‘Warm, close family’ part of Chabad’s appeal

If there’s a key to the success of Chabad Lubavitch, it’s the combination of its emissaries’ strict adherence to Jewish law and their non-judgmental embrace of other Jews, says Sue Fishkoff, author of The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch.

Speaking last week at Chabad Lubavitch of Markham, the California-based JTA correspondent noted that in less than 40 years Chabad has become a billion-dollar outreach empire with more than 4,000 shluchim in more than 70 countries.

Her talk, titled “What is it about Lubavitch that attracts secular Jews?” commemorated the 11th yahrzeit of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Despite predictions that the organization would “if not collapse, at least lose its forward momentum” after the Rebbe’s death, the half-dozen years that followed were its years of greatest growth, and it is continuing to grow, she said.

“What is most intriguing, particularly in North America but also in the former Soviet Union [both places where Chabad’s growth is greatest], is that overwhelmingly the people who come to Chabad classes and services, who send their kids to Chabad summer camps, are the Reform, Conservative and unaffiliated Jews whose values, beliefs and lifestyles would seem very far removed from those of the Chabad infrastructure they’re supporting.”

Fishkoff said that, for her, Chabad shluchim, who typically start as young couples in their early 20s, exemplify the Jewish values she learned as a child but doesn’t necessarily take the time to put into practice herself – visiting sick people, inviting strangers for Shabbat, calling people who are alone in the community, making a point of not embarrassing people.

Over and over, she said, she heard from people like the woman who never heard from her congregation when her husband was sick with cancer, but the Chabad rabbi from the next town visited every day throughout his illness.

When she was researching her book, Fishkoff spent many days with Chabad families. Sometimes, she said, it was 2 a.m. before they had time to sit down for an interview.

“What can other Jewish streams learn from what Chabad is doing?” asked Fishkoff, who belongs to a small Conservative congregation. “How can we incorporate that into our lives, our synagogues, and our hearts?”

She said it was “an incredible lesson” for her to see teenage boys in Portland, Ore. teaching Torah to people old enough to be their grandparents with “such sensitivity, such intelligence, and such confidence without arrogance.”

Although Fishkoff’s book focused on the American Chabad experience, she said she couldn’t resist traveling to Thailand to attend a Chabad seder for 800. In Bangkok, she said, three shaliach couples serve the needs of about 250 local Jews and thousands of Israeli backpackers who travel there after their army service.

“These are young Israelis who at home would never set foot in a synagogue, let alone a Chabad House,” said Fishkoff. Those attending seders in the Far East “will not put on black hats and move to Kfar Chabad, but they’ll have a warm memory of a Jewish ritual and a guy in a black hat they could speak to and who had things to say. I think those seders will go further than anything else to breaking down that religious/non-religious divide [in Israel].”

In the United States, said Fishkoff, Chabad has been able to offer classes “appropriate to a college-educated, lay audience in a way that doesn’t talk down to people.”

Many people told her they were attracted to Chabad by “‘this nostalgic vision they had of the warm, close Chabad family.’”

In fact, she said, many parents from wealthy communities told her they wanted the Chabad shluchim as role models for their non-materialistic values. “I found that fascinating – what it said about us as well as Chabad.”

Also, she noted, Chabad’s celebration of Judaism “speaks to the Jewish soul. Judaism doesn’t just come from the head.”

But Chabad also forces you to ask questions of yourself,” Fishkoff said. “That has happened to me. I can’t say I’ve become any more observant, but I know that every day I’m much more Jewishly aware and more aware of myself as a Jewish person in relation to the world in a way I wasn’t before.

“If Chabad can convince people never to be complacent, but to keep challenging themselves, it will help us become better Jews and better human beings.”