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Chicago Jewish News (06/22/2001) |
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"I was once privileged to hear from my father-in-law (the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe) that his father was once asked, ‘What is a Chabad-Lubavitch chasid?’
He replied, ‘A chasid is like a street- lamp lighter.’ In olden days, there was a person in every town who would light the street-lamps with a light he carried at the end of a long pole. On the street corners, the lamps were there in readiness, waiting to be lit; sometimes, however, the lamps are not as easily accessible. There are lamps in forsaken places, in deserts, or at sea. There must be someone to light even those lamps, so that they may fulfill their purpose and light up the paths of others.” Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe Ben-Gurion University professor Velvel Green coined a phrase that became an instant classic several years ago when he said, “Sooner or later, we’ll land an astronaut on Mars, and he’ll be met there by a Lubavitcher shaliach.” That hasn’t happened quite yet. (Blame NASA, not the Lubavitchers.) But shlichim — emissaries—of the Chabad-Lubavitch brand of Chasidic Judaism have planted their flag just about everywhere on our own planet. And in the Chicago Jewish community, where there are Chabad outposts from the Gold Coast to Highland Park, with one coming soon to Peoria. That’s right, Peoria, Illinois, the very symbol of white bread middle America (“But will it play in Peoria?”) will later this year join the 10 other Illinois communities with a Chabad- Lubavitch married couple directing Chabad activities. Clearly, the movement does play in Peoria—and in Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Paris, Katmandu, Ho Chi Minh City, Jakarta, Nairobi and hundreds of other cities and towns across the globe. Just how major a presence Lubavitch has become in the Windy City was vividly demonstrated just this week when a fund- raising benefit kicked off a campaign for the biggest Chicago-area Chabad project yet: the Center for Jewish Life, to be built on a multi-million- dollar parcel of real estate in the upscale River North neighborhood (see separate story). The center symbolizes just how visible the Lubavitchers are, with their giant Chanukah menorah in Daley Plaza and in downtowns all over the area, their “Mitzvah Mobiles,” their public succahs. And it symbolizes just how robust the movement is here. Rabbi Daniel Moscowitz, along with his wife Esther Rochel, is the architect of the modern Chabad era in Chicago. The couple arrived here in 1976, sent by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to expand the Chabad presence in the city. A native Chicagoan, Moscowitz grew up in West Rogers Park, then studied in Lubavitch yeshivas in New York City, Montreal and Paris. When he arrived back in Chicago, there were two Chabad rabbis here already— Rabbis Solomon S. Hecht and Harold Shusterman, both connected with synagogues—but no formal structure and no Chabad houses. (The “houses” are centers that contain synagogues, classrooms, libraries, school facilities, public rooms for lectures and discussions, and sometimes even a mikvah. In many cases, they are aptly named—the facilities are in the basement of the home of the rabbi and his family.) Today, celebrating a quarter-century as director of Lubavitch Chabad of Illinois, the state’s central Chabad organization, Moscowitz presides over a vast network of institutions and activities—Chabad houses, synagogues, schools, day camps, classes and other educational efforts, study groups, women’s organizations, Shabbat dinners and lunches, holiday programs and programs for children of all ages, for college students, immigrants, the elderly, prisoners, the disabled and hospital patients. An imposing man with an unusually long beard (even for a Chasid), Moscowitz has the demeanor of a powerful leader with something of the patient teacher about him as well. He’s soft-spoken and self-effacing and discourses with equal ease about zoning laws and Jewish law. When he’s asked whether Chabad adherents look down on other Jews who aren’t as observant as they, his answer is a quiet “G‑d forbid.” Chabad in Illinois, he says, is in “a concerted expansion mode, and it’s coming from the grassroots. When I first started, I had to go knocking on doors, and it was a struggle. Today, people are coming to us. Communities are coming to us.” In Peoria, for instance, a small number of Jews “are in a struggle for their survival, and they say Chabad are the ones who can come and help