Hours before he and two dozen Chabad rabbis would depart on a humanitarian mission to Israel, there’s scarcely any space in the happily cluttered living room of Chabad of the Valley’s Rabbi Yanky Kahn.
Besides the last of stuffed suitcases, partially opened containers were filled with helmets requested by IDF troops. The latter intrigued Rabbi Kahn’s young sons.
“We are going to Israel to show support for our brothers and sisters,” the rabbi said. “We are going to visit the soldiers, the hospitals, we are going to visit people who are wounded. We are going to be with the survivors.
“We are going to bring financial help, spiritual help. We have tefillin, toys for children, a lot of equipment for the soldiers, just to show them that we are all one. We are really all one family.”
While the mercy mission was organized by Rabbi David Eliezrie of Yorba Linda, Kahn, a father of four, had been planning a similar trip since Hamas attacked Israel.
An easy decision? “Absolutely. I got my wife Hindy’s decision. She said ‘Absolutely, 100%.’”
There’s an intensely personal aspect to the trip, he told the Journal. “This girl’s father, Nachamia Lavi, was killed in a terrorist attack in Yerushalyim. My mother keeps close track of survivors of terrorist attacks. She helps them. So when I was in Israel in 2022 I went to her house to visit her as a close family friend, and I will go for the sheva brachos when we are in Israel.”
The 43-year-old rabbi said that the trip’s goal is “to help the soldiers – but really to help the community. To go out there and show that we are one family while also trying to help them long-term financially. I want to bring support, even for all the children stuck at home, hundreds of thousands of children at home. I bring a little toy, and I have asked people to donate arts and crafts toys.”
That way, he calculates, while their mothers are busily handling responsibilities around the home, their children can stay in place, doing arts and crafts toys for hours.
But really, his reason for going is “just to help the whole country.”
Glancing around the closely packed front room in Valley Village, he explained how all of this luggage and equipment came together in mere days. “People have spent tens of thousands of dollars to make this happen,” the rabbi said. “It shows the beauty of the Jewish people.”
There was not enough time to itemize the supplies, but Rabbi Kahn tried. “We have lifesaving equipment for soldiers who have made lists of what they want. We have helmets for soldiers, a whole list of what they want: Helmets, toothbrushes, babywipes (because there are no bathrooms there), underwear, socks.”
Of course there are persons to thank. He mentioned Sarah Jacobs, Adina Finn and Yaron Boganim, community members from Chabad of Encino. “They literally have helped fill cargo planes of stuff,” Rabbi Kahn said. Looking around the impressive stockpile in his living room, he said these are just leftovers.
“These people also have taken leadership in the shipping we have been doing,” the rabbi said. “So many people in the community have donated a lot of money, and Chabad is spending a lot of its efforts also.”
He said that people really have stepped up in a variety of ways. The rabbi alluded to large sums of money that have been contributed, along with time and dollars that have been invested in obtaining equipment from manufacturers and other suppliers.
“What’s meaningful and rewarding about this trip,” he explained, “is to bring hope and inspiration to the people who lost loved ones.”
“What’s meaningful and rewarding about this trip,” he explained, “is to bring hope and inspiration to the people who lost loved ones. I want to give them a hug and try to make the world a better place for them. I mean, I really love the soldiers.”
Born in Italy, Rabbi Kahn was brought up in London and came to the United States 20 years ago, when he was 23.
The San Fernando Valley, he said is beautiful. “That,” he said with a wide smile, “is where I met my wife, a Valley girl. We had options to move to South Africa and to Venice, Italy. We chose the Valley because while we had options to be Chabad emissaries, we chose to be emissaries here.”
As an emissary of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, he said, “I will bring everything he has taught us – hope and future and doing mitzvahs.”
From a traveling perspective, Rabbi Kahn noted that each member of the two-dozen party – including Rabbi Mordechai Einbinder, Rabbi Mayer Greene and Rabbi Jonathan Herzog, among others — will be responsible for five suitcases.
Then, Rabbi Kahn said, “I want to make sure everything gets into the right hands.”
