PHOTO: A Roving Rabbi in Greece.
“The Roving Rabbis” are coming to Arizona! Two rabbinical students will be visiting more than 40 cities around Arizona as part of their community outreach training. The young rabbis-in-training will be spending their summer on the road, sharing their love for Jewish life and bringing the beauty of Judaism wherever they go.
Rabbinic students Shmuel Evans and Yitzchak Stell will conduct their visits from July 17 through Aug. 9. Cities they will be visiting include: Kingman, Payson, Sedona, Yuma, as well as smaller cities and towns. Smaller towns cities include Avondale, Bisbee, Buckeye, Bullhead City, Camp Verde, Casa Grande, Coolidge, Cornville, Cottonwood, Dewey, Duncan, Eloy, Green Valley, Holbrook, Jerome, Lake Havasu, Laveen, Maricopa, Nogales, Patagonia, Pine, Pinetop, Quartzsite, Rio Rico, Show Low, Sierra Vista, Snowflake, Sonoita, Tombstone, Wellton, Wickenburg, Wilcox and Winslow.
Throughout their three-week visit, Kaplan and Refson will be reaching out to members of the Jewish community in the region – most often in one-on-one home visitations – listening, talking as they seek to reinvigorate people’s Jewish connections.
For the rabbis-in-training this summer assignment will also provide an invaluable on-the-ground experience in Jewish outreach and the specific challenges of smaller Jewish communities, as well as a unique appreciation for the diverse composition and needs of the Jewish community.
Conceived by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, in the early 1940s, the visitation program has been credited with bolstering and rejuvenating countless Jewish communities and individuals around the world.
“The goal is to make Judaism accessible and relevant to every Jew, wherever they may be,” says Rabbi Zalman Levertov, regional director of Chabad of Arizona, who oversees the program.
The program has seen rabbinical students visit more than 100 countries around the globe and every one of the United States. This year 350 Chabad-Lubavitch rabbinical students have been dispatched to Jewish communities in Asia, Europe, the Americas and beyond.
For more information or to request a visit, please email ChabadAZ@cox.net.
