Creating Community in Cambodia

It was the worst possible week to leave Phnom Penh.

A shipping container from Israel was arriving — filled with matzah, wine, and kosher supplies. Passover was days away. Rabbi Bentzion Butman, who leads Chabad of Cambodia with his wife Mashie, was drowning in logistics. Then a family called from Israel. Their son in Cambodia was enduring a mental health crisis, far from home. They’d booked a flight for him, but six hours before departure, the young man had no intention of getting on that plane.

“I happen to be going tonight on the same flight,” Rabbi Butman told him. “I have a meeting in Israel — I’ll be back tomorrow anyway. Why don’t you join me?”

The young man agreed. Hours later, Butman was on the plane. He’d bought his ticket on a whim. He hadn’t packed. He had a container arriving and a holiday to prepare for. None of that mattered anymore.

He delivered the young man safely to his parents, flew back the next morning, and went straight from the airport to deal with the container.

This is what it means to be the only rabbi in 220,000 square kilometers.

Cambodia sits tucked between Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos in the heart of Southeast Asia — a country of 17 million people still rebuilding its identity decades after the devastation of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which wiped out nearly a quarter of its population in the 1970s. Today, the capital city of Phnom Penh draws an eclectic mix — backpackers, businesspeople, diplomats, and humanitarian workers. The Butmans arrived in 2009, when there was nothing Jewish in the country.

Today, Chabad Cambodia occupies a six-story building beside the Royal Palace — synagogue, kosher restaurant, mikveh, preschool, and a free dormitory that can host twenty-four travelers at a time. Kosher chicken is imported from Vietnam. Beef and lamb arrive from South Africa. Once a year, a container from Israel brings the rest.

For Gerald Vineberg, a Canadian who moved to Phnom Penh two years ago, the Chabad House has become something he didn’t expect to find in Southeast Asia. “It’s an island of peace in a world of turmoil. A place to meet friends for lunch. A place to simply sit and reflect. A place to participate in quiet morning prayers or Shabbat services.” It is, as Rabbi Butman describes it, “a home for every Jew away from home” — and, Vineberg adds, “a shining beacon that all faiths can learn from.”

At night, young Israeli backpackers gather on the rooftop and sit in a circle. Many of them are traveling after military service, and they are carrying more baggage than just their backpacking gear. “People open up and let out,” Butman says. “We cry together, we laugh together, we hug each other. And they walk away in a much better place.” He doesn’t treat it as extraordinary. For him, it follows a simple principle he has lived by for fifteen years: “It’s either you doing it, or it’s not done.”