Kinus Hashluchim
Annual international conference of Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries (shluchim), held in New York each November since 1983
| Kinus Hashluchim
| |
|---|---|
| Date | Annually, on the weekend before the Hebrew month of Kislev (usually November) |
| Participants | About 6,500 emissaries and guests at the closing banquet (2023–2025) |
| Organisers | Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch |
The Kinus Hashluchim (Hebrew for "conference of the emissaries"), formally the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, is the annual meeting in New York of the movement's emissaries (shluchim). It is held each November on the weekend before the Hebrew month of Kislev. It is run by Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, the movement's educational arm, and ends with a gala banquet that the organisers call "the largest rabbinic gathering in the world".[1][2] From 2023 to 2025 the banquet drew about 6,500 emissaries and guests.[3] Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman call the conference "a celebration of their network and their accomplishments", in which "the life of Lubavitch now resides".[4] Most sessions are closed to the public. The banquet is streamed, and it is where the movement announces its "resolutions" for the coming year.[5]
History
Origins
According to Chabad.org's history of the conference, Menachem Mendel Schneerson urged in summer 1983 that a gathering of emissaries like one then being held in Israel be arranged in New York. Yehuda Krinsky, "appointed chairman of the conference", reported to him on 30 October 1983 that the first meeting, for emissaries from the United States and Canada, would take place the following weekend at Chabad headquarters. About 65 emissaries attended.[1] In 1987, "at the Rebbe's behest", it became international. That year Schneerson announced that Merkos would pay off 10 per cent of the debt of any emissary who submitted "an audited accounting of his financial state" and lend the other 90 per cent, repayable over four years. In 1986 he had called for an office to help emissaries, which became the Shluchim Office. In 1989 he charged them to encourage "all people" to live by the Seven Laws of Noah. In 1991, at the last conference he addressed, he "spoke to the shluchim that year of Moshiach's imminent arrival".[1] A separate conference for women emissaries (the Kinus Hashluchos) has been held since 1991.[1]
After 1994
Since Schneerson's death in June 1994 the conference has opened with a group visit to his grave, the Ohel, in Queens.[1] Heilman and Friedman describe Crown Heights during the week of the conference, with welcome signs in Hebrew and English on bus shelters and luggage filling the corridors of 770 Eastern Parkway. They describe the 2006 banquet at Pier 94 in Manhattan, where a wall of video screens showed the Rebbe teaching a melody as the hall sang it: "That, of course, was the point."[6][4] Moshe Kotlarsky directed the conference for Merkos for decades and read the annual "roll call" of countries, until his death in 2024.[1][2] Sue Fishkoff opens her book with an earlier banquet at the Brooklyn Marriott. More than 1,300 rabbis attended, and almost three dozen men stood when Kotlarsky called out "Russia!"[7] By 2023 the roll call covered "5813 shluchim families from all 50 states and 110 countries and territories".[8] In 2025 it was cut to continents and regions because of its length.[3]
Donors and lay leaders
Chabad.org says that in recent years a parallel programme has been run for lay leaders from emissaries' communities, who join the emissaries at the banquet.[1] Fishkoff writes that big donors who once met the Rebbe now "spend two days in Brooklyn at the shlichim's annual convention". She quotes the emissary David Eliezrie at the November 2000 convention: "There's big money in this room." He pointed out Mike Abidor, who had chaired the United Jewish Communities General Assembly, and Michael Steinhardt, "one of the founders of Birthright Israel", attending for the first time.[9] At the 2025 banquet the philanthropist George Rohr helped complete a Torah scroll dedicated to Kotlarsky's memory.[3]
Israel and the war on Gaza
Since October 2023 the banquet has centred on Israel and its army. In November 2023 it was linked to a parallel banquet in Jerusalem for 1,400 emissaries in Israel who stayed at their posts. It opened with a memorial prayer for the 1,200 people killed in the Hamas attack of 7 October.[8] According to Chabad.org's report, a video "drew powerful lines between the Chabad rabbis in Hebron, who in addition to their uniforms as Chabad emissaries have donned that of the IDF" and the Chabad rabbi at Columbia University.[8] Hebron is in the West Bank, occupied by Israel since 1967. Lubavitch.com's preview listed Rabbi Mordechai Hellinger of "Chevron" and the IDF soldier Noam Barguz among the speakers.[10] The keynote speaker, Rabbi Yehuda Stern of Johannesburg, spoke of his brother "who is now in Gaza".[8]
In 2024 the conference followed the killing in the United Arab Emirates of the emissary Zvi Kogan. Kalman Ber, whom Chabad.org called "Chief Rabbi of Israel", spoke, and Krinsky "prayed for the release of the hostages". The roll call counted 1,442 emissary couples in Israel and 2,383 emissaries in the United States.[2] At the 2025 banquet in Edison Rabbi Liraz Zeira, who had lost his legs "while on duty in Syria", spoke by livestream from his hospital bed in Israel. Chabad emissary-chaplains from the US armed forces stood on stage.[3] For the banquet on 8 November 2026, COLlive's preview listed Israel's ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, as keynote speaker, on the theme "Across Israel. For Every Jew."[5]
Crown Heights banquet (2025)
The news site ChabadInfo reported a separate event. It wrote that on the Saturday night before the 2025 Edison banquet, "thousands of the Rebbe's Shluchim" attended a "Gala Banquet of the International Kinus Hashluchim" at the Razag Ballroom in Crown Heights. There, after a psalm reading, the speaker "concluded it with the proclamation: 'Yechi Adoneinu'". The same report lists the Knesset member Ohad Tal among the speakers.[11] Chabad.org's report of the Edison banquet does not mention it.[3]
See also
- Chabad emissaries
- Moshe Kotlarsky
- Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch
- Ohel (Chabad)
- Chabad messianism
- Jewish Learning Institute
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6 Mendel Alperowitz, History of the Annual International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries Chabad.org, undated, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Chabad.org Staff, Mourning Tragedy, Commiting to the Future, 6,500 Chabad Emissaries, Lay Leaders Join for Gala Banquet Chabad.org, 1 December 2024, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 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.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010, pp. 24–25.
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 COLlive, Live: Gala Banquet of Kinus Hashluchim 5787 COLlive, 8 November 2026, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Heilman and Friedman, The Rebbe, 2010, p. 1.
- ↑ Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, New York: Schocken, 2003, pp. 9–10.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 8.3 Menachem Posner and Dovid Margolin, Israel is Focus of 5784 Kinus Hashluchim Gala Banquet COLlive (from Chabad.org), 12 November 2023, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army, 2003, pp. 164–165.
- ↑ Lubavitch.com, 6,500 Chabad Rabbis Gather in Show of Jewish Pride and Solidarity Lubavitch.com, 9 November 2023, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Chabadinfo Reporter, Thousands of Shluchim, One Rebbe: The Gala Banquet ChabadInfo, 16 November 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.