Roving rabbis harken back to a time of traveling help

Rabbi Aaron Raskin plays the shofar as Jews mark Rosh Hashanah during a traditional Tashlich ceremony in September 2013 in the Brooklyn borough of New York City. A program called Roving Rabbis sends Orthodox Jewish rabbis around the globe to have conversations with all kinds of people as part of Chabad.

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Traveling Orthodox Jewish rabbis visit fellow Jews in places around the globe--even a mostly Mormon town--in the name of Chabad.

Residents of the rural West have historically relied on the talents of people passing through.

People such as traveling doctors helped people to get well; traveling circus performers to laugh; and even traveling preachers to connect to a higher power.

But in today's hyper-connected world, those sorts of visitors are a rarity--almost.

KJZZ's Stina Sieg recently met two unlikely travelers--young Orthodox rabbinical students--as they made their way through the wilds of Arizona.

Zalman Refson and Yaakov Kaplan are part of the Roving Rabbis program and two of the hundreds of rabbinical students who travel every year to rural places all across the globe in the name of Chabad, a movement within Orthodox Judaism, KJZZ reports.