Copenhagen: The cobble-stoned streets, ornate spires, and proliferation of dragonesque statues all combine to provide Copenhagen with its fairy-tale character. But contrasting with its cheery bike-filled streetscape are the Danes themselves - an earthy people with ponderous natures punctuated by seriousness andintellectualism.
For a speaker, an audience of dour people constitutes a supreme challenge. Forget question time. It doesn’t work. The people are private - polite, but nevertheless, private. They chew on my bone of spiritual Judaism, taking an interminable period to digest and decide.
The shaliach, however, is more than a match for his Danish community. Yitzy Lowenthal is a consummate Englishman - organized, prepared, meticulous, analytical, and actively pro-active. He briefs me with expected thoroughness: be careful when discussing this theme; don’t go that way; emphasize this point. The truth is that Yitzy’s advice is right on target, ensuring I don’t step on landmines of local sensitivity or inclination.
Yitzy and his wife and family occupy a multi-story Chabad House in the heart of Copenhagen. The upper floor is the residence. Below are floors for the school, the shule, games rooms, offices and more. Very impressive, to say the least. Yet another Chabad miracle conjured up by the Rebbe’s Brocho
After my presentation a young man approaches me with his wife and they tell me how my lecture here three years earlier, influenced them to take on Mitzvos. But I know better. I may have provided the ‘kick-start’ - but it was the hard, grounded work of Rabbi and Nechama (nee Rodal) Lowenthal that really ripened the fruit of these souls - and many others as well.
Denmark may have its Australian Princess Mary. And its Danish architect may have designed one of the wonders of the world, the Sydney Opera House. But I predict that history will record the role of this shaliach and shlucha in even more glowing terms.

Athens: In stark contrast to the ‘heaviness’ of Copenhagen, flows the free-spirited and adventurous uplift of Athens, Greece. Our man in Athens, Rabbi Mendel Hendel, accelerates his four-geared, somewhat aged, second hand vehicle, along the brand new airport highway built especially for the Olympics, its multi lanes and sleek modernity incongruous against the background of undulating hills dotted with quaint Athenian white roofed homes. Hershy and I immediately warm to our new setting.
Mendel’s driving is no match for the helmet-less locals whose powerful motor bikes roar past us as if we are lead-footed -though our speedometer easily reads140 kph. But Mendel smiles. At the end of the day he’s still ahead. He’s the Rebbe’s representative in Greece.
Mendel and Nechama came here a few years ago to win the only Olympic Games event worth winning - Jewish hearts and souls. Their gold medal: a Beit Chabad that endears its host and hostess to every one who has the zechusto meet them. Their bright and breezy style is typically Mediterranean. Of course it helps that Mendel is Israeli. Greeks appreciate chutzpah and brazenness, the secret combination that Chabadniks employ world-wide to capture the enemy territory of assimilation.
The audience that night is the most bubbly, talkative, free-swinging group of my tour. This city may have once been millennia ago, the heartlands of sophistry. Today, Athens is a city of emotional warmth and friendliness. As Mendel and Nechama take us around the ruins of the Acropolis after the Peulo, the equally warm night breeze leave Hershy and I wishing we could spend more time with this thoroughly beautiful Lubavitch couple whose Athens is becoming a truly Lubavitch beachhead.

Helsinki: We fly from the southern tip of Europe to its northern edge. The plane lands four hours later with a thud, also indicative of the transition from smiling Greece to ponderous Helsinki. The airy Greek atmosphere gives way to Finnish stoicism.
Helsinki is home to a thoughtful and gentle young shaliach, Binyomin Wolff, Sydney’s Levi Wolff’s ‘kid brother’. Binyomin and Nechama charm the earthy Finns, capturing their hearts and minds. While many Rabbis and Jewish leaders seek to impress with strength and charisma, here is an example of the Rebbe’s gentle spirit penetrating the Finnish veneer of these descendents of Cantonist Jews.
Helsinki is probably the northernmost outpost of Chabad above Russia. Only Rabbi Yossi Greenberg, our man in Anchorage, Alaska, can boast geographical latitude above Helsinki’s. I am beginning to theorize that the more north a people lives, the more the Arctic winds chill the ardor of human spirit.. And that is exactly why Binyomin and Etti represent the Rebbe in this city. Their job - to melt the hearts of decades of spiritual coldness. They do their job well - very well, except it’s not a job at all. They are only being themselves, arm and kind, and the walls of potential division between this secular community and this intensely religious Hassidiccouple crumble - no less dramatically than did the Berlin wall.
Only one and a half years has elapsed since they came. And already Helsinki’s temperature has risen ,if not through global warming then certainly through spiritual glow.

