by Geulah Schoen Readers probably did a double take when they first saw the August issue of Moment magazine, a periodical that caters to mainstream American Jews. For a moment, it almost looked like a Chabad brochure. The front cover features a globe inscribed "It's a Chabad world" with black coated and hatted Chasidic figures floating in the background.
The upbeat essay written by Sue Fishkoff admires Chabad Lubavitch's dynamic growth throughout the world, listing impressive statistics about its varied global outreach programs. Moshiach must be around the corner! This is certainly an auspicious moment for a mainstream publication to compliment rather than to begrudge or criticize religious (ultra religious!) Jews, actually admiring their different (strange!) ways, and respecting their (powerful!) influence.
On closer examination, however, the Chasidic figures sprinkled on the front cover don't represent Lubavitch dress or posture. The broad, fur hat Shtreimel, the long sidecurls and the roundish 'bend up' hat are the trademark of other Polish or Hungarian Chasidic groups, who actually have ideological differences with Chabad regarding interaction with non observant Jews. Perhaps the more outlandish style was used for a more dramatic effect.
Numbers Are Deceiving
The large numbers of Chabad Houses, the Rebbe's emissaries and their worldwide accomplishments are impressive, but the real secret of Chabad's success is more in quality than quantity.
Indeed, many of the Rebbe's Emissaries live in far flung locations, reaching out to the smallest of communities, where other rabbis would not venture. Lubavitch is known for personal care and concern for each and every individual Jew. They will often spend hours upon hours, going the extra mile to help find a lost Jew in the middle of nowhere. The Rebbe teaches: One Jew at a time.
Similarly, the Mitzvah campaigns do not expect people to change overnight. On the contrary, it is a step by step approach that appreciates the value of each and every single Mitzvah.
The Rebbe teaches: One Mitzvah at a time. It's just that these individual people and Mitzvos keep adding up!
Following are selected excerpts from Moment's "Black Hat Blitz" article.
The scene opens at the international convention last November in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, when over 1,300 "Shluchim" (The Lubavitcher Rebbe's emissaries) from around the world converged on their "770" headquarters for an inspiring weekend of R&R -Rebbe and Rededication.
"Argentina!" "Australia!" "Austria!" Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, development director for Chabad's shluchim network, read alphabetically the names of 109 countries where the movement's emissaries are stationed.
As each name was announced, one, two, or sometimes a dozen men sprang from their seats to a smattering of applause. "Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Romania
!"
....When the announcer boomed out "Russia!" about three dozen young men, half of Chabad's 52 full-time emissaries to Russia (a country that only recently banned Jewish education, imprisoning and torturing Jewish activists, until religious freedom prevailed in 1991) jumped out of their seats to thunderous applause and raucous cheers. Spontaneously, the vast hall burst into a spontaneous hora, with clapping, singing and boisterous dancing that went on and on, a giant pep rally without the pom-poms, a political convention without the TV cameras. Pure joy. Pure passion."
"The Hasidic movement began in 18th century Polish forests, where Rabbi Yisroel Baal Shem Tov preached a revival of Judaism that was based on individual love of G‑d rather than mere rote adherence to religious law.
.....Chasidic movements always took much of their strength from the reigning rebbe, so pundits predicted that Chabad would collapse when Schneerson died childless in June 1994. "The Rebbe" was the heart and soul of Chabad, its spiritual leader and its intellectual and organizational fulcrum.
The Rebbe's absence had threatened to tear the movement apart. But it didn't. Today, more than five years later, Chabad is stronger, bigger, richer, and more popular than ever. It's almost as if the movement forced a shot of adrenaline into its collective arm after Schneerson's death just to prove, to the Jewish world and to itself, that his legacy would survive him. "The 'ologists' all thought we'd jump off a cliff or shave our beards when the Rebbe passed away," said Rabbi Langer.
And don't let their unique 18th -century dress fool you. Lubavitchers may not have television in their homes (except VCR's to watch educational videos), but they are quick to exploit the latest in modern technology, particularly the Internet.
