Csaba Kőrösi, President of the UN General Assembly, visited the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights neighborhood to meet the movement’s leaders and learn about the organization’s work around the world.
The diplomat was welcomed and given a tour of the iconic complex at 770 Eastern Parkway by Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, head of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch, the organization responsible for education and Chabad emissaries, Rabbi Efraim Mintz, head of Rohr Jewish Learning Institute (JLI), the world’s largest organization for the education of adult Jews, and several other rabbis and rebbetzins, leaders of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
The meeting was also attended, virtually, by Slomó Köves, Chief Rabbi of the EMIH-Hungarian Jewish Federation, Mendy Chitrik, leader of the Jewish community in Turkey, and Shlomo Bentolila, Chief Rabbi of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Central Africa.
The main topics of discussion were the international fight against hatred and prejudice and the social processes caused by the war in Ukraine.
The rabbis pointed out that the Lubavitch Rebbe, the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in his teachings placed great emphasis on the prophetic prediction that the peoples of the world „shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks” as a sign of the approach of the Messianic times, „nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” (Isaiah 2:4). The diplomat and religious leaders also stressed the importance of humanitarian aid to war-torn areas.
The meeting raised the idea of an exhibition at the UN to showcase the broad international humanitarian response to the war in Ukraine.
The high-ranking diplomat toured the late Rebbe’s study at the Chabad-Lubavitch headquarters, where the Rebbe received tens of thousands of visitors, including politicians and influential public figures, and other illustrious sites in the building, including the media center, which was the first in the world to broadcast Hasidic gatherings by satellite.