Last week, Rabbi Meir Goldberg accurately described that kiruv rechokim is not only not dead, but that it is thriving on campuses and in communities around North America. Much of this is thanks to Olami, a community of organizations that includes Meor Rutgers Jewish Xperience, and helps underwrite outreach and education activities for students and young professionals in over 100 campuses and communities in North America and over 300 locations worldwide.

In that very same issue, Mishpacha featured Father Desbois’s participation in Heritage Retreats, which dozens of students attend each year, thanks in part to Olami’s scholarships and travel subsidies. And the same week, Mishpacha’s Hebrew edition ran a cover story on Rabbi Menachem Deutsch, the CEO who oversees the work of Olami in 27 countries, touching 45,000 students each year.

There are truly amazing things happening and one does not need to be a “part” of Olami or any kiruv initiative to have already tasted its impact by meeting the impressive young people who are now populating shuls and learning programs around the country. The truth, though, is that there is a kiruv crisis — it’s just not what you think.

As Rabbi Goldberg described, there are ample students waiting to be engaged by Olami (and many other) mekarvim all over the world. Moreover, financial resources being generated by Olami’s founding donors and other philanthropists make expansion possible. And yet, the true crisis lies in the dearth of young couples interested in inspiring the students who are waiting for them. The single biggest concern of those managing Olami’s work around the globe is, “Will we be able to fill a position when it opens?”

Unfortunately, this concern is not unique to campus and young professional kiruv. More and more, colleagues who recruit talented bnei Torah couples to NCSY, community kollel, and teaching positions also describe their frustration at being unable to identify and successfully engage talented and inspiring couples to join their initiatives – especially at a distance from the New York/Lakewood corridor. Despite the impressive and successful efforts of Ner Le’Elef, an Olami-affiliated organization that runs kiruv-training programs for avreichim and their wives in Jerusalem and Lakewood, kiruv organizations struggle to fill some very attractive positions. The true crisis of kiruv rechokim is not whether we can inspire today’s college students, but whether we can inspire today’s yeshivah students to dedicate some years of their lives to the spiritual futures of Hashem’s children on the other side of the Delaware.

There are many factors that make it difficult for young bnei Torah to contemplate spending some years working with college students and young professionals, especially “out of town” – and unquestionably, there will be couples for whom it’s just not a fit. Being away from family can seem daunting, but at the same time, today’s communication technologies and often reasonably priced flights make “long distance” not as long as it once was. These same couples spend years learning in Eretz Yisrael, baruch Hashem, and not only survive, but thrive. Other concerns like the quality of frum life, job security, and finances are all legitimate. Yet, dozens and dozens of families serve as reliable examples of how to succeed in a life of kiruv, and there are real answers to those questions. At a recent Olami Mekarvim Conference, over 30 couples were recognized for ten-plus years of service to campus and young professional kiruv, each raising a beautiful family, most often in large frum communities like Toronto, Chicago, Miami Beach, Baltimore, Los Angeles, and yes… New York. These people are graduates of the best American and Israeli yeshivos and seminaries and are changing lives each day.  For example:

Rabbi Avrohom Reuven Loketch directs Olami’s Meor program at Boston University and at Tufts. He draws daily on the years that he spent learning at Yeshivas Shaar HaTorah in Queens and at Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem. Now on campus for more than 12 years, he still spends portions of each morning learning b’chavrusa, and has been closely involved with many dozens of students who not only began to be shomer Shabbos, but are leading full lives of Torah and mitzvos. And he’s not the only one in Boston doing the same thing.  Rabbi Mendy Gould, a Brooklyn native, has been associated with the Kollel of Greater Boston for over 30 years, and is a kiruv superstar at Brandeis University in the Boston suburbs.  The Goulds and the Loketches — as well as the Gangers (Meor Harvard), the Katzes, the Greenblatts, and the Millers (all with JPulse, a thriving Young Professionals kiruv organization) — live within the frum community and daven, learn, and educate their children in the same first-rate mosdos as all other local klei kodesh. Thanks to these exceptional families, several hundred students and young professionals are involved in Olami programming in Boston each week.

Rabbi Fully Eisenberger, a Toronto-born graduate of Yeshiva Gedola Ateres Mordechai in Oak Park, MI, returned to the Detroit area from Eretz Yisrael with his Brooklyn-bred wife and young family in 2006. He began working alongside Rabbi Dovid Maier Bausk and under Rabbi Avrohom Jacobovitz, a kiruv legend (now living in Ramat Bet Shemesh) at the Jewish Resource Center (JRC) at the University of Michigan. Within a few years, Rabbi Eisenberger began to manage the organization, and today he oversees an outstanding staff that includes Rabbi Yitz Pierce (himself a graduate of Olami’s JAC program at the University of Arizona) and Rabbi Bausk, a Chofetz Chaim musmach who learns all day with students. Other musmachim of the outreach-oriented yeshivah include Olami’s president, Rabbi Raphael Butler, as well as rabbis teaching in Boca Raton, Chicago, Las Vegas, New York, Orlando, Palo Alto, and Phoenix. One of Rabbi Bausk’s students from Michigan recently received semichah from Ner Israel, and has just returned to Detroit to spearhead the JRC’s expansion to Michigan State.

Young families also reach out to students in smaller towns, where public universities draw Jews from the large Jewish communities elsewhere in their state. But, they often find it hard to stay there as their children’s schooling needs demand more.  Rabbi Seth and Lisa Cook graduated the Ner Le’Elef Outreach Training Program in Jerusalem, where Rav Seth learned for many years at Aish HaTorah. They spent four years working with students at Indiana University before moving their family to Pittsburgh, where they are part of a thriving kehillah and work with both young professionals and students at University of Pittsburgh and at the prestigious Carnegie Mellon University.

Of course, nearly 50% of North America’s Jews live in the New York area, and that’s allowed Executive Director Rabbi Aryeh Katzin and Rabbi Reuven Ibragimov, the multi-talented COO of the Russian American Jewish Experience (RAJE), to not only build an organization and teach Torah, but also for Rabbi Ibragimov to officiate at 139 Jewish weddings of his students. More often than not, his wife, Nalini, a director at Souled, an Olami-funded program for young professional women, helps prepare kallahs for life as married women.

These are just some of the stories of the over 100 couples that are teaching Torah and helping hundreds of students become shomer Shabbos each year in North America alone. Their work is supported not only by donations, but also by the caring direction of the Lakewood-based North American Regional Director Rabbi Avi Cassel, as well as other leaders including Rabbi David Markowitz, Olami’s visionary COO. The couples enjoy the guidance of their own rabbanim, as well as kiruv-focused rabbinic leaders like Rabbi Yitzchak Berkovits, Rabbi Berel Gershenfeld, Rabbi Sholom Kamenetsky, Rabbi Aharon Lopiansky, and Rabbi Reuven Leuchter, all of whom have participated in the Yarchei Kallah programs, professional conferences, and phone-based chizuk shiurim that Olami organizes. The organization itself benefits from the general direction of Rav Asher Weiss, who now serves as its posek.

The glorified sense of kiruv’s yesteryear and uninformed perspective of kiruv today is erroneous, and is a tragic disservice to our emerging generation of bnei Torah and the students who are waiting to learn from today’s mekarvim. The kiruv crisis is real. Will the coming generation of young couples hear about its vibrant life and come join its vital cause?

Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 729. Rabbi Gidon Shoshan is senior manager and director of educator recruitment at Olami.