Some of you know I have an attitude or tone when the topic of Chabad comes out. I own it. Today in eJewishPhilanthropy, Rabbi Paul Steinberg does some very constructive evaluation of Chabad and its activities in comparison to the Conservative movement. As a Reform Jew, I do not feel competent to judge what he says about Conservative, but I can easily see how his analysis can apply or be adapted to apply to my movement as well. I believe this is a very well written and very important piece.
-Ira
What Can We Really Learn From Chabad:
A Conservative Perspective
Posted: 26 Aug 2012 09:45 PM PDT
by Paul Steinberg
“Excuse
me, are you Jewish? Have you put on tefillin today?” Many of us
recognize this signature introduction to our Chabad Lubavitch brothers. I
certainly do. Actually, I should disclose that I have personal history with
Chabad, having attended a Chabad day school and Camp Gan Israel, and, for
several years, my family went to a Chabad house every week for Shabbat and
holidays.
I am no chabadnik now and, in fact,
I feel very much at home in the pluralistic, historical, and multi-faceted
ideology of Conservative Judaism. Still, as a Conservative rabbi, Chabad has an
impact on me, especially in the form of friends and congregants who eagerly
tell of the warmth, personal appeal, and authenticity they feel at Chabad
houses. I understand the attraction, for I knew my Chabad rabbis well. I also
appreciate identifying the striking contrasts between what happens at Chabad
houses and relatively large Conservative congregations like my own.
I also
absolutely agree with Professor Steven Windmueller’s recent article
identifying what he considers to be Chabad’s success, when he suggests that we
should learn from what Chabad does that works. Yet, when I hear the accounts
and read the articles that compare our congregations with Chabad, I am not
always convinced of an honest and fair accounting of our differences whereby we
both define what we mean by Jewish organizational success and candidly
acknowledge the reality of American Jewish sociology.
In order to make any comparison with
Chabad and identify their success, we must first understand Chabad. Chabad is a
movement that started in the territories of modern day Belarus, Ukraine, Russia
and Eastern Poland. It is a Chasidic movement that is most famous for its
emissaries, known as shluchim.
These shluchim,
numbering over 4000, go all over the world (and there don’t need to be too many
Jews for them to go there) from Congo to Columbus, Ohio. With these dedicated shluchim, Chabad has managed
to place itself not only on the national Jewish agenda, but also the
international Jewish agenda.
One of the extraordinary things
about Chabad is that, although it is a Chasidic movement, most of its followers
are not Chasidic, nor are they even Orthodox, nor are they likely to become so.
Indeed, Chabad houses offer a warm and accepting environment where there are no
strings attached at all. In this regard, Chabad’s model of communal engagement
is actually the opposite model found in most of the Jewish world.
For most
congregations, the basic model goes something like this: you become a member,
and then you receive services and become a friend. The Chabad model reverses
it: they provide services and become your friend, and later you’ll want to pay
them something because of everything they do for you. They never expect anyone
to become a member; there is no explicit expectation or demand for financial,
communal, or even Jewish commitment.
So then, what is Chabad’s goal? What
do they want? They nobly want us to do mitzvot
or mitzvos (fulfill
Jewish commandments). And why do they want us to do mitzvos? Because of messianism. That is to say,
doing mitzvos –
“changing the world one mitzvah
at a time” – helps to bring about the messiah.
Messianism is the belief that
there is a messiah (the mashiach)
and that he is coming (they are sure it’s a “he”), and, for some in Chabad, he
has already been here (we’ll discuss below). Messianism has been at the heart
of the mission of Chabad for at least the past hundred years, and they believe
that it is their job is to hasten the coming of the messiah by encouraging
mitzvos, specific ritual acts. Chabad has their own version of a top ten list of
mitzvos, and the performance of those mitzvos has cosmic
significance, potentially tipping the spiritual balance toward the messiah’s
arrival. In other words, putting on tefillin
in the street, eating a kosher meal, or spending a Shabbat at a Chabad house
just one time and never doing it again is an act that has the power to tip the
celestial scales. Therefore, the role of the shluchim
is to encourage mitzvos
in order to accelerate the coming of the messiah.
Over the past 50 years, Chabad has
taken this message and skillfully packaged it into media and slogans – slogans
that are particularly catchy in America, such as, “We want mashiach now!” Wanting
something and wanting it now, after all, is about as American as apple pie.
However, what is fascinating about this religious ideology is that it doesn’t
take much to motivate the mashiach
and get him here now. It doesn’t require keeping 613 commandments, it doesn’t
require a lifetime of service, and it doesn’t even require a sustained
commitment to the Jewish community. They claim that for mashiach to be here, it
requires us to “just add goodness and kindness,” something of which no one
could possibly be opposed.
