“The spirit that permeates all Lubavitch activities and programs” is “a deep recognition of the innate spirituality and goodness that every individual possesses; and the insistence on peeling back external barriers to uncover and tap into that potential.”
So said Rabbi Shmaya Shmotkin, spiritual leader of The Shul in Bayside and director of the Friendship Circle, in a recent telephone interview.
Moreover, everybody has “challenges and struggles” and the capacity to overcome them, said Shmotkin’s father, Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin, director of Lubavitch of Wisconsin.
Such barriers could be autism and blindness, which afflict Kodi Lee, 13, of Tooele, Utah. But these have not prevented him from being a musical prodigy — a pianist and singer — who has performed all over the world.
He is scheduled to perform at the Friendship Circle’s fifth annual banquet, “The Sounds of Friendship,” on Sunday, June 7, at The Pfister Hotel in downtown Milwaukee.
Other personal challenges are shyness and lack of command of English. Those are what afflicted Israel native Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin when, as a self-described “boychik” of 24, he and his wife, B. Devorah Shmotkin, came to Milwaukee in October 1968, and made Wisconsin the seventh U.S. state to have an official Lubavitch representative.
But that didn’t prevent Shmotkin, with his family and associates, from building what more than 40 years later has become an extensive Lubavitch of Wisconsin operation in the greater Milwaukee area and in Madison.
Its activities include education programs for Jews from toddlers to adults, synagogues, three mikvahs (ritual baths), a day camp and the Friendship Circle.
The Friendship Circle “matches teen volunteers with children that have an array of special needs,” said Rabbi Shmaya Shmotkin. “They go to homes and spend time together and forge friendships that last a lifetime.”
At present, the program has 88 teen volunteers, according to the invitation to the event.
Teens are “a group so many have written off as self-absorbed and narcissistic. This program proves what we’ve contended all along, that given the opportunity, these young people are as caring and giving as ever,” said Rabbi Shmaya.
In addition, beginning last spring, the program began to link adult volunteers with adults with special needs for “a host of activities that are catered to them,” he said. According to the invitation, 47 adult volunteers are participating in this activity.
To date, 62 individuals with special needs are being served by the Friendship Circle.
The banquet is planning to honor not only the volunteers. The Friendship Circle is also scheduled to present its Friends of the Year Award to Audrey and Joseph Bernstein.
“They are renowned community leaders and philanthropists who were instrumental in the launching and the growth of the Friendship Circle and other Lubavitch programs, as well as other Jewish and secular programs and organizations,” he said.
The vision behind all the programs, of course, is that of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902-1994), the leader of the international Chabad Lubavitch Chasidic movement.
In reflecting on his 40 years here, Rabbi Yisroel Shmotkin emphasized the rebbe’s “modus operandi” (mode of operation):
“The essence is the absolute belief in the absolute good in everyone,” Shmotkin said. “It is a matter of bringing it to the fore, to remove the layers covering it — emotional, environmental, misconceptions, total ignorance.
“But once you remove that and present [Judaism] in the right way, we believe every Jew will just grab it.”
Shmotkin also said the rebbe “put trust in individuals,” which was exemplified in his allowing the young Shmotkin to become his representative in Wisconsin.
When Shmotkin volunteered to go to a community, “I wasn’t looking out for my personality,” Shmotkin said. “I am not a public speaker or a great public relations man [and at the time] I could hardly speak a few words of English.”
That Shmotkin succeeded was due to the rebbe’s “encouragement and urging” Lubavitch emissaries to “put a sense of urgency” in “how important it is to reach out to [all Jews], to uncover what they really are and to share with them what is really theirs.”
“Not a single individual is excluded, not a moment is to be wasted,” Shmotkin said. “The call is for now and the call is to all. No task is too vast, and no cost is too great to share with all Jews that which is their birthright, our heritage.”
The reception for the Friendship Circle dinner begins at 5 p.m. Dinner chairs are Rachel and Adam Bernstein and Stephanie and Alan Wagner.
For more information on the dinner, call Lubavitch at 414-961-6100.
Formerly op-ed editor, Leon Cohen has written for The Chronicle for more than 25 years.
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