Last update - 00:00 09/02/2007
Some 2,000 Haredi women meet in N.Y. for Chabad emissary conference
By Shlomo Shamir, Haaretz Correspondent in New York
Some 2,000 women married to Chabad emissaries to 72 countries arrived in Brooklyn on Thursday to take part in a conference on their role in their husbands' outreach activities.
The Chabad movement, one of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism, sends hundreds of its followers abroad on "shlichus," or missions reaching out to local Jewry, taking their often large families with them.
During their stay abroad, emissaries wives are expected to participate in their husbands activities.
"The paradox is that the commonly held conception of a Haredi woman is that of domestic isolation but wives of Chabad emissaries are active and involved in the fabric of modern life," a conference pamphlet read.
"Wives of emissaries run the Chabad Houses at university campuses, assist women in distress, teach classes on religious issues to celebrities and famous people and are in fact full participants in the their husbands' activity and responsibility."
Chabad representatives are present in all Western countries as well Uzbekistan, The Congo, Singapore, China, India and others.