them.” Moscowitz hopes to have a Chabad presence in the city before Rosh Hashanah. He attributes Chabad’s growing influence and popularity primarily to one notion: “We appreciate every person for what they are and who they are. We look to the soul of every person, and there we all are the same. Our goal is to try to get people more involved in their Judaism, but our goal is not that everyone be exactly like us. Every person is welcome, no strings attached.” “People are affected by sincerity,” he says in trying to explain why Chicagoans have embraced Chabad’s message so enthusiastically. “They are looking for more meaning in life, and this is a path that provides a moral and ethical approach to everyday problems with a spiritual guidepost, something grounded in the heritage of the Jewish people.” What makes Chabad different from other groups, he says, is that “all of the Chabad people make an extra effort to be concerned about the individual. As large as we grow, we try not to become a bureaucratic organization. We’re concerned with the individual heart to heart.” It’s a message that has changed her life, says Sandy Segal. The Skokie woman, a retired eighth-grade teacher, says that before she became involved with Lubavitch Chabad of Wilmette, “I would have thought never in my wildest dreams.” Segal was brought up in a family that celebrated Jewish holidays, but she had no Jewish education and never went to synagogue. She found out about the Wilmette center when she attended a lecture there a few years ago. “I heard that Rabbi Flinkenstein was going to give some classes, and I thought, ‘why not go and try them?’” she recalls. “That led me into a whole new world.” What particularly impresses her, she says, is the acceptance she has received from the Flinkensteins and other members of the community. “They take you in, they teach you, they answer your questions, they make you feel wanted and accepted,” she says. “It didn’t matter what I knew or what temple I had attended before. The warmth, the love that is there for all Jews is so wonderful that you can’t help but feel this is where you belong.” Dr. Alan and Caren Lifchitz first became involved with Chabad some 20 years ago. When Caren Lifchitz needed her kitchen kashered, “I called Lubavitch, because that’s who you call,” she says. From that encounter, she and her husband, both natives of South Africa, came to know Rabbi Moscowitz and gradually became more and more involved. “I loved the approach, because it doesn’t matter where you’re coming from. We didn’t come from a Jewish background—really we knew nothing—but we never felt intimidated,” she says. The Northbrook couple has been instrumental in facilitating the expansion of a Chabad center in that suburb. In fact, Rabbi Moscowitz and his wife will soon be moving there to greatly expand services in the area. That expansion, Caren Lifchitz says, shows just how responsive Chabad is to the community. “The facilities out here were not really adequate, and we thought it would be nice to have a Chabad synagogue in Northbrook,” she says. “We got together with a few other people and helped to open the doors, and now they are coming out here. We are just really lucky and glad to have somebody like that in our neighborhood.” Craig Weiss of Wilmette also comes from a non-observant background. He had had no experience with Chabad until he started attending services at the Wilmette center simply because it was the closest shul to his house. Now he’s an enthusiastic supporter, along with his wife and two teenage children. “It’s very different (from other synagogues),” he says. “There is no politics. The rabbi and rebbetzin are on duty 24 hours day to the community, and they don’t really care what your level of observance is. It’s open to every Jew, every family, and you’re made to feel welcome.” Since he discovered the Wilmette center, Weiss, who travels often for business, has spent Shabbat at Chabad centers all around the world, from Arizona and New York City to Paris, Venice, Florence and Rome. Everywhere he is warmly welcomed. “It’s the same experience everywhere,” he says. “People open their home up, they bring food to your hotel. They’re willing to do anything for another Jew, any hour of the day or night. I’ve been around and seen a lot of people, and these people, if you’re a Jew, they’re there for you.” Though most other Jews consider Chabad an example of Orthodox Judaism, Moscowitz says he doesn’t like to use such terms as Orthodox, Conservative or Reform. Not surprisingly, he tells a story about the Lubavitcher Rebbe to illustrate that point. In his later years, Moscowitz