Whenever I travel, I visit Jewish sites, sometimes as a tourist as in Budapest and Vienna, other times as a participant in services. The latter includes Dublin, San Salvador, Dresden, São Paulo and, most recently, McAllen, in Hidalgo County, Texas.

I flew into McAllen, on the Texas-Mexico border, in mid-June to attend my 50th reunion at Mission High School in the nearby town of Mission. On past trips, I attended services at McAllen’s Temple Emanuel, where my parents were married in 1955. This time, however, my first trip to the Mission-McAllen area since my 2011 reunion, I decided to attend the 7:15 a.m. Thursday minyan at Chabad of the Rio Grande Valley (Chabad RGV). I sent a note to Rabbi Asher Hecht introducing myself and my connection to the Valley, and he invited me to come on over.

After a decade of involvement with Chabad shuls in Bedford, NY, and now Wakefield, Mass., I know and strongly connect with the movement, its enthusiasm and focus on finding your mission in life (what could resonate more with a native of a town called Mission?). The notion of Chabad in deep South Texas, a region with a small Jewish presence in the midst of a staunchly Catholic and Protestant majority, astounds me—as much as when I found a Starbucks in McAllen during the 2006 reunion. The region anchors a far corner of the country, hundreds of miles away from the Jewish centers of San Antonio, Austin and Houston. I thought to myself, Chabad in the Valley? Is this one of the birthpangs of the coming of Moshiach? 

But for Chabad, distance and a lack of a Jewish infrastructure are part of the opportunity and challenge. I’ve personally seen the growth process in Bedford and Wakefield. The emissaries go where the need is. Anyway, what’s distance for a movement that sends shluchim worldwide? No place is too far from 770 Eastern Parkway, not even Hidalgo County, Texas.

I arrived after getting a 6:30 a.m. flight from Boston to Austin to McAllen. While the reunion began Friday evening, I came early to explore where I grew up and graduated from the same high school my mother did, 40 years later. I settled in to my hotel, the Bungalows on........

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