JEWISH WORLD

JEWISH WORLD • JUNE 14-20, 2024 23 continued from page 11 Kotlarsky When in need of ad]ice, Chabad emissaries knew they could count on 9abbi 2otlarsky for his mentorship and support. Rabbi Kotlarsky became well known for his role in the annual Kinus Hashluchim, or In- ternational Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries. )owman has not ]isited a synagogue since the 6ct. attack, but he’s planning a series of meetings with 1ewish leaders. continued from page 10 )owman that his opponent has called the rapes and abuse that occurred Oct. 7 “made up.” He walked that back, but the damage was already done. Bowman did not return calls seeking comment. Most people outside the 16th district are not likely to have heard of Bowman. But he did make national headlines when in October 2023 when he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for will- fully setting off a false fire alarm in the Cannon House Office Building. He said his action was a mistake, but the House voted 214- 191 to censure him for it. Jeff Weisenfeld, a Republican who has worked for Gov. George Pataki, Sen. Alfonse D’Amato and the late New Yok City Mayor Ed Koch, said that a number of Jews have become wary of sup- porting Bowman, particularity af- ter he said the U.S. and Israel are facilitating the erasure of Palestin- ian lives. Standing before Pales- tinian flags at a recent rally, Bow- man said, “I am ashamed, quite ashamed, to be a member of Con- gress at times when Congress doesn’t value every single life.” Latimer, who was elected county executive in 2018 after de- feating incumbent Rob Astorino, served on the Rye City Council, the State Assembly (from 2005 to 2012) and the State Senate (from 2013 to 2017.) Latimer likes to point to his record cutting taxes, fighting for civil rights and de- fending a woman’s right to choose. He has fought the Nation- al Rifle Association and is a major supporter of Green New Deal projects in the county. He has the support of several prominent Jewish leaders in West- chester. Rabbi Jonathan Morgen- stern of The Young Israel of Scarsdale called Latimer “a lead- er” and said he would make a fine member of Congress. He also has the support of Engle, the man Bowman beat. “George is class act,” Engel said. “He works hard and would really attempt to repre- sent the people.” Bowman, a former teacher, has said in published interviews that he launched a coalition to fight gun violence, fought to improve healthcare for the poor and and create affordable housing in the county’s low-income neighbor- hoods. He has said that he is not anti-Israel and pointed out that he’s voted in favor of military and economic aid to the Jewish state. James Bernstein is a veteran journalist who frequently writes for the ‘Long Island Jewish World.’ before continuing his studies in Montreal. Even as a young yeshi- vah student, he actively participated in the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns. In Montreal, Kotlarsky once per- suaded the famous Yiddishcomedi- an Shimon Dzigan to wear tefillin, which moved Dzigan so much that he was late for his show. Dzigan ex- plained to the audience that he couldn’t refuse a request from a Lubavitcher yeshivah student to wear tefillin, and the emotional ex- perience caused his makeup to run. K otlarsky married Rivka Kazen in 1970. Like so many young Chabad Chassidim, the Kotlarskys expressed to the Rebbe, Rabbi Men- achem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, their wish to set out to some distant point on the globe where they could serve as shluchim. It soon became clear, however, that Kotlarsky’s life mission was to be fulfilled in the work of Merkos L’In- yonei Chinuch. For decades he spent more time on the road than at home, traveling on buses and planes, at first through- out the United States and South America, and then Europe, the Far East and even the Himalayas. While supporting her husband’s work and raising their large family, Rivka was constantly active in the Rebbe’s mitzvah campaigns, and taught young women at the flag- s h i p L u b a v i t c h w o m e n ’ s school, Beth Rivkah. Her Crown Heights home served as homebase for Jews from Belgrade to Taipei, who knew they could always find an open door. During his travels on behalf of the movement, Rabbi Kotlarsky would meet with the leaders and members of local Jewish communities, listen- ing to them attentively and carefully considering their needs. Did they have Jewish education for their chil- dren? A