's story

Chabad.org's coverage of this year's conference profiles Rabbi Dovid Goldshmidt and his wife, Talya, who founded the CTeen chapter in Atlanta in 2022. Goldshmidt is the first CTeen alumnus to come back to the program as a CTeen rabbi. The Atlanta chapter runs a bar and bat mitzvah club, leadership and mentoring programs, and Shabbat dinners a couple of times a month.

For neighbors

With thousands of visitors staying in and around Crown Heights through Monday, expect busier sidewalks, shuls and kosher restaurants along Kingston Avenue and Eastern Parkway, particularly on Friday afternoon, through Shabbat and on Sunday. The 3 train stops at Kingston Avenue and Crown Heights–Utica Avenue, and the 2, 3, 4 and 5 stop at Franklin Avenue–Medgar Evers College.

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