Chabad of Colorado has a new leader. Since mid-2023, Rabbi Mendel Popack, who leads Chabad of Denver North with wife Estee, is the outreach organization’s new regional director for the Centennial state.
Popack isn’t doing it alone, though. In a departure from the previous leadership structure, comprised of the founding and senior emissaries — the late Rabbi Yisroel Popack, Elka Popack and Rabbi Yisroel and Leah Engel — the regional director works together with a “Vaad Hashluchim,” a board comprised of five emissaries from across the state.
Joining Mendel Popack on the board are Rabbi Benjy Brackman (NW Metro Denver), Rabbi Yisroel Engel (Bais Menachem, Denver), Rabbi Mendel Mintz (Aspen) and Rabbi Aaron Sirota (Western Center for Russian Jewry, Denver).
According to Rabbi Mendel Popack, who recently sat down with the Intermountain Jewish News to discuss the expanding umbrella organization, the board fits with his vision for a holistic approach. His father, he says, felt mandated by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to work not only in Denver but across Colorado.
Popack points to a letter Schneerson wrote for Chabad of Colorado’s annual event in 1986.
Toward the end of the message that was recited at the event, Rabbi Schneerson said, “I am confident that every one of you will increase still further your active participation in the vital activities and programs to keep the light of Torah shining ever more brightly in all parts of Colorado.”
Key words for Popack: “All parts.” A marching order he continues to follow.
In the years since 1986, under the senior Popack and Engel’s leadership, Chabad of Colorado did expand across the state, and has continued to do so under the younger Popack’s leadership as well, with new outposts in Broomfield and Steamboat Springs opening in the last year-and-a-half, bringing the total number of Chabad houses in the state to 19.
“All parts,” for Popack, is not limited to geography, but also “programmatically and demographically.” For example: Situated in the neighborhood formerly occupied by Stapleton Airport, CU Anschutz comes under Popack’s area. Popack explains that his Chabad house makes available kosher-for-Passover food for all eight days of the holiday to anyone at the hospital — staff and otherwise.
That was another leaf he picked up from Rabbi Schneerson via his father. While committed to making available for every Jew shmurah matzah for the seder, that wasn’t enough. Rabbi Schneerson instructed Chabad of Colorado to ensure that kosher-for-Passover food be available for the entire holiday. He trusted his emissaries to fulfill the task, which the younger Popack says they did. Rabbi Mendel Mintz, for example, delivers food for the seders across the Aspen area.
According to Popack, as well as Motti Seligson, director of media at Chabad Lubavitch, Chabad is the fastest growing and largest Jewish organization in Colorado.
Operating through a board, a relatively rare model for Chabad, allows for collaboration, Popack says. Having a statewide overview helps ensure that needs are identified without being duplicated.
It has also afforded the group the opportunity to maximize individual programming, such as Steamboat recently participating in a wide-ranging program of Chabad of South Metro Denver, when it hosted six IDF wounded veterans.
In 2023, the board also held a conference with a guest speaker to address statewide emissaries.
For an organization that is decades old, the current approach is in its early days, Popack acknowledges, but the first few steps leave him feeling optimistic about the direction. “When you work as a group,” he says, “you have more buy in.”
The Chabad model, he explains, is for each outpost to be responsible for its own operations, including fundraising. “That was by design,” says Popack. Rabbi Schneerson believed that sustainability would only come through any given community’s direct engagement with and support of its own Chabad house.
Nevertheless, the relationships that each outpost has cultivated with, among others, state representatives, law enforcement and local Jewish agencies, can help the umbrella organization facilitate collaboration.
In fact, that’s the word Popack uses to describe his role as regional director: “Facilitator.”
When he was approached by Chabad headquarters about taking the role, he decided he would bring to it his “collaborative style.”
“Our combined leverage creates strength,” he says.
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