Rebbe’s Unifying Vision Recalled

PALO ALTO, CA — Wondering who’s Jewish? Take a tip from Rabbi Dov Greenberg. As director of Stanford University’s Rohr Chabad House, he’s developed a foolproof way to find out:

“Sometimes I sit in the center of campus and try to meet Jewish students,” he explained. “I’ll ask, what faith community are you part of? If the student tells me he’s Mormon, I know the student is Mormon —that’s fine. If the student says he’s Buddhist, I know the student is Buddhist. But if the student answers, I’m a human being,” Greenberg said, “I switch to Hebrew and invite him to Chabad House for Shabbos.”

“He’s having an internal debate,” Greenburg explained. “If he says I’m Jewish, then he’s provincial. It smacks of particularism But, he doesn’t want to deny his Jewishness either.”

So continues, Greenberg said, the ancient debate and division among Jews. “Are we universalists or particularists? Is our task to make the world a better place or to keep our traditions and Torah?”

Here to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the passing of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, Greenberg discussed the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s success in resolving this issue and bringing all Jews closer together.

“The Rebbe taught that G-d never asked us to choose between fixing the world and being observant,” Greenberg said. “G-d
asked us to do both at the same time.”

And, Greenberg added, it is only when we are rooted in what makes us unique that we have something to give to the world. Like African-Americans with jazz or Tolstoy with Russian culture, our particularism is our universalism.

The Rebbe helped his followers share their Jewish values out in the world just as he helped so many Jews move closer to their faith. Greenberg’s own family is a case in point.

“My great-grandfather threw his tefillin (and 3,000 years of Jewish tradition) off the boat when he emigrated from Ukraine to America,” Greenberg said. Both parents grew up secular. Then, after bumping into Chabad on campus, his father wrapped tefillin for the first time.

Things changed—“Once you put tefillin on you’re sort of zapped.”

His parents met, married and became deeply religious. They sent Greenberg to Chabad school.

“How did this family move from throwing their tefillin off a boat to a young couple embracing their identity?” Greenberg asked.

The answer—one mitzvah at a time. Don’t undervalue the power of a single mitzvah, Greenberg said, and of moving in the right direction, however slowly.

Greenberg also stressed the Rebbe’s profound acceptance of all Jews.

“Take the Jew seriously, not the things the Jew is doing,” he said. He illustrated this with the story of a man who ate bacon and eggs every Shabbos, just to spite G-d. He met a rabbi who encouraged him to take a religious class.

“Only a Jew eats bacon and eggs especially on Shabbos,” the rabbi said. “You believe in G-d and you believe in kosher—that’s very Jewish.”

Greenberg likened Chabad to a GPS system that quietly recalculates when drivers ignore or confuse directions. It leads you back to the right road, no matter which wrong direction you turn, he said.

“Chabad is a G-dly positioning system.”