The Blogs: Remembering the Rebbe, finding my mother | Daphne Lazar Price

Daphne Lazar Price discovers 1987 video footage of her late mother at a Chabad women's convention, shown at a Toronto Chabad house near her mother's yahrzeit. She reflects on her master's thesis predicting technology would preserve the Lubavitcher Rebbe's presence after his death, tracing Chabad's early use of telephone hookups, satellite TV, and the internet. The footage also captured women in the audience, prompting a call to document women's roles in Jewish communal life.

Daphne Lazar Price writes a personal essay about discovering never-before-seen video footage of her mother, who died in 2010, filmed in 1987 at a N'shei Chabad women's convention. The footage was shown during a Saturday-night screening of Lubavitcher Rebbe videos at a Chabad house in Toronto, appearing shortly before her mother's yahrzeit. Price reflects on her 1995-96 master's thesis at Concordia University, which predicted that technology would keep the Rebbe's presence alive after his 1994 death. She traces Chabad's early adoption of communications technology: telephone hookups from 1970, satellite and cable TV broadcasts by 1980, the 1989 'Chanukah Live' linking menorah lightings across continents, and the growth of Chabad.org. The footage, preserved by Jewish Educational Media, also captured women in the audience, leading Price to argue that communal records should include women's lives and the people who sustain institutions. She notes that Chabad's inclusion of women's images contrasts with some Orthodox publications that erase them. The essay concludes that preservation requires both technology and human decisions about what survives.