At the CTeen International Summit, the flagship youth gathering in New York City sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch movement that caps Havdalah and the end of Shabbat with a concert in Times Square—hostage survivor Segev Kalfon took to the stage on Saturday and cried out Shema Yisrael (“Hear, O Israel).”
Standing beside him was a fellow former hostage in Gaza, Matan Zangauker, as was Ilana Gritzewsky. More than 4,500 young Jewish voices joined in the declaration in a roar.
Kalfon was abducted from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and held for 738 days in Gaza before his release from Hamas captivity. He had spoken before about his intention to recite the prayer the moment he was free. Saturday night, he made good on it.
Also announced was the opening of CTeen’s 900th branch, a milestone that brought thousands of teens from 60 countries to New York.
But celebration was not the only note of the evening. Young people from the Bondi Beach Jewish community in Australia took the stage to speak about their recent loss. On Dec. 14, during a “Chanukah by the Sea” event, father-and-son terrorists shot and killed 15 people, among them Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the Chabad emissary who had built the local youth branch from scratch just months before his murder.
Schlanger’s 17-year-old daughter, Priva, addressed the crowd, speaking about the mission her father had left unfinished. Footage of the Bondi teens—raw, unfiltered testimony about the moments of horror and the long road since—played on the event’s giant screens. What came through, again and again, was not despair but a fierce, almost defiant pride: “We will keep being Jewish, loudly and proudly.”
Rabbi Mendy Kotlarsky, chairman of Chabad’s Global Networks, told the crowd that “darkness will not have the last word” and announced that a new youth center in Sydney would be named for Rabbi Schlanger.
Of the signature event in the heart of Manhattan, he said: “For many of these teens, being Jewish means standing alone in their schools every single day. Tonight, they stand thousands strong, celebrating their heritage publicly, sending a powerful message of resilience and strengthening Jewish life globally.”
The four-day Shabbaton, now in its 18th year, drew teens from more than 60 countries to New York. Most of them arrived in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn, N.Y., on Thursday; went sightseeing on Friday and shared Shabbat dinner; went to services on Saturday; and on Sunday, planned to visit the Ohel in Queens, N.Y.—the gravesite of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, with the program culminating in a banquet lunch on Sunday.
Originally published by Israel Hayom.
