Rabbi Chaim & Kaila Danzinger: The Radical Move from Pasadena to Rostov-on-don (Part 1)

00:00 Speaker 1 Moving to California is like just a dream come true.

00:02 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Chaim Danzinger.

00:04 Speaker 3 It was amazing, you know, palm trees, sun, everything. The community was, you know, the life.

00:10 Speaker 2 And that's his wife, Kayla. In 2006, the Danzingers agreed that their Jewish outreach, working alongside Rabbi Chaim and Rebbetzin Chana Hanoka in Pasadena, was for the most part ideal.

00:23 Speaker 3 We had this gorgeous view in our apartment of the mountains that we'd wake up to every morning, and I was working in the preschool, and my husband was teaching JLI courses, and we would have guests every Shabbos, especially with Caltech, the university there.

00:38 Speaker 1 Beautiful community, warm people. California is California. It was great.

00:43 Speaker 2 Except for one thing.

00:45 Speaker 1 I just always felt something was missing. I felt we're very blessed to be working alongside Chaim and Chanie, but I just felt that I could be doing more. I felt that there's a place that we're more needed.

00:56 Speaker 2 Rabbi Chaim had that place in mind, because before they were married, the Danzingers had each helped run camps in Russia and Ukraine. The Danzingers knew that life for Jews in those places was much more challenging than it was for Jews in Pasadena.

01:13 Speaker 1 But in the back of my mind, I always felt like we should really be there.

01:16 Speaker 2 By 2008, the Danzingers had two young children, so Kayla wasn't sure she wanted her family to endure the hardships in Russia and Ukraine with which she and her husband were familiar. And despite Rabbi Chaim's growing desire to do Jewish outreach in that part of the world, he respected his wife's wishes to remain in sunny Pasadena.

01:38 Speaker 1 So we stayed there. We stayed in California.

01:40 Speaker 2 For a short while longer, that is, because what happened next beautifully illustrates the Lubavitcher Rebbe's vision of Jewish outreach across the globe.

01:49 Speaker 1 The Rebbe teaches that we have to go where we're needed. We have to go where we can make an impact, not necessarily to the place that is most convenient or most beautiful.

01:58 Speaker 2 Chaim and Kayla Danzinger's willingness to share authentic Yiddishkeit with thousands of Jews who desperately needed it taught the Danzingers a lesson about what, and more precisely who, make a place beautiful. I'm Gary Wolk, and this is Lamplighters, stories from Chabad emissaries on the Jewish frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and a community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. This Lamplighters episode is dedicated in honor of Moshe Braun by the Braun children, who send their father all of their love and blessings on his birthday. We here at Lamplighters say amen to that. Thank you very much to the Braun family for listening and for supporting us in our mission to bring you inspiring stories of Chabad emissaries all over the world. And you can also help keep our series going strong. To dedicate an episode, please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe.

03:48 Speaker 1 When it came time to go to yeshiva, my parents sent me to Ottawa.

03:52 Speaker 2 That was when Toronto native Chaim Danzinger was 14 years old.

04:00 Speaker 1 It's a very nice cold winter, and one of the nice things we enjoyed doing there was playing ice hockey.

04:05 Speaker 2 Kayla Danzinger was raised in Pittsburgh. When she was in ninth grade, she decided she wanted to be a summer camp counselor. She did that in the US for a few years, and then in 2000, she and a friend had the opportunity to help at a Jewish camp in Ukraine. Airfare wasn't included in the deal, so they made their own fundraiser.

04:27 Speaker 3 We just sat there making phone calls from home and, you know, collecting $10 here, $15 there, you know, until we got enough money so that we would be able to fly to Ukraine and help run the camp there.

04:39 Speaker 2 The next summer, she helped at a camp in Moscow. She loved both experiences.

04:45 Speaker 3 So I saw that there was an interest and a real fascination with Yiddishkeit. Every little thing that we taught them, they would just, like, drink it up, and it was inspiring to watch how excited they got about Yiddishkeit.

