The Women at the TOP: Meet the Rebbetzins at this Year’s Kinus HaShluchos

The Women at the TOP: Meet the Rebbetzins at this Year’s Kinus HaShluchos

This month, over 4000 Shluchos (female Lubavitch emissaries) from far-flung Jewish communities around the world gathered in Crown Heights, Brooklyn to fill up their gas tanks with 5 days of inspiration and camaraderie before they headed back home to communities where they are often the only fully-observant Jews around. I found this video so empowering, to hear the rebbetzins talking about how powerful we women can be if we would only believe in ourselves and our power to change the world–one day, one person, one mitzvah at a time.
This video made me think of one young rebbetzin who, tragically, wasn’t in attendance at this year’s Kinus. 40-year-old Henya Federman A”H, Shlucha to the Virgin Islands, drowned this past November after jumping into the sea to save her drowning daughter’s life. Her baby daughter died immediately, Henya returned her soul to her Creator only this month.
Henya was a devoted wife and mother of 12 as well as a mother to the largely unaffiliated Jews of the Virgin Islands. I knew of Henya from a close family friend who lived for many years in the Virgin Islands. Like so many other local Jewish residents and visitors, our friend’s first steps back to observant Judaism were taken in the Federman home. After the accident, our friend was as devastated as a person who had lost a close relative. This man in his seventies told my husband, “Henya was everything to me. She was my daughter. She was my sister. She was my mother.”
And that is what so many Jews around the world feel about their community’s Shlucha. That they were drowning, and their Rebbetzin dove into the water to pull them back to life.

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