You probably never heard of Devorah Benjamin. A native of Manchester, England now living in Broookln's Crown Heights, married to Rabbi Benjamin and raising their two children and teaching school in the Lubavitch Jewish community seems like a ticket to anonymity. Not the bad sort of anonymity, just the usual good, hard-working citizen kind of life that most of us pursue; doing our jobs, raising our families and doing our best in a difficult world. If that was all there was to Devorah, well, that's plenty enough and admirable in and of itself.
What sets Mrs Benjamin apart, however, is her self-created charity, a mouthful called Keren Simchas Chosson V' Kallah, an organization that provides funding for Lubavitch Jews who could not otherwise afford the opportunity to have a proper Orthodox Jewish wedding. She started this charity not by approaching wealthy donors and setting up a foundation. Devorah Benjamin started by going door to door in Crown Heights soliciting donations, whatever loose change could be spared to help a fellow Jew. Even pennies were welcome.
In densely populated Crown Heights, there is a huge Lubavitch population, indeed it is the main concentration of Lubavitchers and their World Headquarters is located there, at 770 Eastern Parkway, the former home and shul of the late Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the man most responsible for putting Lubavitch on the world map. It serves as their Vatican and is referred to simply as 770. It was Rebbe Shneerson's (Again, in earthy Lubavitch style, simply referred to as "The Rebbe.") leadership and mission that resulted in the opening of Chabad Houses all over the globe. A Chabad House is simply a shul (temple, school or both) run by a Lubavitch Rabbi charged with the mission of bringing traditional Judaism to Jews everywhere. The proper designation of a Luvbavitch Jew is actually Chabad-Lubavitch, their mission, philosophy and sect identity all wrapped in one neat package. Of course there's a whole lot more to it than that, but this is about only one of their number, not the whole ball of wax.
As a member of the second-largest Christian denomination, Lapsed Catholics, I don't pretend to understand all of their beliefs, content to think of the Lubavitch as my Industrial Strength Jewish friends, a group of people who for the most part practice what they preach. And Mrs. Benjamin has been a friend and co-worker for a number of years. What she had accomplished, a vast amount of proper weddings provided for people and the dissemination of the radiant goodwill she exudes, has been amazing. From her door-to-door penny collecting beginnings her charity now brings in between a half and three-quarters of a million dollars per year. None of which, by the way, goes to herself or her family. Hers is a labor of love, a love for her fellow human beings, her love for her faith and her love of doing what she feels is right. She saw a need and did not complain there was a void but took it upon herself to fill it.
She may be dealing with newlyweds who are devout and born Lubavitch or newcomers into the fold unsure of how to go about arranging a proper Orthodox wedding. Well, there's a bona-fide expert in the neighborhood who can advise you of how to go about it or actually provide funds to make it happen. Devorah Benjamin is a household name in Crown Heights and is hooked up with all the caterers, rabbis, photographers, musicians, florists, bakeries, kosher-trained wait staff services (hello!) and anyone else who contributes to the orderly chaos that is a Lubavitch wedding. Even though her charity is now an established foundation with several other directors and sponsors on board, Mrs. Benjamin is still very much the hands-on grass roots organizer she always was.
The other night I handled a small wedding for her, only 50 people and she was in and out most of the day, making sure everything was just so. The Kallah (bride) was from Cody, Wyoming, a convert from Christianity with a dozen family members in attendance. The Chosson (groom) was from South America by way of California and a lifelong Lubavitch rabbi. Before the wedding day Devorah had met neither of them or anyone in their family, only spoke on the telephone with them. Such is the level of trust that those introductory phone calls were all that was needed. Her word is her bond and she expects the same of everyone with whom she deals and oddly enough in this sign-on-the-dotted-line world, that arrangement works.
On the strength of these people's need and several telephone conversations she arranged everything for the wedding, including myself, who set it all up for several hours beforehand and served everybody during the wedding. Most of the food was home-made, all of it donated by members of the community, many of whom have come to feel that Devorah's charity is their charity and much like herself, feels it is their personal responsibility to make sure Jewish weddings are proper and traditional. Apparently her love and passion are contagious.
My duties also included reassuring the lovely people from Wyoming that they had not indeed landed on Mars and they would have a good time. They did, and possibly came away with a better understanding of Orthodox Judaism. Maybe not, but at least they got to meet some nice people and got to feel that their relative the bride is in good hands. Mrs. Benjamin took it all in stride, supervised the whole thing while at the same time planning and organizing several other very large weddings coming up. Some of her weddings have as many as 300 or 400 guests and are held in large catering halls with a full catering staff, wait staff and big wedding band. Our small Wyoming-California wedding boasted a catering staff of one (me) and a piano player who's name I don't know plus a talented singer named Yossi Frankel to do the entertaining and they did a great job. I did okay myself, I might add. Heck, I did add it , didn't I? (I'm very good at what I do, even if can't exactly define my actual job description so easily.)
No matter what the size of the wedding, which hall or small shul in which it is held or what the backgrounds of the engaged couple, Devorah Benjamin does it right and puts her personal touch on the proceedings. That might involve running around like a chicken without a head at large affairs doing a thousand things at once, or like the other night helping me prepare the room, the dessert trays and ladling out the soup, decidedly unglamorous but very necessary jobs. Everything must be just so and she never leaves anything to chance. All that while she was fielding calls on her cell phone involving 15 upcoming affairs of every size and description and slipping home to feed her family and check on the kids' homework and generally doing what it takes to keep her family going. Talk about energy, she's got it to spare.
You can look up her organization on the web. Her site is www.kscvk.org/ and you can see for yourself how one petite woman can do what no one else before her could. This lady moves mountains, one scoop at a time, and her approach to that task has not changed one bit from her beginnings knocking on the doors of strangers. She's still knocking on doors, only his time she's no stranger to any Lubavitch person and every door in the neighborhood is open to Devorah Benjamin. For all her accomplishments and the special regard in which she is held in the Chabad-Lubavitch world, she is still the humble and down-to-earth person she always was, and her love and generosity have transformed a huge segment of her community. Mazel Tov to you and yours, Devorah.
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