JTA — It was close to 90 degrees back home in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on Friday, but Chani Aziza said she was thrilled to be freezing on a sidewalk in Brooklyn.

Aziza was one of thousands of women affiliated with the Chabad-Lubavitch movement who gathered in Crown Heights this week for the movement’s annual gathering of female emissaries.

Aziza, who moved to Dar es Salaam with her husband and two children three years ago as Chabad’s first emissaries there, is used to cooking all of their center’s food from scratch. No kosher prepared foods are available in Tanzania.

Now, as she braved frosty temperatures to pose in Chabad’s signature group photos, she said she was looking forward to visiting the many kosher establishments in the area, including the sushi restaurant Noribar.

“My friend just told me, like, enjoy it, you can eat whatever you want,” said Aziza.

But she said the gathering had a more serious upside, too.

“It’s fun also to come here to take power, see all this amount of shluchos, everyone in different places and different challenges,” she said, using the Hebrew word for emissaries.

The women in Crown Heights, hailing from over 100 countries where the Chabad movement maintains a presence, were taking a rare break from the front lines of serving as what is often the only Jewish presence in their communities. As their husbands fulfill rabbinic duties, female emissaries take on a wide range of responsibilities, from managing their Chabad centers’ educational programming to supporting community members through crisis to making sure Shabbat meals are prepared — often while raising their own families far from extended support networks.

“We give the entire year. Our lives are all about giving, and today it’s about filling up our cup to make sure that we are receiving,” said Dinie Rapoport, who serves on the executive committee for the conference. “The goal of this conference is for us to come and to be renewed and rejuvenated, to be able to........

© The Times of Israel