says, Rabbi Schneerson was unable to continue having one-on-one meetings with all the followers who sought him out, so every Sunday he would receive thousands of people as they filed past him in a line, seeking his blessing and exchanging a few words with him. He continued this practice when he into his 90s, standing for hours and handing out dollar bills to each person, instructing them to donate the money to charity. One day a woman asked, “Rebbe, at your age, how can you stand on your feet for so long?” He answered, “When a person is counting diamonds, they don’t get tired. Everyone who comes here is a precious diamond.” “That’s the approach the Rebbe taught us,” Moscowitz says. “We can’t judge people, that they are more observant, less observant. We can challenge them, we can try to encourage them to become more involved, but every person is a diamond, and every one is precious.” It’s this philosophy, he says, that leads to one of Chabad’s enduring motifs: There is no membership in its synagogues or other programs. No dues, no building fund, no High Holiday tickets. “Our motto is, you don’t have to pay to pray,” Moscowitz says. “When people call, we never say, well, you’re a member, you we can help, or, you we can’t help, you’re not a member.” In fact, Chabad relies almost exclusively on donations to run its programs. The schools receive a “minimal” amount of funding from the Jewish Federation, but, says Moscowitz, “beyond that; we’re totally dependent on donations.” It’s common knowledge that many come from non- Orthodox Jews—and some non-Jews—who favor the Chabad philosophy. Contrary to common belief, Moscowitz says, there is no centralized structure that financially supports the 3,000- plus Chabad houses all over the world. Fund-raising is all done locally, by the shlichim. There’s a reason that the plural of that word is always used, because the emissaries are sent to their destination as a couple, and Lubavitchers consider both halves to be equally important. This, too, was an innovation on the part of the Rebbe, Moscowitz says. “He was way ahead of his time in understanding the role of the woman and that there has to be this partnership,” he says. “He understood that the role of the woman is crucial, and my wife, and all the Chabad women, understand that this is their life. Whether it’s teaching, counseling or making a Shabbos dinner, the women are really totally immersed in the community.” Chabad women are generally involved in teaching classes for other women and running schools, day camps or other educational endeavors, not to mention caring for their own usually large families. There are often many guests for Shabbat meals and at other times and a host of details involved in running a home and an organization. Both men and women would be shocked at any suggestion that Chabad women are oppressed in any way or that they play a secondary role in the community. Most of the men believe, as Rabbi Naftaly Hershkovich of the Niles Chabad puts it, that “a rabbi can only do so much, but nothing could happen without the women.” Moscowitz says there’s also a misunderstanding of the way these couples get together in the first place. There is matchmaking within the organization, but the marriages are not “arranged,” Moscowitz says, noting that his son just got engaged. “Someone suggested that he date this young woman, and it worked out,” he says. “It’s actually a very good, streamlined way for people to meet.” Another myth he’d like to see put to rest: the shlichim are not “missionaries.” Like most other Jews, Chabad men and women do not attempt to proselytize non-Jews. “We follow the (Jewish) tradition of allowing people to convert if they are really sincere, but part of that tradition is that first we have to try to dissuade them,” Moscowitz says. But it is to non-observant or under- observant or sporadically observant Jews that Lubavitchers direct their most vigorous efforts, urging men to put on tefillin (small leather boxes containing pieces of parchment with portions of the Torah inscribed on them), women to visit the mikvah (ritual bath), and everyone to light Chanukah candles, hear the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, spend time in the succah to recite a blessing with the lulav and etrog. A non-observant Chicago man who installs and repairs water filtration systems says he always allots extra time when servicing Lubavitcher homes because he knows they’ll be successful in persuading him to put on tefillin and pray. For all these reasons, Moscowitz says with pride, the “prophets of doom and gloom” who predicted that the Chabad