Chabad was the first Jewish organization with its own Web site, chabadonline.com, providing everything from instructions how to celebrate holidays to detailed answers to talmudic questions. Lubavitch News Service (LNS) sends out free weekly articles highlighting Chabad activities around the world. Last summer, www.chabadonline.com, a computer network linking every Chabad branch in the world to a webzine, went on-line allowing each rabbi to add his own schedule of events, so any Jew anywhere could find his place in Judaism.
According to Lubavitch World Headquarters, the movement's infrastructure has expanded 30 percent since the Rebbe's death. More than 3,700 emissary couples working in various countries are aided by almost 50,000 professionals throughout the organization. About 400 shluchim "went out," or took up their postings, in the past five years. More than 511 new Chabad institutions have been established, including 406 new facilities purchased or built from scratch, bringing the total number of institutions worldwide-seminaries, day schools, camps, and so on- to 2,600. Officials in Brooklyn claim that nearly one million children around the globe attended Chabad activities last year.
Resistance
(The Moment article focuses on Chabad emissaries Chanie and Levy Zirkind) "The Rabbi and his Wife are Real People" who moved from Brooklyn to California. "Fresno's Jews didn't exactly roll out the red carpet for them. The Zirkinds asked one of two local rabbis to meet him in his office. "When we walked in, Levy tried to give him shalom aleichem, but the rabbi wouldn't shake his hand," Chanie says quietly, furrowing her brow at the memory. She says the rabbi told the young couple he would pay to send them and their belongings back to Brooklyn, suggesting they leave immediately. "This is a Reform town," he told them.
One year the Chabadniks threw a Purim party at Discovery Zone, a local amusement park. Another year, they took revelers to a penny arcade. "Why limit religious life to a synagogue?" Chanie asked. "Some children won't venture into a synagogue. But will come to our events. Maybe after that, they'll feel more comfortable entering a shul."
"We're continuing the Rebbe's Mitzvah revolution," says a Lubavitch woman in her early 20s, who recently moved from Brooklyn with her new husband to a distant city in Russia's Far East.
Chabad's expansion in the Former Soviet Union is phenomenal. In 1994, Lubavitch was working in eight Russian cities. Today they have 150 full-time emissary couples in 55 cities across Russia, Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics, and Central Asia, enrolling 7,400 children in their religious schools.
Ben Gurion University Professor Velvel Green, author of 'Life on Mars,' was only half kidding when he said, "Soon, when an astronaut will land on Mars, there'll already be a Lubavitch shaliach there to greet him!"
"Chabad has the biggest army of Jewish outreach people, the 'Rebbe's Peace Corps', ready to live on the edge of poverty," says New York University professor and noted Jewish historian Arthur Hertzberg. Hertzberg wasn't always a friend of Chabad. In fact, Hertzberg once t old the New York Times that Chabad "had all the aura of Sabbatai Zevi (the notorious 17th century false messiah)." But his personal encounters with Chabad shluchim turned him around, he says. Hertzberg's daughter, past president of a Conservative congregation, sends her children to the local Chabad school, Hertzberg relates with pride."
"These 3,500 people are the most holy group in the Jewish world today," he states. "Everywhere I go in recent years, I bump into one of these young couples working their heads off. They live on nothing, and they stay with it. I can disagree with their theology, but I can only admire them."
Another reason why Chabadniks are so successful is their activism. They are literally all over the place. They don't wait for Jews to come to their synagogue; they take their Judaism to the streets. Chabad shlichim run free Passover seders in hundreds of places around the world; they patrol the streets of Bangkok inviting Israeli backpackers to Shabbat meals; they throw huge public Hanukkah parties in the main squares of major American cities.
San Francisco's Rabbi Langer, a ba'al teshuva who used to hang out at Grateful Dead concerts in the 1960s, showed up at the Woodstock anniversary concert last summer with kiddush wine and one hundred challot and invited every Jewish kid he could find to his outdoor Shabbat celebration. This is also a guy, by the way, who drives around the city on a refurbished police motorcycle he calls his mitzvah bike. "It's my shtick," he admits. "In order to draw people in, you have to garb yourself in a costume they respond to."
Many young American Jews respond positively to the in-your-face public expressions of Jewish pride that so embarrass their parents' generation. "Chabad does things no one else has the gall to do," says Beth Preminger, 21, a recent graduate of Harvard University.
