Chabad emissaries
Married couples (shluchim) posted for life by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement to run its centres around the world
| Chabad emissaries (shluchim)
| |
|---|---|
| Type | Network of Chabad-Lubavitch emissary couples, placed and supervised by the movement's central offices |
| Founded | 1950 (first overseas couple, to Morocco); first emissaries in the United States in the mid-1940s |
| Founder(s) | Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn; Menachem Mendel Schneerson |
| Headquarters | 770 Eastern Parkway, Brooklyn, New York |
| Area served | More than 100 countries and all 50 US states (2025) |
| Key people | Moshe Kotlarsky (d.); Mendy Kotlarsky; Yehuda Krinsky; Abraham Shemtov |
Chabad emissaries (Hebrew shluchim, singular shliach; female shlucha or shlicha) are the married couples whom the Chabad-Lubavitch movement sends from Brooklyn to live permanently in a city, campus or country and run a Chabad House, school or synagogue there. Sending them out (shlichus) is the movement's main activity.[1][2] Chabad's headquarters says more than 5,000 emissary families direct over 3,500 institutions, 2,000 of the families in the United States.[3] In November 2025, 6,500 emissaries and guests from 111 countries met at the annual Kinus Hashluchim (International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries).[4]
The emissaries raise most of their own money, but they are placed, supported and disciplined by the movement's central bodies. In Israel and among the armed forces of the United States, the emissary network works directly with the state. Emissaries serve as military chaplains and in IDF reserve units, including in the occupied West Bank. Since 2016 the Israeli government has part-funded Chabad's campus emissaries through Mosaic United.[5][6][7]
History
Fishkoff writes that the first Chabad emissaries in the United States were sent in the mid-1940s by Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, to open day schools in Pittsburgh, New England and the New York area. In 1948 he sent Shmuel Dovid Raichik to California as a roving emissary.[8] In 1950, before he became Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson sent a couple from Brooklyn to Morocco. Fishkoff calls this the start of "the worldwide outreach campaign for which Chabad is now known".[1]
Heilman and Friedman tie the expansion to Israel's 1967 victory. After the war, they write, the Rebbe set out to direct Israel's "destiny, politics, and religious culture": "In place of the Israeli army he would send his shluchim to do the work."[9] Norton Mezvinsky and Joshua Kolb write that after 1967 the Rebbe "emphasized the need for increased settlement" and sent emissaries to Israel carrying his messages.[10] In 1972 he sent 200 emissaries to the Egyptian front and the occupied Golan Heights to get Israeli soldiers to put on tefillin.[11] Emissaries also followed young Jewish travellers, "particularly Israeli youth" on trips after army service, to places such as Kathmandu, where Chabad's Passover seder became one of the largest in the world.[12]
The network kept growing after the Rebbe's death in 1994. Fishkoff counted more than 3,800 emissary couples in 45 US states and 61 countries in 2003.[13] Between 1994 and 2002 more than 610 new couples took up posts and 705 new institutions opened, for a total of 2,766, with annual operating costs approaching $1 billion.[14] Yehuda Krinsky has said: "There isn't a shliach in the world who doesn't feel the Rebbe looking over his shoulder."[15]
Organisation and money
Couples "leave home with one-way tickets and—if they're lucky—a year's salary". After that they are expected to pay their way through fees, local donors and related jobs.[1] Fishkoff gives $36,000 a year as "the typical salary of a young shliach couple" in 2003. In the former Soviet Union, by contrast, "two major donors" pay emissaries' salaries and expenses.[16] Headquarters supplies materials, settles disputes and sets the general direction, which makes Chabad "a highly centralized, yet profoundly decentralized movement".[1] Berman, who studied emissaries in the field, likewise describes a central office in Crown Heights that helps place families, while emissaries are "largely independent" and "do their own fundraising".[2]
The first emissary sent to a state or country becomes its regional head. That person hires all later emissaries in the territory, decides which cities and campuses to open, and disciplines emissaries "who run too far afield of Chabad directives".[17] Heilman and Friedman compare regional heads to "CEOs of corporations".[18] At the centre, Moshe Kotlarsky worked at headquarters from 1971 and administered the worldwide network. When a Chabad House needed a down payment or a local dispute flared, "Kotlarsky is the one who flies in, writes the check, or picks up the phone".[17] He chaired the annual conference and was described by Heilman and Friedman as "vice-chair of the shluchim". Prospective emissaries consulted him and Krinsky, the head of Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, before choosing a posting.[19] After Kotlarsky's death, his son Mendy Kotlarsky of Merkos 302 opened the 2025 conference.[5] Kotlarsky's account of the Rebbe's four rules for a new city: do not cause friction, secure a financial base for the first year, build a mikveh if none exists, and "avoid countries on the verge of revolution".[17]
The Machne Israel Development Fund pools donors to support emissaries. Relaunched in September 2026, it set up a "Frontier Fund" for remote communities, an emergency fund for emissaries in crisis and an "Israel Pillar Fund".[20]
Place in Jewish communities and states
Fishkoff reports that at least half the pulpit rabbis in England, Italy and Australia, and almost all in South Africa and the Netherlands, were Lubavitchers. In Russia, Chabad rabbis elected the Moscow emissary Berel Lazar chief rabbi in 2000, "pushing aside the existing chief rabbi in a stunning power play publicly backed by President Putin".[21] See Chabad Lubavitch of Russia.