Tallinn: Just a two hour ferry ride across the waters of the Baltic northern coast and I find myself, Erev Shabbos, in Tallinn - the capital of Estonia. Tallinn? Where in the world is Tallinn? Where is Estonia? When this city first appeared on my itinerary I was non-plussed. What could I possibly achieve in Tallinn? Why did the ECJS in Brussels, my tour sponsors, see Tallinn as an important stop on my tour? Do Jews really live here? It crossed my mind that maybe Tallinn is an outpost for some discarded Rabbi who needs a peasant fiefdom to rule?
The Tallinn I discovered was indeed something quite else - a real surprise. And i has become the jewel of my European experience. Like Warsaw, Tallinn boasts modern Raddison hotels, some spectacular architecture, and vibrancy in a corner of what was the one-time far-flung Soviet empire. But it is an ex Soviet satellite that hastruly struck back. It has turned thoroughly western! A population of about a million people is annually hostto over 4 million tourists - especially beer-swilling Finns who sail over for weekends conducting drinkathons- the price of beer being a fraction of the cost back home. Many more Europeans are discovering this well kept secret of the Balkans, with its old walled city sprouting new hotels, guest houses, souvenir shops, and chicrestaurants. They flock there, including many Jews.
And Tallin is the seat of the Chief Rabbi of Estonia. ‘Chief Rabbi’ you ask incredulously? What venerable throwback of an older age of Rabbinical lineage still exists here? Well, the Chief Rabbi is a young twenty-something, who, with his wife Chani, has transformed the landscape of Jewish Tallinn. His diminutive size and energetic youthfulness belies a learned mind and clarity of life’s purpose far beyond his years. I remember the Rebbe once telling me in a Yechidus: “the position will make the person”. This is a living example. This Chief Rabbi is a youthful Lubavitcher who has ‘commandeered’ this community of several hundred families of Russian speaking Cantonist descendants by storm. He runs the school, he runs the shule, he runs the community events, and he runs a Chabad that is the only game in town. And Chani is there, softly running him, with her special wisdom and gentle prodding - the power behind the throne.
Tallinn is choked by tourists. So much so that we can’t even find a hotel to stay in! Shmuli Kot, our Chief Rabbi, is also our chauffeur (in Chabad when a Chief Rabbi choose to be our driver we call this the epitome ofego-abnegation - bittul hayesh!) and, on erev shabbos, when there are hundreds of other probable priorities on a Chief Rabbi’s plate, he chooses to show us the sights of the old city while his secretary tries to track down a spare room in town. We finally settle into the newest hotel, taking two suites, because single rooms arecompletely booked out. It costs more, much more - accommodation being the only cost here that remains as highas in the west. But this is hachnosos orchim! Shmuli won’t compromise on the teachings of Abraham of old.
Shabbos is wonderful. The people are warm, expectant, keen, and Jewishly searching. There is even a group in town that meets weekly to study - Kabbalah! Right here in Tallinn? Everything continues to surprise me here. Binyomin Wolff and his wife Nechama, come from Helsinki to join us for the Shabbaton. And as Shmuli, Binyomin and I walk in our black frockcoats through the streets of Tallinn, the locals don’t even bat an eye-lid. Sometimes we overhear some playful banter at our expense, and an occasional ’shalom’ is shouted from across the road. It strikes me odd. Is this not the old anti-Semitic Soviet Union with Jew baiting a national past-time? Apparently not. At least, not in this amazing corner of the Balkans.
My lecture is scheduled for today - Friday evening. I wonder why a full PowerPoint presentation is scheduledright in the path of Shabbos. But Shmuli seems untroubled. And he doesn’t err. It continues to remain amazingly light outside. Our session goes on for over two hours. And still it’s light. Only later do I learn that darkness only begins to settle in towards midnight! The people stay. They hunger for more. And so we continue at the communal Friday night Kiddush and dinner. Shmuli runs the show with aplomb and friendliness. I intersperse the singing with tales and Toiros. Another hour passes and it’s still fully light outside. So Binyomin and I go to the ‘Chief Rabbi’s’ home for another Shabbos dinner!
The next day: again a full house for davvening. The Jewish folk of Tallinn may not know much about davvening, but they sense that this is the way a Jew speaks spiritually. They sing, they listen, and they mouth the words. This is followed by a wonderful Farbrengen that I lead over Kiddush, mashke and all, for over two hours. It seems that Tallinn Jews are gluttons for spiritual punishment because they come back in the late afternoon for another session. Three hours they sit and listen to me, asking myriads of questions - questions long in themaking, questions constructed from the exigencies of an uncertain life, questions that belie subliminal fragments of Torah from their grandparents and past generations.
Tallinn is a shot in my arm. I leave Tallinn wishing I could stay longer. I have learned much here. I have learned about Jewish resilience. And I have learned another chapter in the book of the Rebbe’s heroic shluchim and shluchos.

