A Brooklyn Portrait

Thousands of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis, clad in traditional Hasidic garb, gather outside the movement’s worldwide headquarters in Crown Heights for their annual “class picture” on Sunday, November 19, 2017.

Rabbis from around the world were in New York for the International Conference of Chabad-Lubavitch Emissaries, an annual event aimed at reviving Jewish awareness and practice around the world.

This year’s conference carries added significance as the Chabad community marks fifty years since Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, the movement’s leader, initiated the “Mitzvah Campaigns.”

More than 5,500 rabbinic emissaries and communal leaders from as far away as Thailand and Congo attended the conference. The topics covered included combating anti-Semitism, stemming the tide of assimilation, counseling troubled relationships, and promoting a message of inclusion.

Chabad-Lubavitch members clad in prayer shawls converse outside the movement’s global headquarters, at 770 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights.

A young rabbi carries books inside the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters. The annual event includes a “conference within the conference” for rabbis who serve students on college campuses.

Wearing tallitot and tefillin, a group of rabbis prays at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters.

Rabbis in prayer outside the brick-clad headquarters.

Two rabbis entertain a gathering of Chabad-Lubavitch children.

A Chabad-Lubavitch woman leads a gathering of children in song.

A Hasidic woman stands outside a wig shop near the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters.

After the ”class portrait,” thousands of Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis line up to travel from Crown Heights to a banquet in New Jersey.

Beyond the curtain, the rabbis feast at a banquet in Bayonne, New Jersey.

Rabbis and lay leaders engage in spirited Hasidic dancing at the banquet in Bayonne.

A rabbi dances during the banquet.

Rabbis in conversation after the banquet. The annual conference gives rabbis an opportunity to connect with other Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries and “recharge their batteries.”

A Chabad-Lubavitch rabbi at the end of the banquet. According to Rabbi Chaim Landa, the movement’s annual conference gives the participants, especially those going back to far and isolated outposts, an exhilarating send-off, coupled with the sense that they are not alone.