Estimated 100,000 join massive Zoom event honoring influential late rabbi

Tens of thousands of people signed up for a huge interactive meeting at Zoom on Wednesday to honor an influential late American Orthodox rabbi who is not only seen as a teacher, mentor, and scholar, but is seen by some as a messiah.

On the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the death of Menachem M. Schneerson, an estimated 100,000 participants from North America, South America, Europe, Israel, South Africa and East Asia registered – according to Chabad, the subsidiary, Schneerson led on a total of 45,000 devices of Hasidic Judaism. In 20 interconnected zoom meetings, each representing a different community or region, viewers prayed, told stories, sang, and studied passages from the Torah, the first five books of the Hebrew Bible.

The zoom rooms are connected to a central show near the visitor center at Ohel, the place in Queens, New York where Schneerson – commonly known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe or simply Rebbe – is buried. COVID-19 prevented many of the thousands who normally visited the site from traveling to pay tribute to the rabbi on or around the anniversary of his death.

“Zoom staff told us that they had never had a single event with so many virtual rooms connected to the same show,” Ronen Peled, the event’s producer, told Chabad.org. “So far, their platform had a cap of 1,000 people in a single room or a webinar with 300 cameras, but the rest are passive viewers and are not seen.”

With the coronavirus pandemic restricting large personal gatherings, tools like Zoom, Facebook Live and WhatsApp have proven to be essential to help communities of faith maintain sacred traditions like Ramadan, Easter and Passover. Wednesday’s show, entitled “Barcheinu Avinu” (memory of our father), required a production company and an extensive technical team on site and around the world. The event lasted approximately one hour and 45 minutes.

“Our focus is always on strengthening people’s connection to the Rebbe,” said Rabbi Levi Slonim, member of the organizing committee. “This year we had to dig deeper and be more creative to achieve our goal, but thankfully the event was deeply moving and the scale was breathtaking.”

Large screens behind live speakers and performers near the Rebben’s tomb showed gallery views of the zoom rooms. Speakers included rabbis and children from families affected by the pandemic. When a group of a capella singers entered the stage, they were separated Social distance protocols. A live feed showed worshipers praying for the health of the Jews everywhere.

Schneerson, who died on June 12, 1994, at the age of 92, oversaw the transition of the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of Judaism from a small Hasidic sect to a global force known for its broad and creative endeavors, often based on technology To fall back on. A humanoid robot, for example, helped light candles at one of the public Hanukkah parties in San Francisco in Chabad-Lubavitch. Around 2,000 rabbis gathered in New York for a large selfie at an annual international Lubavitcher meeting.