What most people notice about Chabad
though, is how it has proudly promoted traditional Jewish culture in the public
square. Many are familiar with their telethon dancing rabbis and street-tefillin shluchim. And don’t
forget the gigantic Hanukkah menorah that Chabad introduced to the world, as shluchim are raised on forklifts
in public malls and plazas to light the lights. Chabad’s presence is prominent
at the Kotel in Jerusalem, in the cyber world of the Internet and even at the
White House in Washington. Furthermore, their marketing products such as
publications and magazines, as well as collective distribution are the envy of
many in the Jewish organizational world.
Finally, what we also associate with
Chabad is the image of the Rebbe himself as the centralizing source of
inspiration. No other Jewish leader in modernity has achieved his status of
popularity. One only needs to see his face to know what he represents – and
what he represents is not without controversy. To this day, banners donning his
photo, mounted at storefronts and at the entrance of the Chabad Lubavitch
Yeshivah on Eastern Parkway read, Yechi
Melekh Ha-Mashiach (“Long Live the King Messiah”) and “MESSIAH IS
HERE: Add just goodness and kindness.” These markers leave little doubt as to
who they believe is the messiah. However, since the Rebbe’s passing in 1994,
Chabad has worked very hard to shift its messaging regarding the Rebbe as the
messiah, but still has not changed the banners.
So, now that we have a context for
Chabad, we can better assess the question of its success. Professor Windmueller
and others pronounce Chabad’s great organizational success, corroborating the
claim that Chabad is possibly the most successful Jewish outreach organization
in the world. Maybe they are. But that would only be success according to their
own goals of bringing the sum number of mitzvot
performed into the world for the hastening of the messiah. These, however, are
not our goals at all.
Frankly, it is unwise and misleading
to contrast the totality of Chabad’s successes with our own because we are
working toward two totally different sets of goals. Such comparisons often
result in more confusion and doubt about who we are than inspiration and
solidarity in our own vision of Jewish life. And there are good reasons why we
are who we are and not who we are not. For example, the fact that Chabad is
able to get someone to put on tefillin
in the street once so as to tip the balance in favor of a messiah is irrelevant
for Conservative Judaism. Our goal is to help Jews live an integrated, whole
life of mitzvot, so
that each of us contributes to an ongoing and evolving world of goodness. We
measure ourselves by different goals and ask ourselves different questions:
- Are we helping Jews to live an embodied and rich life of mitzvot?
- Are we heightening and expanding Jewish life both locally and nationally throughout America?
- Are we building a stronger feeling toward the State of Israel and an expansion of a robust Jewish life there?
- Are we helping to bring Jews of different streams and ideologies together to work in a pluralistic and respectful manner toward common aims?
- Are we providing ample opportunities for more Jews in America live a life of Jewish learning?
- Are we contributing to the advancement of scholarship and research in Jewish studies?
- Are we working to improve relations between Jews and non-Jews?
- Are we engaging Jews in honest and mature conversations about God?
- Are we helping Jews enroll their children in a Jewish educational programs, Jewish summer camps, and Jewish youth groups?
- Are we guiding Jews toward a rich inner spiritual life, including prayer?
- Are we advancing Jewish civics and actively applying Jewish values toward worldly ethical problems?
These are the kinds of questions
that we ask of Conservative Judaism. I don’t think we ask these questions of
Chabad and I’m not certain it would do any good because they are not the
questions they ask of themselves. Plus, if we did, I’m not too sure they would
fare very well on the affirmative side.
There is no denying that our
Conservative institutions need fixing in many ways, especially now, as we find
ourselves in what seems to be a very unstable time. That being said, we are
supremely aware of our own deficiencies and peccadilloes because we are experts
at stacking up the self-criticism, jumping at every complaint, and overreacting
to any demographic downturn. It’s good to remember that inspiring Jews toward
authentic, serious Jewish living has been a challenge since the time of the
Torah. Why should it be different today? Of course, complacency and hubris
would be foolish and we should continuously seek out best practices. Yet as we
look to those virtues of success (as identified in the questions above), let us
neither overstate others’ nor deny our own.
Lastly, if there is anything we can
learn it is to be resolute in our ideology and our message of relationships and
connectedness. For us, it’s about connecting the wisdom of the past with the
advances and insights of the present – connecting Jewish thought with Jewish
practice; Jewish law (Halakhah)
with ethics; Jews with other Jews of all varying denominations and
perspectives; Jews with non-Jews, Jews with the State of Israel, and Jews with
God. We believe in a world that moves toward more connectivity in all its
glorious Jewish diversity, and bound by the unifying force of the oneness of
God. It is from this place of authentic, religious vision that we are compelled
to set our benchmarks and measure successes.
Rabbi Paul Steinberg is the Senior
Educator at Valley Beth Shalom in Los Angeles, CA and is the author of the
award-winning series, Celebrating the Jewish Year (JPS, 2009). He also teaches
at the Graduate School of Education at American Jewish University and is
working on his doctoral dissertation on the Bar Mitzvah at the Jewish
Theological Seminary.