04:58 Speaker 2 Is there a particular story you can tell that demonstrates the sort of yearning for Judaism that your campers had when you were a counselor?

05:07 Speaker 3 Yeah. I remember, like, waking up at, like, 6:00 in the morning to the kids singing Jewish songs. I remember being in the park and, like, all the berachos that we were teaching them and all the benching, they would just sing it while they were, you know, playing on the swings. I remember we put up a mezuzah in our bunkhouse, and they were so excited. They would stand, like, on guard right next to the mezuzah, and everybody that would walk by the mezuzah, they would scream, "Wait, kiss the mezuzah. Kiss the mezuzah." There was something really, really special. But once I had finished with Moscow, I decided, "Okay, I'm done with this."

05:37 Speaker 2 Kayla says that's because life in Russia was very hard compared to the life she had enjoyed in North America, so-

05:45 Speaker 3 I closed the door behind me and I, I wasn't looking back. I felt like I had gotten it out of my system, and we were good to go.

05:55 Speaker 2 But Kayla was still interested in doing Jewish outreach, so in 2001, after she graduated from seminary in Tzfat, she worked for Chabad emissaries in Palo Alto, California, and Raleigh, North Carolina.

06:09 Speaker 3 Once I was helping shluchim as a girl, that's when I really decided that this is something I want to do for the rest of my life.

06:15 Speaker 2 Three years earlier in 1998, Chaim Danzinger, then a rabbinical student, had helped run a Chabad camp for Jewish kids in Simferopol, Ukraine. He says the 12-hour drive from the airport in Kiev was a preview of the hardship of Ukrainian life.

06:33 Speaker 1 So we're driving through towns, villages. The mafia was controlling the petrol, so we drive, run out of gas. The driver will go out and negotiate with some people on the sides of the roads, that they should give us like a tank of gas. As we're driving, you know, we're, I'm wondering what's it gonna be with food, you know? Matzah is the go-to, uh, food product. So it was 1998. They pulled out, uh, boxes of matzah that said in big block letters, "1994" on them, and I realized there's no point, you know, putting up a fuss 'cause you either eat that or you stay hungry.

07:03 Speaker 2 When the young Danzinger arrived at camp, he saw firsthand what the Jews of Ukraine were lacking spiritually.

07:11 Speaker 1 Kids came knowing nothing about Judaism. They came not knowing who Moshe Rabbeinu, who Moses is. They didn't know what Rosh Hashanah is, Yom Kippur, never heard of matzah, Pesach, nothing. The word Torah was new to them.

07:27 Speaker 2 But it was quickly apparent to Danzinger that his 70 or 80 campers were more than eager to learn and to take on mitzvahs, the easy ones as well as the more difficult.

07:38 Speaker 1 A week into camp, a boy came to me, one of these campers of mine, and he tells me in Russian, "Ya khachu a brisannya," which means, "I wanna do a bris." And I look at this boy, his name is Dima. He's 14. He wants a bris? So I handed him a ball. I said, "Go play basketball." He went away. He comes back a half-hour later, and he says, "I want a bris," again. So I hand him, I had some American candy in my pocket. I handed it to him.

08:06 Speaker 2 Dima went away again, but he kept coming back, and then another counselor told Danzinger that a mohel was coming on the last day of camp.

08:15 Speaker 1 And I was in shock. I said, "Here, in camp?" He said, "Yes, we do it every year."

08:18 Speaker 2 The mohel came, and Dima was still steadfast in his wish. Danzinger was chosen as Dima's sandek.

08:26 Speaker 1 And something funny happened. I fainted. Dima was fine. He was playing a Tetris game while undergoing a bris, and for me, it was too much, I guess, to handle. I fainted. They're pouring water on me. They're waking me up, and, um, I woke up, and I'm looking at this kid, and I'm looking at the tremendous self-sacrifice he's having, the mesirat nefesh. Why is he doing this? His father isn't Jewish. His grandparents don't know anything. His mother, you know, is not pushing him. Why would he decide to do something so difficult?