Israel and the military
In October 2023 Chabad.org reported that emissaries at three centres serving Israel Defense Forces bases were supplying reservists called up for the war on Gaza and helping them put on tefillin. The centres were Eilat, Metula and Hebron, the last in the occupied West Bank.[6] The director of Chabad of Hebron, Danny Cohen, and the city's three other Chabad rabbis were serving in IDF uniform. Cohen said: "Year-round, our mission here is with the IDF soldiers and security forces."[6] Lubavitch.com reported that "a number of attending rabbis" at the 2025 conference would "be on leave from duty in the IDF or the U.S. Military".[4] At the gala, Chabad emissary-chaplains "representing all branches of the armed forces" appeared on stage. The audience also heard from Rabbi Liraz Zeira, who had "lost his own legs while on duty in Syria".[5] See Chabad in occupied Palestine.
Israeli state funding
Mosaic United, which says it "receives one-third of its funding from the Government of Israel", announced in August 2016 that Chabad on Campus International, Hillel and Olami would each receive more than $7 million. The grants, matched two-to-one, were worth $66 million over two years.[7]
Attacks on emissaries
These are criminal matters. Convictions and allegations are set out separately.
- Mumbai, 2008. A Chabad rabbi and his wife were killed in the November 2008 Mumbai attacks.[22]
- United Arab Emirates, 2024 (convictions). Zvi Kogan, 28, a Moldovan-Israeli emissary in the UAE, where Chabad had expanded after the Abraham Accords, was murdered in November 2024. In March 2025 the Abu Dhabi Federal Appeal Court found that the killing had a "terroristic purpose", sentencing three men to death and a fourth to life imprisonment. Israeli sources suggested Iran had ordered the killing, which Iran denied. That claim remains an allegation.[22]
- Bondi Beach, Sydney, 2025. On 14 December 2025 two gunmen opened fire on the Chanukah by the Sea event at Bondi Beach, killing 15 people, in what ABC News described as a terror attack. The dead included Rabbi Eli Schlanger, head of the Chabad mission in Bondi and one of the event's organisers.[23]
See also
- Kinus Hashluchim
- Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch
- Moshe Kotlarsky
- Mitzvah campaigns
- Chabad on Campus International Inc.
- Chabad in occupied Palestine
- Chabad Terror Victims Project
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, New York: Schocken, 2003, p. 15.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Elise Berman, "Voices of Outreach: The Construction of Identity and Maintenance of Social Ties Among Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries", Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 48.1 (2009), pp. 69–85, at p. 73.
- ↑ Lubavitch.com, Headquarters Overview Lubavitch.com, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Tzemach Feller, Thousands Convene in New York for the Annual International Conference of Shluchim Lubavitch.com, 12 November 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Menachem Posner and Dovid Margolin, 6,500 Chabad Rabbis Gather for Largest Jewish Conference in World Chabad.org, 16 November 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Bruria Efune, Chabad Centers Near IDF Bases Provide Lifelines for Soldiers Headed to War Chabad.org, 10 October 2023, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 Mosaic United, Mosaic United Announces Official Launch, First Major Project PRWeb, 12 August 2016, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, pp. 111–112.
- ↑ Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, p. 188.
- ↑ Norton Mezvinsky and Joshua Kolb, "Eyes Upon the Land: Chabad Lubavitch on Israel", Religious Studies and Theology 32.1 (2013), p. 12, doi:10.1558/rsth.v32i1.7.
- ↑ Heilman and Friedman, The Rebbe, 2010, p. 189.
- ↑ Heilman and Friedman, The Rebbe, 2010, pp. 9, 174.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, p. 10.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, pp. 12–13.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, p. 80.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, p. 110.
- ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, p. 113.
- ↑ Heilman and Friedman, The Rebbe, 2010, p. 258.
- ↑ Heilman and Friedman, The Rebbe, 2010, p. 8.
- ↑ Tzemach Feller, Machne Israel Development Fund Relaunches With New Generation of Supporters Lubavitch.com, 3 September 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, p. 14.
- ↑ 22.0 22.1 Grace Gilson, 3 sentenced to death for murder of UAE Chabad rabbi Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 31 March 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Tony Ibrahim et al., More Bondi Beach shooting victims named, including 10yo girl and rabbis ABC News (Australia), 15 December 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.