movement would fall apart when the Rebbe died, couldn’t have been more wrong. Noting that this Sunday, June 24, is the seventh yahrzeit of the Rebbe’s passing (Tammuz 3 on the Jewish calendar) Moscowitz says, “It’s just the opposite. In the last seven years, the movement has grown at an unprecedented rate. That’s because the Rebbe set a system in motion that can never turn back.” Indeed, in Chicago, it’s moving very much ahead. In addition to the new downtown center and the Peoria Chabad House, a Hyde Park center will formally open in the next few months. And Moscowitz said he’s ready for more. “We never wait until the budget is there,” he says. “We usually start and hope that everything will work out.” While the Chabad philosophy and outreach approach has earned it some criticism from non-Chasidic Orthodox Jews, most Jewish leaders in Chicago say they welcome both its high profile and its emphasis on connecting Jews and Judaism. Rabbi Ira Youdovin, executive vice president of the Chicago Board of Rabbis, says that Judaism “is a big tent, and there are many different options. I’m pleased that there is a Chabad approach. I’m sure that there are a lot of people who have gone into the Mitzvah Mobiles and lit candles or put on tefillin and that experience was an important one in the process that eventually made them regular attendees of Reform, Conservative or Orthodox congregations.” Besides, he adds, “They’re fun people.” Rabbi Asher Lopatin, spiritual leader of Chicago’s Anshe Sholom B’nai Israel Congregation and one of the city’s best-known Modern Orthodox rabbis, says the Lubavitch movement “has been very influential in my life.” He frequented Chabad houses in Boston and Oxford, England, where he studied, and found that “although some of their philosophy is a little different from my philosophy, they bring a lot of enthusiasm and introduce a lot of people to Judaism in a positive way. They’ve made a valuable contribution to the Orthodox and the Jewish world.” He says portions of his own approach are based on the Lubavitch model, including the practice of hosting many people for Shabbat dinners and lunches in his home, along with his wife. “Is there competition (between Chabad and other Orthodox synagogues)? There might be some,” he says. “I think competition is a good thing. I’m a big advocate of the open market. “You have to have a comfortable attitude about competition to appreciate them sometimes,” he adds. “They’re out to expand their movement.” Rabbi Joseph S. Ozarowski, executive director of the Chicago Rabbinical Council, an association of Orthodox rabbis, says “We welcome them. We support spreading Torah and love of Judaism.” Moscowitz, meanwhile, takes pains to emphasize—with, of course, another story about the Rebbe—that Jews don’t need any special educational or religious prerequisites to become involved with Chabad. In this tale, a reporter comes to one of the Rebbe’s “dollar sessions” and, standing in front of him and videotaping, asks, “Rebbe, what’s your message for the world?” The Rebbe replies, “That everyone should increase their acts of goodness and kindness.” Here’s how some of the Chicago-area Chabad shlichim are going about doing that. Lubavitch Chabad of Skokie
There is also a summer day camp, Junior Gan Israel Day Camp, with 150 kids between the ages of 2 ½ and 5, from all segments of the Jewish community. It’s a job that brings Zeesy Posner, who runs the camp, an incredible amount of joy. “We’re at a stage now where we have a lot of former campers coming back as teenage counselors,” she says. “A girl who is now a counselor told me she still has her camp T-shirt from when she was three years old. She didn’t want to part with it.” Her family is another source of joy and pride for Zeesy Posner—not just the usual nachas that parents get from their children’s accomplishments, but the satisfaction of knowing that each child—there are six of them, from age 8 to 22 — is living a Chabad life. Zeesy’s parents were shlichim in Worcester, Mass. Now, her two oldest sons have spent the last two Passover holidays in a small town in Ukraine, conducting seders for Jews who never had them before. A daughter is working in a Chabad camp in Vienna. Another son is studying and teaching in South Africa. One son initiated the custom of mounting menorahs on car tops and driving through the streets on Chanukah, a now-familiar sight to Chicago Jews. Then he duplicated the effort in Hungary. Northwest Suburban Lubavitch Chabad