08:55 Speaker 2 But it wasn't only Dima who made that choice. Three other campers willingly took on the mitzvah of Bris Milah that day, entering the Jewish covenant with God and taking their Hebrew names.

09:07 Speaker 1 I left camp. I flew back to Canada, and I just couldn't get beyond this camp. I just couldn't get past this. I couldn't bear the thought that these kids went back to villages, towns, cities that have no rabbis, no communities, no schools. My mind was, "How are these kids doing?"

09:27 Speaker 2 Danzinger returned to Ukraine for the next two summers. Then in 2001, he started his own camp in Dnepropetrovsk.

09:35 Speaker 1 Together with some friends, we established a camp that to this day is actually still operating. It's called Camp Yeka. That's gonna just give them the best and most meaningful, impactful summer experience. So I hired the best counselors that every camp in America is trying to hire. I said, "We need you in Ukraine." And we went back, and we started doing camps that were on a different level.

09:55 Speaker 2 Danzinger appreciated that he was working with young Jews in a part of the world that was once the center of Chabad life and thought.

10:03 Speaker 1 We study Tanya. We study the mimers of the Rebbe Rashab. We study all the Hasidis of all the Chabad Rebbes, and suddenly we're going back to their country, to this old land, and it's specifically there that we're able to work and invest our efforts to bring Jews back to the fold. For me, it felt very special. Looking back now, so many of our campers today are rabbis, rabbis in Kiev, rabbis in Moscow and St. Petersburg, in Israel. Camp changed their lives, and now they wanna continue impacting the same way they were impacted.

10:38 Speaker 2 Danzinger began to think of this as his life's work. That same year, Danzinger heard about another special person, a counselor at a girls camp in Simferopol, Ukraine.

10:53 Speaker 1 And I didn't know she was there. She didn't know I was there. I was just good friends with her brother.

10:57 Speaker 2 Her name was Kayla Estrin. Her brother is Eli Estrin, who is featured in the very first Lamplighters episode.

11:05 Speaker 3 He came home from camp, and he told my parents that the head counselor is an amazing guy, and when it's time for Kayla to get married, we have to hook her up with the head counselor, Chaim.

11:14 Speaker 2 But Kayla was only 16 years old at the time.

11:17 Speaker 1 She wasn't looking. I wasn't looking, but somehow we kept on suggesting it as the years passed by.

11:22 Speaker 3 So for years, he kept having Chaim in mind for me, and then when I started looking at shidduchim, I started, you know, the whole process, so my brother suggested it again, and, um, both of our parents looked into it, and that was it.

11:36 Speaker 2 In 2005, Kayla and Chaim, who had earned rabbinic ordination in Johannesburg two years earlier, began dating. They discussed the possibility of going out on shlichus as a married couple.

11:49 Speaker 1 And everything was going great. At one point, the topic came up where we would wanna live.

11:54 Speaker 3 And then suddenly, like I felt like Chaim kind of dropped a bomb on me, and he suddenly started talking about moving on shlichus to Ukraine as a family, and I was, like, very, very taken aback 'cause I was like, "Listen, I know what it's like living there. I've seen it all, and, um, I totally appreciate that you liked it and that you enjoyed it and that you had such a great experience, but that is absolutely not something that I'm willing to do for the rest of my life."

12:20 Speaker 1 And my wife made it clear that she truly enjoyed her time there, and she felt it was very special and meaningful. But when it comes to, you know, establishing a home and a family, she had no intentions on going back.

12:31 Speaker 3 He was like, "But you know, give me a chance. Let me, like, tell my case." And so he tried to convince me, and I was like, "Okay, it's either me or, or Russia, like, or Ukraine. So pick your choice."

12:47 Speaker 1 And that's when I said, "No, it's fine. We could live in the States." So great, we got engaged, mazel tov, and we had a wedding in Pittsburgh. And, uh, like most Chabad families, we established our home in Crown Heights.

13:00 Speaker 2 The Danzingers had their first child in Crown Heights.

13:03 Speaker 1 And then we got a wonderful shlichus opportunity. We got an offer to move out to California.

13:08 Speaker 2 That offer came from Rabbi Chaim and Rebbetzin Chanie Hanauka, who run Chabad of Pasadena. The Danzingers flew out to take a look.

13:17 Speaker 3 And we fell in love right away. It was just, it was amazing, you know? Palm trees, sun, everything, the community, it was... Who would, who would say no to that?

13:25 Speaker 1 They offered us a position to work for them in the Chabad house, and we agreed. In 2006, we arrived on Hanukkah, and it was a beautiful community, warm people. California is California. It was great.

13:37 Speaker 3 Yeah, we were very happy there. We had a beautiful apartment. We had this gorgeous view in our apartment of the, of the mountains that we'd wake up to every morning, and we were busy working with the shlichim, and I was working in the preschool, and my husband was teaching JLI courses, and we would have guests every Shabbos, especially with Caltech, the university there. So we were very involved with the community.

14:02 Speaker 2 But after about a year of work in Pasadena, Kayla noticed something.

14:07 Speaker 3 As time went on, I saw that my husband wasn't as excited about it as he used to be, and I wasn't sure what was going on until one day he kind of spilled the beans that he really, really missed life in Russia or Ukraine, and he missed the feeling of being needed and just the type of shlichus that there was in Ukraine.

14:31 Speaker 1 I just always felt something was missing. I felt the community is great. We're very blessed to be working alongside Chaim and Chanie, but I just felt that there was something I could be doing more. I felt that there's a place that we're more needed. There's a place that we could really have an impact.

14:47 Speaker 2 So the Danzingers had an honest talk.

14:50 Speaker 3 So once we discussed the situation that California to me was very comfortable, but for him it wasn't, you know, I started becoming more open-minded to what options there were out there.

15:01 Speaker 2 So Chaim spoke with Rabbi Berel Lazar, Chabad Shliach to Moscow, and Chief Rabbi of Russia about their options. One was in Kishinev, Moldova. The other was Rostov, Russia.

15:14 Speaker 3 And so he told us that he'll fly us out, and we could decide ourselves which city seemed to be a good fit.

15:20 Speaker 1 When I heard the name Rostov, the city Rostov, I stopped. This is an offer that's hard to refuse. I'm being offered to move as a shliach, as an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe to a city where 100 years ago, this was the capital of Chabad.

15:41 Speaker 2 In 1915, Shalom DovBer Schneersohn, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, established his home and yeshiva in Rostov. He passed away in 1920, and his son, Yosef Yitzchak, the Friediker Rebbe, assumed Chabad leadership.

15:58 Speaker 1 So for me, knowing the history, the Chabad history, knowing that the Rebbe Rashab lived here, the Friediker Rebbe became Rebbe here, the Rebbe met his wife here, the Rebbetzin, Rebbetzin Chaya Mushka, and being offered the opportunity to help a community come back to life after the devastation of the Holocaust, 70 years of communism. So I approached my wife and I said, "You know, would you consider it?"

16:23 Speaker 2 Danzinger says his wife wasn't too enthusiastic at first.

16:27 Speaker 1 But I came with a great idea. I said, "Would you consider coming to Rostov to check it out for a couple days? And then we'll go to Israel on a vacation. So it's gonna be like a vacation to Israel with a short stopover in Rostov." She agreed.

16:39 Speaker 3 So that's what we did.

16:41 Speaker 2 In August 2008, the Danzingers departed sunny California with their two children, one a toddler and one a baby.

16:49 Speaker 3 We flew to Russia. We stopped off in Moldova. We checked out the scene there, and then we continued on. We were in Moscow for a little bit, and then we continued on to Rostov.

16:59 Speaker 1 We came into the beautiful synagogue. It's a shul that's known as a cantonese shul, built by brave Jewish soldiers that spent 25 years in the Tsar's army. They were plucked away from their parents' homes at young ages. When they came back to the city, they wanted to have their own shul. This year it's 150 years old, so this is, uh, really an exceptional, extraordinary shul. We spent Shabbos there.

17:23 Speaker 3 I was really, really blown away. It's this historical synagogue. It's beautiful and grand, and when we came there for Shabbos, it was a full house. There were young people, there were old, and kids, and, and it was just this beautiful community that were lacking a rabbi.

17:41 Speaker 1 And you see they're here not for the kiddush, because after services, we didn't have any lavish kiddush. We didn't have a good cholent, but they stayed. They stayed, why? They come to connect with God. They come to pray to God. They come to feel Jewish in their neshamah, in their soul, and I was so moved sitting here Friday night, hours after we finished services, answering their questions with the elderly, with the youngsters, with students. For me, I just felt back in my element.

18:10 Speaker 3 There was a preschool already, and I came to the preschool, and the kids were all singing these songs with their just adorable accents, and, and it was just a very, very inspiring Shabbos, sitting down with everybody and hearing their stories and hearing their journeys to Yiddishkeit and hearing how much they needed a leader in the community. The longer we were there, the more we were convinced that this is a special, beautiful place. The Rebbe Rashab's Ohel is there. We had the big zechus to be davening at the Rebbe Rashab's Ohel, and to visit the Rebbe Rashab's house, to become shluchim in such a city was, was a very special offer.

18:45 Speaker 2 The Danzingers left Rostov. Rabbi Chaim was convinced they should move there permanently, but Kayla was still struggling with that possibility.

18:54 Speaker 3 And we were sitting on the plane, stopping over in Moscow. And, um, sitting next to me on this plane was a very sweet Jewish babushka, originally from Rostov, and the entire time on the plane she was helping me with my kids, and, you know, fussing over my kids, and, you know, telling me what to do, what not to do. You know how it is with the Russian babushki. And then she kept saying to me, "Are you sure you want to move to Russia?" And I was like, "Yes." I myself, of course, wasn't sure, but, um, she kept telling me, "Listen, I'm from Russia. It's a really, really difficult place to live. Don't move there. Just go there for a little bit, say hi to the Jews, you know, like do your little thing, and then move back home." The more I would hear her talk to me, I, I felt like this is something I really want to do, and I kept arguing with her, and I kept telling her that the Jews in Russia really need us. And I kept telling her how important this would be, and how much we were needed there. And so I just felt a little bit of a switch that happened on that flight. I, I felt more, like, confident that this is something that we should be doing.

20:07 Speaker 2 The Danzingers vacationed for a few days in Israel, and returned to California.

20:12 Speaker 1 I asked my wife what she thought of the trip, and she said she loved Jerusalem. She said it was a great trip. I asked her what else, and then she said, "You know, let's make the move." And in 2008, we, uh, sold our belongings in California. So we gave up the surfing boards, we gave up the bikes, and a lot of the, uh, nice outdoor sport equipment, and we switched them for ice skates. With the little we had left, we drove cross-country, sold my car on the East Coast, and we boarded a flight, a one-way ticket from JFK to Moscow, and on to Rostov, and, uh, we've been here ever since.

20:50 Speaker 2 The story of the Danzingers' move from balmy Pasadena to Rostov 15 years ago is fascinating in and of itself, but it's nothing compared to the stories they discovered there, story after story of proud Jews with family histories intertwined with the horrors of the Holocaust, repression and fear in the Soviet Union, the decline of Jewish life, and a stunning Jewish rebirth. To hear about the Jews of Rostov, please watch for part two of the story of Rabbi Chaim and Rebbetzin Kayla Danzinger when it becomes available on Lamplighters on this streaming service in April 2023. In the meantime, Lamplighters wishes you and your families a zissen Pesach. I'm Gary Wolik. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast@L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine, or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.