When a shliach from Troy knocked on one Jew’s door, he never could have imagined the journey he would spark for the young man, both figuratively and literally. Over 70 Chabad Houses later, the spark ignited by one shliach has grown into a full-fledged fire of connection to Hashem and to yiddishkeit.

Adam Kollin was born in Pontiac in 1955, and his family moved to Rochester when he was two years old. Growing up, Adam had no Jewish friends in school, and aside from a few major Yomim Tovim that his family marked ceremonially and some time spent with his grandfather, Yiddishkeit did not mean much to him. It remained distant and in the background.

While studying at the University of Michigan, he suddenly found himself surrounded by Jewish students for the first time, but it still did not lead to a deeper connection with his heritage.

One day, while living in Troy, he heard a knock on his door. The young man standing there, dressed in black and white, introduced himself as Rabbi Menachem Caytak, the Rebbe’s shliach serving the Jewish community of Troy.

“I’d never even heard of Chabad before,” Kollin later told the Detroit Jewish News. “But I felt a connection immediately.”

“These are people who are extraordinarily observant,” he said. “Yet not once in hundreds of conversations did anybody tell me I had to become more religious. They just wanted to spark something Jewish in me.”

He began attending events and shiurim at the Chabad House, started learning and reading as much as he could, and soon began putting on tefillin every day. But the Chabad House in Troy and the shluchim there were far from the only ones he encountered.

Kollin owns several different businesses, including companies that manufacture powerful microscopes capable of capturing images of objects as small as atoms, as well as products that assist people with hearing difficulties. His work requires him to travel extensively, and before meeting Chabad, he often spent long weekends alone in hotels.

Now, he realized he had family wherever he went, with shluchim around the world who were more than happy to welcome him.

“I never grew up around Jews,” Kollin said. “And now, almost everywhere I go in the world, I feel like I have family.”

Today, he estimates that he has visited 73 Chabad Houses and met hundreds of the Rebbe’s shluchim around the world. Needless to say, his life has completely changed. His travels have given him a stronger sense of Jewish identity, meaning, and purpose than he ever expected he could find.

His journeys have taken him to all corners of the globe, from celebrating Purim at a Chabad House on a boat along the Seine River in Paris, to an unexpected detour in Tokyo after airline officials refused to let him board a flight to China because he had forgotten his Chinese visa.

In the United States, Kollin took up motorcycle riding on his trusted Harley-Davidson and has since traveled through 48 states, visiting dozens of Chabad Houses and shluchim families across the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

Again and again, he encountered shluchim who treated him like family and shared with him the warmth and joy of Yiddishkeit. After losing an expensive pair of tefillin, a shliach he had never met before immediately handed him another pair to use, without asking anything in return.

“He didn’t ask who I was or ask for a deposit,” Kollin said. “He just said, ‘Take them.’”

From Tokyo to Andorra, and from Paris to Munich, dozens of shluchim have played a part in shaping Adam’s life and journey.