“Orthodox? We don’t use those terms,” says Katz, who with his wife Chanie has directed the Northwest Suburban Chabad house for 12 years. “We value and appreciate every Jew. If you talk to families who attend our schools, our programs, you’ll find that 95 percent come from a minimal level of observance. A Jew is a Jew.” The Chabad House, which serves Buffalo Grove and a number of surrounding suburbs, offers worship services, holiday programs and adult education, but its most successful component is its pre-school, which, under Chanie Katz’s direction, draws about 150 children. Buffalo Grove, she says, “is a very nice area of young Jewish families who want to know more, on many different levels. Just having a pre-school helps to expose them to a more observant way. They get to see what it’s all about.” She herself is immersed in the lives of the couple’s seven children, ages 11 to five months, plus “services on Shabbat, social events, school events, company every Friday night—it’s the Chabad life.” Lubavitch Chabad of Wilmette
Eventually, he says, “it looked like there was a need for something permanent,” and the Flinkensteins moved to Wilmette to start a Chabad House in an area that as recently as a half- century ago was known for being inhospitable to Jews. “Slowly it started to evolve,” he says. The couple held services in the basement of their house and started a Hebrew school in someone else’s home. Today they operate out of a storefront and run a host of programs, from the popular annual “Chanukah on Ice” to a Lag B’Omer bonfire to Rabbi Flinkenstein’s weekly Kabbalah class. Rabbi Flinkenstein says the center tries to be innovative in its programming. “Purim Around the World” focuses on a different country every year, from Mexico to Morocco, and draws guests from throughout the Chicago area. For kids, there is a “Mommy and Me Cheese Experience” for the holiday of Shavuot, its highlight being the creation of various colored cheese pastries. While the Jews of Wilmette have varying levels of backgrounds and Jewish knowledge, Rabbi Flinkenstein, like the rest of his colleagues, refuses to label any as more or less observant. We do not acknowledge any type of labels,” he says, and tells a story from his own experience: “A little boy and his family drove to shul (not permitted to observant Jews on Shabbat). They were in the first stages of coming to shul, and they drove. Some of the other children criticized him. The little boy came to me and asked if they weren’t allowed to drive to shul. I told him that the answer was that one should not drive to shul (on Shabbat), but also one should never criticize someone for doing a mitzvah.” F.R.E.E.
The Samuel G. Bellows Educational & Cultural Center on Devon Avenue in Chicago houses a synagogue, social hall, library and youth center and provides educational, cultural and social activities for these Jews. There are Hebrew schools, a bar and bat mitzvah program, adult education, counseling services, programs for the elderly, a radio show, newspaper and magazine and programs for adults and children at every Jewish holiday. Rabbi Notik even circumcises men who did not have the procedure performed in the Soviet Union, once serving as a mohel to three generations of one family in the same day. With more than 800 Russian Jews still arriving in Chicago every year, F.R.E.E. provides services for which great need exists, he says. In the Soviet Union, “they had no access to synagogues. Very often people don’t know anything about Judaism. They don’t know from which side Hebrew is read. They’ve never seen a Shabbos candle, never had a bar mitzvah.” Notik remarries long-married couples who did not have Jewish weddings, which were forbidden in the Soviet Union. Once he married 21 couples at one time. Notik came to the United States from Russia 30 years ago. His family was one of only about 100 families who continued to practice Judaism clandestinely—“underground observant Jews,” he calls them. Notik’s wife, Shterna, is the daughter of Russian Jews, but was born and raised in Canada. Notik calls the work he does “a big job, but very rewarding. Knowing that we are messengers of the Lubavitcher Rebbe—just seeing people really transforming their lives—it is very emotional to me. I am always thanking G- d for the opportunity to do that.” Central Avenue Synagogue-Chabad House (Highland Park)