Onto Dublin - my final European stop before another continent of the Rebbe’s army of shluchim awaits me - North America.

It’s been 56 years since I left Poland as an infant in the hands of my parents. It’s an eerie feeling walking the streets of Warsaw - the capital of the country of my birth. But this is also the country where Jewish blood screams loudest from its cover of unholy soil.

When Rabbi Yossi Waks put Warsaw on my lecture itinerary I was sorely tempted to veto this stop. But I was intrigued when I heard that my host was to be Rabbi Mayer Stambler, an Israeli Lubavitcher businessman who commutes weekly from Israel. Mayer conducts a large and successful property development company in Poland. But this must be just a “front” because the real rationale for his “gilgul” is obviously the creation and financing if an impressive Chai Center - replete with shluchim from Israel to boot! So curiosity got the better of me. Plus the tremendous opportunity to teach Toras Chassidus in Poland - a bitter/sweet “revenge” in the name of my dear departed and murdered forbears.

Mayer personally funds this Beit Chabad which now draws scores of Jews back to their roots - saving the neshomedicker nitzutzois from the klippos of Polonia. The Chai Center seminar attracts a full house consisting mainly of Polish Jews - spiritual survivors of another era; but also includes some Russian Jews; plus a couple of American businesspeople attracted by a fast growing Polish economy; and, of course, the intrepid Israelis who are always found world-wide at the cutting edge of opportunity.

In the short few hours that I walk its bustling streets, this “Krukover yid” discovers that this is not the environment of his parent’s childhood. Warsaw is a modern bustling metropolis with high-rise office blocks and architectural originality to rival St.Kilda Road, Melbourne. It is amazingly modern. The streets have western chains ranging from McDonalds to Max and Mara! The younger generation dresses, speaks, and behaves like caricatures out of the sitcom “Friends”. Only a few older Polaks stare at me with that indelible look that freezes my blood. Admittedly, this is Warsaw, not some backwater polish hic-town where the stares would multiply geometrically.

Mayer put us up at the ultra-modern five-star newly-built Intercontinental Hotel - a glass-curtain tower to rival any in Europe. From the fitness center (a place I use to clear out the mental and emotional cobwebs) and pool, on the 43rd floor, one has a panoramic 365 degrees vista of Warsaw and its environs. This “kretchma” rivals any of the world’s best hotels both in service and facilities. I am amazed how in a short 35 years the west has culturally overpowered a bastion of hardcore communistic drabness and regimentation.

