Younger Set Travels All Over to Lend a Hand (or Voice) for High Holiday Services

Like he has done every year since he was 15, Sruli Steiner of Thornhill, Ontario, will be spending Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur away from home. As the younger brother of four Chabad emissaries, the 21-year-old says he has gained a lot from helping out in their Chabad Houses.

“For Rosh Hashanah, I’ll be leading services in Minneapolis, where my brother Yitzi, and his wife, Chavi, serve the Jewish students at the University of Minnesota. Then for Yom Kippur, I plan on helping out in Washington, D.C., where my brother Yudi, and his wife, Rivky, direct the Lubavitch Jewish Student Center at George Washington University,” says Steiner in a phone interview from Argentina, where he’s finishing off a year as a senior student at the Yeshiva Gedola in Buenos Aires.

Like in past years, Steiner says he will be serving as cantor for the Days of Awe, but also plans on assisting in other ways as well. “They need a lot of help this time of year,” he says, “and I come just to be an all-around good guy—shopping, cooking, helping with the kids, making the students comfortable—whatever they need, I am there for them.”

Half a world away in Australia, 18-year-old Zeesy Gurevitch says she plans to run children’s programs during services for a Melbourne Chabad center for both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Even though she has done it many times before, she says she’s “looking forward to this experience, since it will be in a completely different culture and in an entirely new country.”

As in past years, Gurevitch, who was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., notes that her goal was to “to make these special holidays become alive and exciting for these kids, by bringing in amazing concepts and teaching different ideas—all in a fun manner with games, stories and songs.”

Zeesy Gurevitch, second from left, plans to run children's programs during Chabad services in Melbourne, Australia, for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

Setting an Example

Reflecting on the many places she has gone, she says: “It’s not about where you’re going; it’s about who you meet and hopefully have a positive influence on—just by being an example of a religious, Chabad, normal teenager.”

Yosi Wolf, an Australian-born classmate of Steiner’s, says he will be in Westchester County, N.Y., where his brother, Rabbi Arik Wolf, co-directs Chabad of Bedford with his wife, Sara.

He says he helps in a variety of ways: “In the past, I showed people into the sanctuary, making sure they had prayerbooks and everything else they needed to have a meaningful and inspiring experience.”

Wolf explains that he does it for two reasons. “First of all, it allows me to see firsthand the life of a Chabad emissary providing on-the-job training. But even more important, I go because I am needed. There are only two of them, and there are as many as 400 people attending at peak times. There is so much to do, so they really can use an extra pair of hands.”

Getting chairs arranged and rooms set up for hundreds of people is no small feat, and that's where the extra assistance comes in.

While Steiner and Wolf will both be joining family members, most of the young men and women traveling to Chabad Houses all over the world will be assisting nonrelatives.

For example, Shraga Telsner, a 20-year-old native of London, says he has served as a cantor for Chabad centers in Germany, Virginia and Tennessee, and this year plans to be in suburban New Jersey.

In addition to ongoing voice lessons, Telsner, a trained chazzan, says he begins practicing the traditional chants and tunes around a month before Rosh Hashanah to ensure that will be in tip-top form.

“I try my hardest to choose tunes that people know and can sing along to,” he says. “After all, I am not coming to pray for them. I am coming to pray with them.”

Steiner says: "I come just to be an all-around good guy—shopping, cooking, helping with the kids, making the students comfortable—whatever they need, I am there for them."