Letters of Thought: Kinus Hashluchim in Photos and Thought

Over the weekend Crown Heights bustled with the energy of the nearly four thousand shluchim in attendance for the Kinus Hashluchim (The International Conference of Shluchim) . . .

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I was more then impressed by the shluchim that swarmed around me. One could see the joy of friends, now living on opposite sides of the world, reunited . . . Seated in their old places in 770, they would open a sefer -a sicha, ma'amar a Misechta or Shulchan Aruch, and relive their bochurishe yahren.

The highlight of the event truly was the banquet -I've seen videos of it in the past, heard about the power of the event, but never before have been to one . . .

The event was set up in Pier 94 in Manhattan.
Coming late (an adventure in an of itself, involving standing outside for 45 minutes for the 'bochurem's' bus to arrive, giving up and instead taking a subway, transfering twice and walking four blocks in Manhattan) I was ushered into the Merkos Shluchim (read nosebleed).

The banquet was set up in the form of a massive T, being in the right arm I was able to get a clear, if some what distant, side view of the speakers at dais. I was not, however able to see the (much longer leg) of the T. After the 'famous' Roll Call (video credit: COL), the crowd began to dance . . .

Entering the main section of the banquet, I was startled by the size of the crowd. For some reason, the view prevented to me had somehow seemed to me as if it contained the majority of the banquet. When I saw the thousands of people -shluchim, rabbonim, businessmen, and others dancing, the enormity of the event - the beauty of unity - dawned on me.

Though many, and far better, pictures can be found elsewhere, I present a few of my own (unfortunately the lighting was low
and my camera's flash is not strong enough)

After the end of the conference, I returned to 770 . . .

Wandering around between Farbrengens, I finally found one to my tastes - not extremists to the left or the right, masters of self-aggrandizement or other such externalities - rather I found one with a group of dedicated shluchim -some famous (R' Berel Lazar -chief Rabbi of Russia- and R' Yosef Chaim Kantor -head shliach to Thailand-) and some less so, these individuals were completely given over to the cause . . .

During the farbrengen, R, a Masphia from Russia brought a young bochur -perhaps only fourteen years old- with him. Shoving the kid next to me in the heart of the crowd, he stood precariously on the back of a bench, looking over at the farbrengen below.

Wearing a simple black kasket, tricolored stripped shirt and well worn jacket, he smiled at me meekly. His name was Rambam (yes, after the Rambam) and as it turned out, he didn't understand a word of Yiddish, English or Hebrew . . . Yet he spent the rest of the night and well into the wee hours of the morning holding my hand for balance and watching the farbrengen.
Ashrei Chelkam!