Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, 74, Dies; Expanded Chabad’s Global Reach

Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, who helped establish scores of outposts around the world for the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and served as a global ambassador of sorts to aid its far-flung emissaries in accomplishing their mission of revitalizing Jewish life, died on June 4 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the seat of the movement. He was 74.

Rabbi Motti Seligson, Chabad’s director of public relations, confirmed the death. He said Rabbi Kotlarsky had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.

The 250-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch movement has some 6,000 emissaries, known as shluchim, in more than 100 countries and all 50 states. These include places with few Jewish residents, such as Kathmandu, Nepal, which offers access to Jewish observance for climbers and trekkers in the Himalayas.

Chabad is an acronym for the Hebrew words for wisdom, understanding and knowledge, and Lubavitch is the town, in what is now Russia, where Chabad was centered for a century until World War I.

Rabbi Kotlarsky traveled tens of thousands of miles to respond to requests for an institutional presence in sparse Jewish communities in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean and the former Soviet Union. He also scouted out what might be required in an established outpost — in Europe, the United States or elsewhere — to strengthen the mission of an emissary couple, typically a rabbi and his wife.

He might ask representatives of a Jewish community whether they needed help in setting up a school or a mikvah, for taking ritual baths.