functioning mikvah? Ac- cess to kosher food? Kotlarsky would assess all these factors and suggest ways that Lubavitch could assist them to strengthen their com- munity. In some cases, they would ask that Chabad send an emissary couple to help them. All of this Kot- larsky would put into a detailed re- port for the Rebbe’s review. Kotlarsky went wherever he was needed, sometimes not even know- ing why he was being sent. Like the time in January of 1984 that he got a phone call at home from Rabbi Chaim Mordechai Aizik Ho- dakov, the Rebbe’s chief of staff, telling him, “The Rebbe wants you to go to Curacao immediately.” Upon arrival to the Caribbean island with a friend, they promptly hailed a taxi to the synagogue. However, in- stead of taking them to the famed Mikveh Israel synagogue, the cab driver took them to another, much smaller one, from which a man was exiting. “We were sent here by the Lubavitcher Rebbe,” Kot- larsky told the man. The man, named Chaim Grois- man, nearly fainted. Groisman, it emerged, was a local Jew whose family was going through a crisis. Their son, Eli, was being harassed in his Protestant school for not attend- ing mandatory religious services. It got so bad that they started keeping him home from school, only to re- ceive warning letters that by law they had to send him to school. The Groismans did not know what to do. One night Chaim Groisman had a dream in which his late grandmother appeared and told him that if ever there was a time he was in trouble, he should turn to the Lubavitcher Rebbe. He’d never heard of the Reb- be before. The next day Kotlarsky and his traveling companion showed up. “Rabbi Kotlarsky invited me to go to New York and attend Camp Gan Israel in the Catskills that sum- mer, and later to yeshivah that start- ed in September,” Eli Groisman re- called. “This was the answer to our prayers, and I accepted the offer im- mediately.” Groisman later wrote a letter of thanks to the Rebbe for sending his emissaries and caring for “a small Jew from Curacao.” “I must … take exception to your referring to yourself as ‘a small Jew from Curacao,’” the Rebbe wrote to him… [T]here is no such thing as a ‘small Jew,’ and a Jew must never underestimate his or her tremendous po- tential.” For the rest of his life Kotlarsky would cite these words from the Rebbe as a source of personal guidance and inspiration. I t was on one of his travels, this time to Bogota, Colombia, that he met Jewish businessman Sami Rohr. Their friend- ship quickly blos- somed, and by the late 1970s a regular visitor to the Kot- larsky’s Crown Heights home was Sami’s son, a young recent graduate from Harvard named George. The extended Rohr family would go on to partner with Chabad and provide seed money and ongoing support to hundreds of Chabad centers and thousands of Chabad programs— bringing the Rebbe’s vision of a Jewish renaissance to college cam- puses, the former Soviet Union, and communities all over the world. “I will never forget when I visited him in the hospital just days before he passed away,” Kotlarsky wrote about Sami Rohr. “His first words to me were, ‘Nu, Rabbi Kotlarsky? Did you bring me some new ‘business’ today?’” Kotlarsky heavily expanded Chabad’s rabbinical visitation pro- gram, which sees rabbinical students fan out across the globe during the summer break and other times of the year; helped found Chabad on Cam- pus International and the Rohr Jew- ish Learning Institute, both of which he chaired; and spearheaded an ar- ray of additional initiatives, includ- ing CTeen, CKids, Chabad Young Professionals and Chabad on Call. At this year’s Kinus, during his annual report on Chabad’s massive expansion during the past year, Kot- larsky reiterated, as he always did, that it was not a time to rest. “We know we have a great deal of work still ahead,” he said. “The Rebbe once said, you could have 1,000 people in your community. If only 999 have been touched and one wasn’t … the mission has not yet been accomplished.” In addition to his wife, Rivka, he is survived by his children Chanie Wolowik (Woodmere, N.Y.); Rabbi Mayer Kotlarsky (Boca Raton, Fla.); Sarah Benjaminson (Glen- view, Ill.); Nechama Greenberg (Vista, Calif.); Rabbi Mendy Kot- larsky (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Rabbi Sruly Kotlarsky (Lafayette Hill, Penn.); Rabbi Levi Kotlarsky (Brooklyn, N.Y.); Rabbi Dovid Kot- larsky (Chicago, Ill.); Goldie Perl- stein (Gainesville, Virg.); and many grandchildren and great-grandchil- dren. Chabad.org