Over the years I have read several learned texts explaining how the Rebbe, single-handedly overturned Communist rule in eastern Europe – how his clandestine underground kept a precious continuity of Judaism under the harshest Soviet repression. It is also the story of how. Miraculously, several dozen Lubavitchers ultimately kept Soviet Jewry connected to Torah and formed the basis of the Russian Jewish exodus to modern-day Israel. Poland did not have the benefit of the “refusenik” underground yeshivos. And yet, the waves of defiance somehow entered the psyche - the soul, of even Polish Jews left “behind enemy lines” for three more generations - yet rediscover their Jewishness despite themselves.

Mayer Stambler is today the active link. Jews are gingerly crawling out of the woodwork of Polish assimilation. They seek a deeper Judaism that matches their modern, intellectual and progressive lives. Chassidus provides that sophistication. The audience laughs with me, some cry with me as I try to close the sluice-gate of tears that could any minute flood my face and mind, stifling the flow of words. But I succeed in maintaining my composure - only just. The session extends far beyond scheduled time. A planned private dinner for later is put on a back-burner. What is happening now is much more important.

Then she approaches me - after the lecture . She is an older woman, well dressed and well spoken. She shares with me that she is the ambassador for Costa Rica! Here is a Yiddishe lady, representing a country totally removed from Poland, but comes to Mayer Sambler’s Warsaw, to listen to an Australian, speaking about the Alter Rebbe’s Toiro. The inter-connectedness is simply mind-boggling. And in this moment I stand witness to the Rebbe’s greatness: one leader’s boundless love for, and faith in, his people, allows yet another shaliach to be a link in the “impossible dream”.

Part of me is now glad that I went to Poland. I didn’t go to visit the death camps; or to visit the graves; or to wave flags of Jewish pride in the face of hostile anti-Semitic peasants. I went as a soldier in the Rebbe’s army, for the briefest of moments - less than on day, to the country of my birth - a country that I have also learned to hate. But the price is right: Jewish souls stirring in the glow of “white knights”.

On Iffley Rd., in front of the Oxford University Sports Ground is a large sign announcing that here, on May 6th 1954, Roger Bannister broke the four minute mile - the first man ever to do so. But this was quickly followed by others, like the Australian, Herb Elliot. For decades the target stood - unassailable, and then suddenly, many did so with relative ease. This phenomenon is often referred to as “the hundredth monkey phenomenon” (When a group of monkeys learned to clean potatoes in sea water in order to eat and survive, monkeys on a neighbouring island also gained this insight almost immediately, after the ‘hundredth’ monkey on the previous island had made the breakthrough and taught his herd.)

The Rebbe began the revolution of Chabad Houses with the first success - in Los Angeles. Almost immediately Chabad Houses seemed to proliferate and all succeeded like the first at Gayley Avenue. Maa’yseh ovois simen levonim. Like the “100th monkey” effect, the Rebbe put into the world a koach for shluchim to succeed. This powerful energy actually changed the course of creation!

In Oxford, a young shaliach, Rabbi Eli Brackman, and his wife Fraydie (nee Lowenthal) are quietly continuing this revolution. Upon arrival four years ago Eli and Frayde faced major challenges of a poor Chabad image, previous acrimonious relationship with the local Oxford community, and whispers of financial scandals from before. But, quietly and with true grit, this gentlemanly, youthful scholar-Rabbi has become the real “Jewish game in town” earning the confidence of all.

In a packed dining room with professors, undergraduates, and community, I enjoyed a wonderful evening of repartee, discussion, and farbrengen. As Fraydie kept conjuring up more food from a tiny kitchen, Eli moved around the tables extending friendship to every one of his guests. All I had to do was to keep the intellectual fires burning while this shaliach and shlucho did the real thing - making the academic community feel at home, back home, going home - spiritually.

A wonderful magnanimous benefactor, George Rohr, who has funded so many campus Chabad operations, has recently provided Eli with a substantial sum to make Oxford a premier Chabad operation. On the drawing boards are plans for a student center, residential building, and more.