“We are accustomed to (women’s importance to the movement) being the norm,” she says. “Sometimes people will say, well, the mechitzah (wall separating men and women in synagogues) separates women, and they don’t get aliyahs (being called up to the Torah during its reading on Shabbat). But when you see from the inside how knowledgeable women are, how they are encouraged to study Torah, to grow, you see that in Lubavitch, the sky’s the limit. “In Chabad, women are right there in the forefront of Jewish life, with campus involvement, teaching, writing. It’s a very open, embracing, welcoming lifestyle to women.” That is certainly the case with Michla Schanowitz, who is the education director of the second oldest Chabad center in the Chicago area and one with a solid record of success. The Schanowitzes came to Highland Park 20 years ago to an area that was already “quite solidly Jewish,” she says. “But there was not a synagogue with a mechitzah. We just started programming and opened a shul in the basement of our home. Now we have a building on Central Avenue with a shul, classes, Hebrew school, children’s programs, a mikvah.” Such innovative ventures as a Passover matzah bakery, Purim funhouse and shofar factory before Rosh Hashanah draw hundreds of children each year. Schanowitz says the philosophy she lives by is “we have to cultivate, tap the interest. We feel it’s there within every Jew, the desire for Torah, mitzvahs. G‑d is in all of us, we just have to tap into it.” Avrohom Yitzhak Tannenbaum Chabad House
Rabbi Dov Hillel Klein and his wife Chaya have for the past 10 years been in charge of the center, which offers, in addition to prayer services, discussion groups, classes, and an active program of speakers on subjects ranging from Jewish humor to business ethics to the current situation in Israel. Klein also staffs an “Ask the Rabbi” booth in a student center where he answers questions of students (not always Jewish ones) about Judaism and disseminates information about Jewish activities on campus. He also provides counseling—formal and informal—to students on a host of issues, from dating to careers. Not only students, but also many Northwestern grads and Evanston residents attend the Kleins’ weekly worship services and Shabbat dinners. Klein says he’s always available to help students take a break from campus pressures and “be respected for who they are and where they are religiously in their lives. Our mission is to enhance Jewish identify and pride,” he says. This past spring quarter, living Jewishly at Northwestern got a little easier, thanks to Klein’s efforts, with the institution for the first time of a limited, trial kosher food service plan. Kosher kiosks in three residential dining halls offered students individually packaged foods as well as separate meat and dairy microwaves and toaster ovens plus paper and plastic serving plates and utensils. Whether the plan will continue, or expand, next quarter remains to be seen. This month Klein is in Israel, taking a group of 40 students to the Jewish state through the Birthright Israel program. Along with 1,100 others from across the United States, they’re visiting through Mayanot, a special Chabad program. Though some American Jewish groups have canceled youth trips to Israel because of the violence there, “that’s something that Rabbi Klein would never do,” Moscowitz says. Lubavitch Chabad of Hyde Park
Opening a Chabad center in Hyde Park is a natural, says Brackman, a native of London. “It’s a very diverse, very academic community, and that’s what Chabad is all about—to understand and to study. That’s very much in sync with Hyde Park and the university community,” he says. Already he has launched some programs on campus, including a Kosher Awareness Week, a menorah distribution, mobile succah and classes. Kosher Awareness Week resulted in the university food coop stocking more kosher products. In the fall will come such programs as a make-your-own shofar factory, Shabbat dinners, lectures and classes for both students and the non- university community. Lubavitch Chabad of Lincoln Park and Gold Coast
“We were surprised,” says Benhiyoun, who first operated out of a tiny office in the South Loop and has seen Chabad’s downtown empire expand dramatically. “People here are advanced, nice, liberal, open-minded and very receptive.” He also found that residents of the area had certain special needs in terms of spirituality. “They are living in this world of material things,” he says diplomatically. “Not in a negative sense—but they’re not exactly in search. That’s the hard angle here. They’re not really searching for spirituality. They’re satisfied with where they are. But saying that, they are still very welcoming, although not necessarily so readily available to come and learn. That’s what we’re trying to bridge here. The main purpose is to get them more involved in spiritual and educational programs.” That’s why he tries to make the programs “holistic in nature, to pay attention to the person overall, not just their religious affiliation.” That will be even more true of the new Center for Jewish Life, he says. Lubavitch Chabad and F.R.E.E of Niles
