By Mendel Steingart

One of my earliest childhood memories is the day the Chabad House in Mumbai was attacked.

I remember my mother getting the news.

I remember her crying.

I remember the fear and the pain of losing fellow shluchim.

We grow up hearing about attacks in Eretz Yisroel. Tragedy there is constant, almost expected.

But this was different.

These were shluchim. People like us.

If it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone.

At the time, I told myself something comforting: India isn’t normal civilization. It’s chaotic, unstable, unpredictable. You can’t compare it to the West.

That illusion shattered on Erev Chanukah in Sydney.

There’s a common assumption that mesiras nefesh is about geography.

Shluchim in New York have it easy; they’re a few hours drive from the Rebbe and Lubavitch.

Shluchim in rural America have a harder time; they have to home school their children, who knows where the closest Mikvah is, ect.

Shluchim in Arab countries sacrifice their actual physical security, on top of everything else.

And only someone extraordinary could give up modern comforts entirely.

Sydney destroyed that hierarchy.

Mesiras nefesh isn’t measured by how far you are from kosher ice cream, how many hours you drive for schooling, or whether you walk with armed guards.

Real mesiras nefesh is giving yourself over completely to the Rebbe’s inyonim—big and small—wherever you are.

Where does an “ordinary” person find the courage to charge an armed terrorist with nothing but a brick?

Where does a fourteen-year-old girl get the instinct to shield children she has never met?

Where does a bachur find the strength to risk his life to save another Yid?

The answer is uncomfortable: it comes when you realize that if you don’t act, no one else will.

And from where does an 8-year-old get the courage to ask a stranger if he’s Jewish?

Where does a 14-year-old get the drive to arrange a Farbrengen for his community, to arrange an entire Yud Aleph Nissan parade?

That realization unlocks something buried deep inside.

This is the mission the Rebbe entrusted to us.

Every Yid is responsible for the Yiddishkeit and Chassidishkeit of their surroundings.

You don’t wait for someone else to step up.

You are the someone else.

We cannot wait till others act to jump on the bandwagon.

Each and everyone of us has the responsibility and ability to change our surroundings.

What are you going to do?