Eli is a thoughtful, jovial, and thoroughly amiable Englishman. His youth belies depth and knowledge - seven years in yeshivos after shlichus! But he is also enjoying the strong tail wind of all his predecessors – the hundreds of Chabad shluchim who have become extensions of the Rebbe himself. Each shaliach is the “hundredth monkey”, making the next shaliach’s task much more do-able and successful. Each shaliach’s ma’ayseh becomes a simen to the next shaliach’s success story. How we behave as shluchim creates a new reality in the world, for better or… So let us be very responsible how we behave and respond to our tasks, to the world, and to each other.

As I walk through Oxford’s majestic grounds, libraries, colleges, ancient halls of academia, and exquisitely ornate architecture, centuries old, I could be lulled into an eighteenth century ideal of scholasticism. But our shaliach and shlucho at Oxford do not fall into this trap. They are building spiritual bridges, bringing neshomos together, creating a Jewish moral fortitude in a world of moral relativism.

Roger Bannister is a feather in Oxford’s cap. Eli and Frayde are realities in the Rebbe’s creative imagination.

It’s an eerie feeling arriving to Munich – Hitler’s home, the town from where he began planning and executing the modern day ‘churban’. . On the outskirts is Dachau, described in the local tourist pamphlets as “one of the prettiest mediaeval towns amongst the picturesque villages that lie on the outskirts of Munich.” Forget the network of systematized murder, torture, degradation and exploitation that is also the legacy of this ‘picturesque town’.

Yet here I am in ‘Hitler-town’. Why? Because the Chabad shaliach here Rabbi Yisroel Diskin, the first Chabad shaliach in Germany, came 16 years ago to serve a growing community of German Jews swelled by Russian émigrés.. For decades the Rebbe refused a Chabad presence in Germany. The reason might seem obvious but it will not be the correct. Rabbi Diskin informs me that he understood from Rabbi Hodakov Z’L that the Rebbe was very sensitive to the close knitted nature of German Jewish communities and did not want to offend anyone by introducing another Rabbi in these established, albeit depleted, communities. This says loads about the Rebbe’s absolute love and consideration of all Jews. Of course there was, for decades, a desperate need for Chabad, yet the Rebbe desisted, not to hurt some Jews who might be offended. (If only we could set aside our own squabbles, all claiming to be in the honour of the Rebbe’s name, and practice the Rebbe’ sensitivity and Ahavas Yisroel.)

And now for the piece de resistance. You walk along Princeregentstrasse and get to the corner of Grilleprazestarsse and you find two buildings. One has written on it ‘Beit Chabad-Lubawitsche”. The one opposite is a police station. So, you ask, what is remarkable about a police station? In the 20’s and 30’s it was an apartment building in which was raised the descendent of Amalek – yes, Hitler’s childhood home. To its credit the German government turned the building into a police station so that a possible perversion of a ‘shrine to Hitler’ might not arise there. And to me, this corner is our spiritual monument to ultimate victory, the victory of light over darkness: Hitler’s home does not exist, but in its ambience of blackness shines the light of a Chabad House.

The audience I address that evening are Germans and Russians. They are thirsting for spiritual Judaism. The questions flow throughout and one can sense that Jewish spirituality is their re-entry point to Torah and what they crave. You cannot imagine the enormous elation I feel – I, a child of holocaust survivors, teaching Torah to Jews who, for various reasons, live in the city that most epitomized Nazism at its very worst.

With me is another Australian, Hershy Ash, who is accompanying me on this lecture tour of Europe. Hershy has been working for Rabbi Yossi Waks in Brussels and is my ‘point man’ for the tour. As we stand peering at that innocuous police station he notes: If we would have been standing here about 60 years ago we would have been lynched. Instead I stand openly, a visible Jews, beard and yarmelko and I know my Zeides z.l. smile with me.

Yet, only 60 years later, Europe is again witnessing a resurgence of anti-Semitism. Belgium, France and England are the main breeding grounds. But I am quietly confident that a little light will indeed push away much darkness. There is a Chabad House on the corner of Princeregentstrasse. Dayenu.

On to Oxford.