Hershkovich and his wife, Raizel, share duties at the center with its director, Rabbi Binyomin Scheiman, and his wife, Hinda. Roughly speaking, the Hershkoviches work with the large population of Russian Jews in the Niles- Des Plaines area and the Scheimans work with the rest of the population, but in practice it doesn’t always work out that way. “We do both together—it’s not just one (center) for the Russians and one for the Americans,” says Rabbi Hershkovich, himself a Russian from the Carpathian Mountain region who has also lived in London and Israel. (“Join Lubavitch, see the world,” he says.) The Niles center started in a basement 13 years ago and outgrew the space within a year, according to Hershkovich. Activities then moved to a small ranch house, and soon 60 or 70 were coming for Shabbos lunch and dinner. Now, “every weekend the place is packed with people,” Hershkovich says. “We have a sit-down Kiddish. People have cholent, kugel, schmaltz herring, kishka, chicken, the whole thing. At Passover we have a seder for everybody who doesn’t have a place to go. It’s not nice to brag about yourself, but we are special.” For High Holiday services drawing up to 800 people, they rented the basketball court of a nearby park, then outgrew that and had to move to a larger park facility a few blocks away. In addition to the usual prayer services, classes and two overnight camps, one for boys and one for girls, the Niles center offers many services for Russian Jews and others who know little about Judaism or want to increase their observance. Challah- baking classes taught by the women are highly popular, as are educational classes for women. In addition to heading the Niles Chabad house, Rabbi Scheiman also heads Chabad’s prisoner assistance program and spends much of his time with prison inmates, their families, and prison administrators. There are between 20 and 25 facilities in Illinois that house Jewish prisoners— including four for women—and Scheiman visits each one at least once a month. “Within the month he puts on mileage that most people put on in year,” Rabbi Hershkovich says. Scheiman calls on anyone who is incarcerated and claims to be Jewish, and estimates that 80 or 90 percent of those he sees actually are. The other 20 percent “may have a Jewish wife, or be interested in converting,” he says. He prays with them, counsels them, offers them Jewish educational materials and ritual objects such as tefillin and tallitot, brings holiday packages and helps to arrange a kosher diet for those who want it. A strictly kosher regimen “can be done theoretically, but implementing it is a little harder,” he says. On holidays, he conducts special services or programs appropriate to each one, from Passover seders to Chanukah menorah lightings. He meets with prison officials to advocate for the prisoners and often counsels their families. Sometimes, he says, his visits serve to make prisoners more interested in their Judaism, but his philosophy is “to speak to them as a friend and to provide what they want, each one according to their own need.” Soon to join those Lubavitch emissaries in Chicago are a young rabbi and his wife, Eli and Sarah Langsam. They’ll soon leave New York and come to Peoria to open a Chabad House there. And they won’t just be spending two or three years in Illinois. If all goes well (and it always seems to), they’ll be here for life. That’s the Chabad way. So what do you pack for such a mission? Pictures of the Rebbe? Every Chabad house seems to have several of them. Enough kitchenware to fill up a U-Haul, in preparation for the guests who will inevitably show up for Shabbos lunch and dinner? Books with sayings from the Rebbe to distribute to Jews hungry for that knowledge? Extra mezuzahs, black hats? A good recipe for cholent? No, the Langsams could always get all those things in Chicago, though that wouldn’t be the case with their peers traveling to Shanghai or Kazakhstan. What they’ll need the most they certainly have in abundance: intelligence, idealism, a love for the Jewish people and the Rebbe and the unshakable belief that the work they’re doing is the most important in the world. Which is why what they’ll do in Peoria is what other Lubavitch couples have been and will continue to do in Northbrook, Highland Park, Niles, Hyde Park, Wilmette, Lincoln Park, all over Chicago and all over the world. Count the diamonds. |
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The Rebbe's Kind of Town: