They Looked Everywhere - And Chose Zambia: Rabbi Mendy & Rivky Hertzel

00:00 Speaker 1 We put in a petition for our visa, and it was denied. We tried again, and it was denied.

00:05 Speaker 2 But the Zambian officials who twice rejected Rivky and Mendy Hertzl's application for a work visa with the intent to establish a Chabad house in the capital city of Lusaka didn't know who they were dealing with, quite literally.

00:19 Speaker 1 "What's a rabbi? Why are you coming here? Are we giving a Zambian job opportunity away?" We said, "No, don't worry about it. No Zambians want to become rabbis."

00:28 Speaker 2 But there were Zambian Jews who wanted a stronger Jewish community. They wanted the Hertzls, a young, enthusiastic Chabad couple, eager to begin their life's work in Lusaka.

00:40 Speaker 3 Bringing kosher food, bringing mezuzahs, bringing tefillin, bringing lulav and esrog and matzahs, to just build everything to make sure it will be easy to have a Jewish good life here.

00:53 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolak, 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. Back to our story in a moment, but first, I'd like to tell you about a great opportunity. You can partner with Lamplighters in sharing stories of Chabad emissaries doing amazing work all over the world. Please consider dedicating an episode. You can email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. You can also let us know how we're doing and about the shluchim you think we should consider for upcoming episodes. Please rate and review Lamplighters to make it easier for other podcast listeners to find us. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch. Menachem Mendel Hertzl believes he was born to live a life of Jewish outreach. That began for him in Northern Israel.

02:30 Speaker 3 My parents started a shluchim in a city called Rosh Pina, near Tzfat.

02:35 Speaker 2 Mendy's parents, Rabbi Shalom Ber and Devorah Hertzl, would go on to establish Chabad of the Golan Heights. His maternal grandfather, Rabbi Arye Leib Kaplan, had been sent to Tzfat by the Lubavitcher Rebbe in the early '70s.

02:50 Speaker 3 And I just joined this big family picture of shluchim in that area.

02:56 Speaker 2 Hertzl loved being a part of that legacy, but he also thought about the future and drew inspiration from the story of Avraham Avinu.

03:05 Speaker 3 Lech Lecha me'artzecha ume'ad artcha umebeis avicha. To go and to do the Lech Lecha in the strongest way for me was always the strongest dream and wish to have. Since I was born, it was crystal clear. It was not a question.

03:19 Speaker 2 Mendy studied in yeshivas in Israel and Detroit, and then for one year in Crown Heights, with a single-minded determination to be a Chabad emissary on the front lines. 6,000 miles away, Rivky Hertzl was already living the life of a young shlucha. Rivky describes her upbringing as normal until she wandered outside her family's Chabad house.

03:45 Speaker 1 You know, we would, like, walk to shul on Shabbos, see a moose.

03:48 Speaker 2 That's because Rivky lived in Anchorage, Alaska.

03:52 Speaker 1 We would camouflage ourself into the trees so they wouldn't see us, wait for them to pass. They were, like, part of our life. The bears not as much.

04:00 Speaker 2 Rivky's parents, Rabbi Yosef and Rebbetzin Esther Greenberg, were the pioneering Chabad emissaries to Alaska. The Rebbe sent them in 1991 to support the 3,000 or so Jews who lived and worked in Anchorage at that time. From early on, Rivky was a part of that.

04:18 Speaker 1 I was teaching Hebrew school from a very young age. The Chabad House was in our house till I was maybe eight or nine. The playroom was in my room.

04:27 Speaker 2 Because of Anchorage's latitude, late sunsets made Jewish life even more of an adventure than they would ordinarily be.

04:35 Speaker 1 And when Shabbos ends at 2:00 in the morning, you can't vacuum the floor. You can't really clean up much after. You kind of just go to sleep and deal with it in the morning. We were making havdalah Sunday morning in the summers.

04:46 Speaker 2 Rivky attended Chaim Mushka High School in Detroit and Machon Shoshana in Jerusalem. She says she was strongly attracted to the idea of shlichus. In 2018, Mendy attended the Kinus Hashluchim while he was still in yeshiva. One day, he hopped a ride with a bocher, Chaim Bar Sela, who had done some outreach work in Lagos, Nigeria.

05:10 Speaker 3 And he was describing shlichus there, how much there is nothing, and you're coming to establish not only Yiddishkeit, but you're coming to a place that there is no water, and there is no food, there is no electricity, and there is nothing. And you creating everything by yourself. And to me, that was the dream, to come to a place where there is no infrastructure for regular Jewish life and to start to do whatever I can to make this place better and the Jewish life here stronger.

05:40 Speaker 2 In late 2020, the Hertzls' paths converged.

05:44 Speaker 3 I was learning by the oil, and that year was COVID, not so many years ago. The yeshiva was empty, the oil was empty, Crown Heights was empty, and it was beautiful to just sit and learn.

05:55 Speaker 2 And it was time to think of marriage. Rivky was working at Chabad of Charlotte, North Carolina, when she began dating Mendy.

06:02 Speaker 3 I was dating her in New York at the beginning of the winter, and then- I was asking if we are moving in shluchas. She's from Alaska originally, so it was no question that she will go to shluchas as well.

06:15 Speaker 2 But Mendy wanted to know how far Rivky would be willing to travel, so he picked a random faraway location.

06:22 Speaker 3 The question was just if she's ready to go even to Africa, and I asked when we were dating, "Are you ready to go to Africa?" And she said, "Of course."

06:30 Speaker 2 Mendy Herzl received smicha in Crown Heights, and the Herzls were married in early 2021 in New York, where they lived for one year. They were open to all possibilities.

06:41 Speaker 1 We just knew that we wanted to start something on our own. I think both of us came with that. We wanted to go somewhere that had nothing.

06:49 Speaker 3 We considered the entire world.

06:51 Speaker 1 We started to open Google Maps and the Chabad locator, and we were literally just going through continents and countries and states and cities. We would find a place, check if there was a Chabad there. We would try to figure out why isn't there a Chabad. Is there a Jewish population? We would reach out to the head shliach, the Chabad rabbi of that place, and ask them, "Are you looking for someone?"

07:16 Speaker 2 There were no takers at first, but not long after the Herzls were married, the head shlucha to Central Africa, Miriam Bentolila, passed away. Her husband, Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila, publicly announced that in her honor and her memory, he wanted to open a Chabad house in Zambia.

07:35 Speaker 1 My husband is into geography. I was not. I never heard of the country in my life. I never knew it existed.

07:40 Speaker 2 The Bentolilas had been sending visiting shluchim to Zambia for 30 years. The Herzls jumped at the opportunity to become the country's first permanent Chabad emissaries.

07:51 Speaker 3 I reached out to him, and I said, "Can I get this, uh, job, this position?"

07:55 Speaker 1 And we kept calling again and again. We made him crazy.

07:58 Speaker 2 But other couples were interested too, and the process of choosing the right shluchim was taking time.

08:04 Speaker 1 So we went to look at other things.

08:06 Speaker 3 We decided to consider Italy and Australia, and we actually went to check in Alaska and Idaho and Washington state, everywhere.

08:15 Speaker 2 But Rivky says Zambia kept pulling them back.

08:20 Speaker 1 It's not something that we can even explain. It's like, you know, a shidduch.

08:24 Speaker 2 So they kept calling Rabbi Bentolila.

08:26 Speaker 1 Until he said, "Okay, you know what? You could pack your bags. You could go for Purim and Pesach." So that kind of shocked us a little bit, like make Pesach in Africa?

08:35 Speaker 3 Rabbi Bentolila said, "You need to go here to Zambia to visit for at least a month and a half. You can't do less." And we were like saying, "It doesn't make sense, a month and a half." Like, it means I need to leave my job and to leave the kollel and leave everything. So I called, uh, by mashpia, and I asked him, like, "Do you think it makes sense?" He said, "Listen, we are talking about a decision for life, so you have to take this, uh, month-and-a-half trial to be able to see if you are ready to do this step."

09:03 Speaker 2 So in March of 2022, the Herzls boarded a plane and set off for faraway Zambia on their very first visit to the African continent.

09:14 Speaker 1 We packed matzah, we got everything together, and that's it. We arrived 24 hours before Purim.

09:20 Speaker 3 I'm not a, a person that look for adventures. I'm not the adventure kind of person. So when we came to Africa, everything was new.

09:28 Speaker 1 We didn't have meat. We didn't have dairy. We didn't have fish. We just gathered together whatever we could. We learned how to sift flour for the first time, how to check brown eggs. This was in one night. You know, we made hamantaschen. We made a pareve pasta bar, but that was it. The next night we were already making a Purim party, and we met maybe 25, 30 people, and they all came together. It was beautiful. You know, we got to know some people. They asked us if we were coming to stay. We said we don't know.

09:57 Speaker 2 The Herzls spent the next few weeks getting to know the local community and preparing for Pesach.

10:03 Speaker 1 We had 30 people for our first community Seder. We, uh, learned how to bring frozen kosher food in from South Africa. We learned that when you bring it by car, by bus, it might spoil. It might get delayed. You don't know if you'll get the food. We had to bring in maror. We had to... The whole thing was a learning experience, but it was a really beautiful Seder that we had.

10:25 Speaker 2 The Herzls also learned about the history of Zambia's Jewish community, which stretches back over 120 years. Many of Zambia's first Jews worked in the ranching and mining industries, and they had set down some roots.

10:39 Speaker 3 So the Israeli and Jewish community here was for many, many years, and they were very strong here. There was nine shuls here, and there is still nine cemeteries, nine different cities all over the country.

10:51 Speaker 2 For over six decades, the Jews of Zambia held on to tradition, albeit without a rav and without a single mikvah. Then, in 1968, the Lubavitcher Rebbe sent a shliach, a young South African yeshiva bachur named Yerachmiel Glazer, to support and inspire Zambian Jews. Years later, Glazer told Mendy Herzl his story.

11:15 Speaker 3 That the Yidden here are celebrating Pesach and Shavuot and Rosh Hashana, but nobody's celebrating Purim. So when he came from Chabad, it was in '70, he was trying, like, to help them to realize that Purim is also a holiday, and he said, like... They made a beautiful Purim party.

11:29 Speaker 2 That was in 1970, but by that time, Zambian Jews were feeling less secure in their country as it transitioned to a one-party socialist government.

11:39 Speaker 3 Then they disconnected the relationship with Israel in '73, so it became worse and worse, so a lot of families left.

11:46 Speaker 2 By the time Glazer threw Zambia's first Purim party in 1970, there were only a handful of Jewish families living in Zambia. That's one reason why celebrating Purim nearly 50 years later meant so much to the Herzls. But after Zambia's government abolished its one-party system in the early '90s, Israelis began to return.

12:08 Speaker 3 Now it's like a movement of Israelis and American and South Africans and international community.

12:13 Speaker 2 That was just one of the things that convinced the Herzls to stay.

12:17 Speaker 1 We decided by the end of Pesach that this was gonna be the decision.

12:25 Speaker 3 We felt that it's our place, that there is so much to do here, and we felt that what we're doing has a meaning to it here. So yeah, it was a very emotional connection.

12:34 Speaker 2 In fact, the Herzls were so sure that Zambia was the perfect place for them that they stayed a month longer than they had intended, past Lag BaOmer.

12:43 Speaker 1 We went back to New York, gathered up our things, our apartment, gave things away. We went to my parents in Alaska to have my first baby, and then we thought, "We'll jump on a plane and go." We didn't realize that work visas could be denied. And so we went to New York, and we were getting ready to go back in time for Hanukkah. We put in a petition for our visa, and it was denied. We tried again, and it was denied. They basically didn't really know what we were, who we were, what's a rabbi, why are you coming here. You know, most countries don't want to give away job opportunities to people who are not citizens, so they said, "No, don't worry about it. No Zambians want to become rabbis."

13:23 Speaker 2 For a few months, the Herzls navigated the Zambian bureaucracy. They sent yeshiva bochurim and couples to run services the following Tishrei, Hanukkah, and Purim.

13:33 Speaker 1 And we were just sitting on our hands, just waiting to be allowed into the country.

13:37 Speaker 2 But the Herzls finally emerged from a sea of red tape. Rivky remembers that they received their final government approval on a Thursday.

13:46 Speaker 1 We barely even had ti- I mean, we only had three days notice from when we got the visa till we were on a plane, so we didn't have much time to gather our things together. It came on a Thursday. We were on the plane on Sunday night heading back, three weeks before Pesach.

14:00 Speaker 2 The Herzls arrived in March 2023 as Zambia's first permanent Chabad emissaries.

14:07 Speaker 1 We made Pesach, and after that was when we kind of started to figure out what does our community actually need from us.

14:14 Speaker 2 The Herzls agreed that what Jews in Zambia needed the most at the outset was very simple: connection to Jewish community.

14:23 Speaker 3 Our first priority as shluchim is to make sure that every Yid in town is connected with us. We need to make sure that everyone in town knows our number, knows who we are, and they will feel comfortable to come and visit.

14:38 Speaker 1 Just a place that people felt comfortable to express their Jewish identity. This is my place. I could come and make havdalah, and I could come and, and daven. I think whatever it is that they feel comfortable with, they feel like that's their place.

14:54 Speaker 2 Rabbi Mendy estimates there are now about 40 Jewish families living in and around Lusaka. More than half of those are permanent residents. The rest stay for weeks, months, or years because of connections with seasonal business or the American or Israeli embassies.

15:11 Speaker 3 And, uh, Baruch Hashem, yes, when you have a new family come, new people that come, they bring new energy, a new environment, and we know that we have an opportunity to make them connected to Yiddishkeit, to make them connected to the , to make them connected to everything, and that's our job. That's what we are focusing on.

15:30 Speaker 2 The Herzls do get a small handful of tourists eager to view Zambian wildlife and nature preserves, but it's expensive for Israeli backpackers, and the world-famous Victoria Falls are a long eight-hour drive from Lusaka. So most of their support comes from the permanent and transient communities, Shabbos guests, and international donors who value having a Jewish resource so far from home, and from their informal kosher market that supplies locals with meat, wine, dairy products, and Israeli dry goods. The Herzls say they love their diverse, committed community.

16:08 Speaker 1 Here, you know, in the middle of nowhere, everyone kind of comes together, and they come here, and they just feel free to kind of reinvent themselves Jewishly.

16:19 Speaker 4 My name is Saul Israel Radansky.

16:22 Speaker 2 Saul was born about seven decades ago in Livingstone, Zambia, practically under the misty shadows of the world-famous Victoria Falls.

16:31 Speaker 4 There was a shul and a rabbi and a sohet. There was something like 170 Jewish people in the town, and so I grew up in that community until I was 10 or 11.

16:42 Speaker 2 Saul attended a Jewish school in Cape Town, South Africa, until he was 17. He went to university in London and lived in Canada, Australia, and Italy, all the while maintaining business connections in Zambia. He returned with his wife and children in 1996. By that time, even in Lusaka, the Jewish population was still below what it had been before its flight in the early '70s.

17:07 Speaker 4 The number of Jews was tiny. We were down to maybe 20 people who wanted to identify as Jews.

17:14 Speaker 2 Saul had seen the visiting shluchim, and through them, what Chabad stands for.

17:19 Speaker 4 And I could see, of course, there was already the beginnings of an open-handed dialogue between Chabad and the general Jewish community, secular and non-secular.

17:30 Speaker 2 Saul is currently chairman of the Council for Zambia Jewry, and one of those who lobbied for the Herzls and helped them acquire the necessary work permits. Unfortunately for Saul, when the Herzls were granted approval, a COVID travel ban had stranded him in Australia, preventing him from returning to Zambia for two and a half years, so he first met the Herzls by phone.

17:54 Speaker 4 And I got to know them by talking about the real issues regarding their physical presence and their determination to be here. We weren't talking about, you know, recipes for matzo balls, things like that.

18:08 Speaker 2 Well, why not? There's certainly nothing wrong with a good matzo ball soup recipe.

18:13 Speaker 4 I- I wasn't yet telling them that my particular forte was in tzimmes, but, um, they got to understand that eventually .

18:24 Speaker 2 Saul points out that he is, quote, "Not Chabad." He considers himself to be secular, but he saw something in the Herzls that he felt would be good for the community.

18:35 Speaker 4 Both of them showed that openness that I'd become familiar with in the previous years. Tolerance was an absolute necessity, and so I thought this was going to be a fabulous, uh, opportunity for the Jews of, uh, Zambia, and I thought it would attract many more.

18:56 Speaker 2 It was an opportunity for Saul as well. These days, he attends prayer services, and Rabbi Mendy says Saul is there at every single holiday celebration. He even wraps tefillin from time to time. Saul credits the Herzls.

19:11 Speaker 4 I would never have ever imagined becoming as included in a dynamic Jewish environment if it had not been for them. I probably would not have allowed myself to be exposed to Jewish tradition.

19:29 Speaker 5 My name is Michal Sibiar Cohen. I was born and, uh, raised in Israel in Tel Aviv.

19:34 Speaker 2 Michal says she's from a traditional family that ate kosher and celebrated the holidays. She attended a secular school and earned two university degrees in linguistics. Michal has worked as a teacher of Hebrew and French and as a translator in an Ivory Coast cybersecurity firm. A few years ago, her husband took a CEO position at a Zambian limestone company, and the whole family moved there.

20:01 Speaker 5 I didn't know about any Jewish community before the Herzls arrived. I just remember the day they arrived, and they just made it so easy, really, for everyone to feel that, wow, we want to be part of it. Immediately for my husband, who is a completely non-religious, uh, person, he told me, "Wow, Rabbi Mendy is so nice, and he's from my area, the north of Israel. Let's go." And also Rivky. You know, I could sit and speak with her hours about the Jewish community in Alaska, and I was like, "What? Are there Jews in Alaska?" And she was like, "Yeah, of course, a lot." You know, and when you enter there, you feel safe and peaceful. You want to learn more and to open your mind, and no one will ever judge you, no one. And you just want to stay close to them and to be part of it. I have three boys, and my kids, them, they also felt it.

21:02 Speaker 2 Michal's oldest son requested that Rabbi Mendy be his bar mitzvah teacher.

21:07 Speaker 5 He told me that the moment he started the lessons with Rabbi Mendy, it was just like talking to someone who will always understand him.

21:17 Speaker 2 Michal and her family celebrated her oldest son's bar mitzvah in Zambia.

21:21 Speaker 5 And the guests were Israeli and Jewish community. Some of them I didn't even know, but the entire community was, uh, invited. So it was special to see Jewish people arou- from around the world coming and celebrating a bar mitzvah of a kid they don't even know.

21:38 Speaker 2 The Cohens left Zambia last year and returned to Israel. When it was time for the bar mitzvah of Michal's second son in early twenty twenty-six-

21:48 Speaker 5 Rabbi Mendy was giving him Zoom lessons. You know, I, I would stand and listen behind the computer and listen to them, and my husband also told me that he likes to listen to him. And my husband is telling me it's so nice to go and sit with Mendy for two hours and to listen to him and to talk to him about things.

22:07 Speaker 2 Michal says she recently started lighting Shabbos candles, which she had never done before, and she's now looking for women's Torah study groups. And who knows? Maybe she and her husband will learn even more in a few years when their youngest son studies with Mendy on Zoom for his bar mitzvah. In just over three years, the Herzls have made a significant impact on Jewish life in Zambia. It hasn't been easy learning the ropes in a new city, country, and continent. In Zambia, getting even basic items can pose a real challenge.

22:44 Speaker 1 Last Sukkot, we had our lulav and esrog arranged to come in a day before Sukkot from South Africa, and at twelve PM Erev Sukkot, we discovered that it was stuck in the airport. They weren't letting it out, and they said we didn't complete all the documents that are needed to allow it in. They called it the flowers. "We can't give you the flowers without getting a document from South Africa, and from here, and from that one, and from this one." And it was looking pretty bad.

23:12 Speaker 2 But Rivky took charge.

23:14 Speaker 1 So I got on the phone with the lady in charge there. I kind of forced her to get on a FaceTime with me, and I tried to explain to her and talk reason to her. And at a point I said, "I'll give you my whole bank account. Tell me how much. Just, just give me the number. We need this as a religious obligation." And, uh, I was on the phone with her for about an hour. You know, we were writing letters to the OL, to the rabba.

23:35 Speaker 2 Rivky says that after more than an hour of persuasion, the woman at airport customs relented.

23:41 Speaker 1 She accepted, uh, a payment of some sort to give us the lulav and esrog, and, uh, it was unbelievable. I mean, even after her, I had to fight with three more agents to get it home to me, so it was, it was a real, it was a real process. It was a very special experience. And, uh, it arrived two hours before the holiday started.

24:06 Speaker 2 Remember that early events at Chabad of Zambia drew an average of about thirty people.

24:12 Speaker 3 And in Tishrei, we had seventy, and Rosh Hashana, in Sukkot, in Simchat Torah, almost every event we had seventy people.

24:19 Speaker 1 And we did not come with any expectation of growth. We were fine with having thirty people at every event, but unbelievably, our events at this point are at sixty, seventy.

24:28 Speaker 2 The Herzls' home/Chabad house could no longer comfortably accommodate holiday crowds, so the Herzls recently moved into their own house. There's an Airbnb, which is usually full for Shabbos and holidays, across from the shul. They now import kosher food and wine for a community that increasingly demands them. Chabad of Zambia hopes to build a mikvah and expand their preschool and Hebrew school programs. But beyond the growth and the numbers, Rivky says there's also been a qualitative change as their diverse community comes together.

25:04 Speaker 1 When we first came, people were not necessarily willing to be a community with each other. If they felt too different, coming from two different backgrounds, they almost didn't feel they were a part of the same family. And as time went on, people really learned how to come together and to be okay with the differences, and it's a very cool thing to watch. You know, I have, I have one little girl that calls our house the candle-lighting house. "Can we go to the place where we light candles? The li- The candle-lighting house."

25:37 Speaker 2 Zambia is a majority Christian country.

25:40 Speaker 6 Baruch Hashem, the Christian community here is very welcoming, and they love Israel, and they love us as Jews, and they are very, very appreciating what we are giving here because Israel is very, very committed here to this country as well. So I never met personally any antisemitism, any bad feelings towards Israel. The opposite, connection and warmth, and this is also part of our job. Meet with these people. Explain to them what is Judaism. Explain to them what can we do to make them feel more connected to God.

26:10 Speaker 1 And I would say that we probably experience the least antisemitism. We get emails daily asking to help people convert to Judaism.

26:20 Speaker 6 What is Judaism all about, and what is Sheva Mitzvahs, and that also non-Jews are going to heaven. They're learning from Judaism and from us that we always have to make this world better and to make this world peaceful, to make this world a place of goodness.

26:36 Speaker 2 That message has made its way all the way up to Zambian president Hakainde Hichilema, whom the Herzls met in 2023 in Israel, where they gifted the leader with a menorah. The Herzls' community is relatively small, but they dedicate everything they have to it.

26:56 Speaker 6 It's not nine to five job. It's like 24-hour, seven days a week.

27:01 Speaker 1 I think that what the rabbi wanted from us is to be 24/7 on call. You know, we don't sleep for a second. We don't get the off button. There's no off button when it comes to the Jew in need. Even if they're non-Jews and wh- what do people need from me? What can I give to inspire people to live a more godly life, to live a more giving life?

27:20 Speaker 2 The Herzls now have in their possession letters sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe to Yerachmiel Glazer, the Yeshivah bocher the Rebbe sent to Zambia in 1968.

27:31 Speaker 6 And every time we have doubts and we have hardships, and we feel like, uh, not so sure that that's our shlichus, we say like, "I have this original letter in my hand." So it's always strengthening, and it's always a point of, like, reassurance of what we are and what is our job here.

27:48 Speaker 1 I think there is nothing more empowering.

27:53 Speaker 6 We have a beautiful gift that we got from the Rebbe, shlichus, which is surrounding me and my family since the second I'm starting to breathe until I'm stopping breathing. We are standing in the front lines to bring Mashiach. Because we want to bring Mashiach as soon as possible.

28:25 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wolek. 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 at 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. Lamplighters is a project of Machne Israel, the social services arm of Chabad Lubavitch.