From Brooklyn to Bangkok by the Orthodox route

On Yud Shevat popular British newspaper, the Times featured a piece on Chabad: Dedicated to global outreach, the Hassidic Lubavich movement is a visible — if not always welcome — presence in cities around the world

It was the biggest banquet in the history of New York, a city that not only never sleeps but never likes to be beaten when it comes to statistics. Not that this was any ordinary banquet and the diners any ordinary group of people. They were all men. And they were all dressed exactly alike. They wore uniform black suits, white shirts and ties and every one, all 4,000 of them wore a large black hat.

The scene was an aircraft hangar-sized hall in what used to be the Brooklyn Navy Yard, scene of dozens of World War Two movies. But this was no showbusiness event. Most of those crowded into the hall were rabbis. And all of them were dedicated followers of another rabbi who has been dead for 16 years, a man who had told this crowd and their predecessors to go out into the world and spread the word.

Together, they represented 100 outposts, many of them tiny and in countries where the population have never seen a Jew in their lives. In a way, they are missionaries — although they prefer the word “outreach”. But they do not seek to convert others to their faith; simply to provide a Jewish existence to, say, Jewish businessmen and backpackers who have strayed into their territory. In London, you will see their “Mitzvah tank”, (Mitzvah means good deed), a van from which rabbis and others help people to pray, to learn about Judaism or perhaps to light Chanukkah candles during that winter festival.

They are members of an ultra-Orthodox Hassidic movement founded in 1773 in the Lithuanian village of Lubavich. Ever since, they have been known as the Lubavicher Hassidim or, more and more, as part of “Chabad”, an acronym for the Hebrew words for wisdom, understanding and righteousness. It was during the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — known as “the Rebbe” — from 1950 to 1994, that the movement spread its wings by working in places as far flung as Turkey, China, Romania and, most recently, Cambodia.

The extension of its influence far from its base in New York is not regarded by all as a positive development, and it has paid a heavy price. In Mumbai two years ago the Chabad House was attacked by terrorists and the rabbi and his wife were murdered.

In Hong Kong, a Lubavich rabbi hosts Friday night Sabbath eve dinners for passing strangers in one of the island’s luxury hotels. Take a plane from Bangkok and ask for a kosher meal on board, it will not only be supervised — as happens with food on other flights — by the local rabbi, but is actually prepared by the man who might or might not like to be called the chief rabbi of Thailand. These rabbis are ordered to their posts from New York and rarely say no. Some may wish that they had.

There are plenty of Jews outside of their headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the nerve centre of their operations, who not only doubt the Lubavich philosophy, but actively oppose it. A leading London rabbi makes no bones about being a former follower who broke away, even though his father is a leading Lubavicher.

There are other problems. Its attitude to Israel was for a long time regarded as cool. This was exacerbated by the refusal of Schneerson to visit the country. There were suggestions that it interfered in Israeli politics, but that has rarely been true. But, if there was an obvious ambivalence, Lubavichers try not to show it. Their Israeli headquarters, in full view of the road to Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion airport, is an exact replica of the chief centre in Brooklyn.

One of the main (and regularly heard) criticisms is that Lubavich steps in and exclude other, less authoritarian, organisations, to say nothing of rabbis.

In Britain, there are Lubavich rabbis in places which undoubtedly, without them, would have no Orthodox leadership. They operate schools in London, all over the Commonwealth and in France and Italy. Throughout Europe, there are summer camps for children. Areas far away from American cities are served by a flying rabbi operation, using Lubavich’s chartered planes.

All causes for pride in an organisation that believes it has to take advantage of every means of communication — including relaying all over the world their regular gatherings in Brooklyn, known as “farbringen”.

But all is not well. Consider the situation in Bournemouth, which had a flourishing Orthodox Jewish community. An internal argument resulted in the founding of a breakaway Chabad congregation, which the establishment considered unnecessarily divisive. The community is not big enough to support both — but Lubavich followers have built an impressive small new synagogue, hold religion classes for children and have even opened a kosher delicatessen. The divide led to the original synagogue opening a shop of their own. Why did Lubavich step in? “Because there was a demand,” said one follower. I wondered what would have happened if there was a “demand” to serve bacon at their shop.

To some, much more serious are the divisions within Lubavich itself. For a time in New York, there was a kind of kulturkampf between two wings of the movement, one calling for a status quo the other seeking change, even leading to an insistence by some that the old rebbe never actually died. They have proclaimed him to be the Messiah, which Jews believe has still to arrive. In London and Manchester, there are cars bearing the inscription, “Mashiach vemelech” or “Messiah and King”. That statement has resounded within world Jewry, and mostly not very sympathetically. To some it holds Lubavich, and with it other Jews, to ridicule.

The messianic believers are comparatively few, but among the followers, the influence of Rabbi Schneerson is evident everywhere. There are pictures of him in Lubavich synagogues and in members houses. The movement’s critics say is close to idolatry, if not more Christian than Jewish.

“It is not at all like having pictures of Jesus,” says Rabbi Yitzhak Hirsch Sufrin, a trustee of Lubavich in Britain. “It is much more like people showing their affection for perhaps Elvis or the Beatles.” Except that neither Elvis nor the Beatles wore a battered trilby hat and a beard like the man in the pictures. There are Lubavich followers who, since his death, have even named their newly-born sons Menachem Mendel in his honour. But still alive? “I have been to his grave, so that satisfies me,” Yitzhak Hirsch Sufrin says with a twinkle in his eye.

Traditionally, Lubavich, like other Hassidic sects, was ruled by a dynasty — the last Rebbe was the son-in-law of the previous incumbent. But since Schneerson had no children the role has been left in abeyance and few people believe there will be a successor to the title in their lifetime.

In Rebbe’s lifetime, surgeons asked his advice on whether to perform complicated operations, lawyers sought to know his opinion on their cases and even stockbrokers wanted guidance on making certain investments. The Rebbe, who graduated from the Sorbonne, gave them his consideration and usually his advice. “He was a very clever man,” Rabbi Yitzhak Sufrin says. “And we all benefited from his knowledge.”