1983 — Today
History of the Kinus Hashluchim
The Kinus began in 1983 with a few dozen emissaries in Brooklyn. Four decades later, the Kinus Hashluchim gathers thousands of Shluchim from more than 100 countries — the same network this atlas maps, assembled in one room for five days each November.
How the gathering began
The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, had been sending emissaries to cities across the world since the 1950s. By the early 1980s that scattered effort had become a global body without a meeting place. The Kinus Hashluchim was convened to give it one: an annual conference at Chabad World Headquarters, 770 Eastern Parkway, where the emissary in a remote outpost has the same access to guidance, resources, and colleagues as one serving a major Jewish population center.
Era by era
1983–1985
The first gatherings
At the Rebbe's direction, the first Kinus Hashluchim convenes in Brooklyn with a few dozen emissaries. The format is set early: days of study and workshops at 770 Eastern Parkway, closing with a banquet and a group photograph on the steps of Chabad World Headquarters.
1986–1991
A network takes shape
The Rebbe sends Shluchim to new cities across North America, Europe, South America, and Australia. Attendance climbs each year, and the Kinus becomes the point in the calendar where isolated emissaries meet the rest of the network face to face. The parallel Kinus Hashluchos for women emissaries grows alongside it.
1992–1994
Expansion after the fall of the Iron Curtain
Shluchim return to cities across the former Soviet Union — Moscow, Kyiv, Tashkent, Riga — many of them places Chabad had been driven out of decades earlier. The roll call of countries at the banquet lengthens sharply in these years.
1995–2005
Continuity and growth
The Kinus continues without interruption after the Rebbe's passing in 1994. Attendance passes the thousand mark and the banquet moves to progressively larger venues in the New York metropolitan area to hold the crowd.
2006–2019
A global institution
The conference regularly draws several thousand Shluchim and lay leaders from more than 100 countries. Workshops broaden beyond outreach into education, mental health, security, crisis response, and institutional management, and the Kinus becomes the movement's main professional forum.
2020–today
Interrupted, then rebuilt
The pandemic forces a hybrid and regional format, then the Kinus returns in full to Brooklyn at record scale — thousands of emissaries, the roll call of countries, and the same photograph on the same steps, with more rows than ever.
What happens at the Kinus
Five days of study, workshops, and field reports, organized by Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, culminating in the Grand Banquet with its roll call of countries and states. The enduring image is the group photograph on the steps of 770 — the same frame each year, filled by more emissaries from more places. A parallel conference for women emissaries, the Kinus Hashluchos, is held in the winter around Chof Alef Shevat.
Seeing the growth on the map
Each Chabad center and Shliach recorded in this atlas corresponds to someone who has come, at some point, to a Kinus. Scrubbing the year slider on the map shows the same expansion the banquet roll call describes — decade by decade, country by country.