Monday, September 29, 2008

Chabad revives dying Shuls

To find the 10th man for a minyan, the quorum required in Orthodox Jewish services, some rabbis on the Lower East Side of Manhattan have been known in recent years to step into the street and stop passers-by. Are you Jewish? they ask.

It is a troubling notion for the remaining Jewish population of a neighborhood that in the 19th and early 20th centuries was the American portal for Jewish immigrants — hundreds of synagogues once thrived there — and where now a few dozen synagogues struggle in a place jammed with Indian and Thai restaurants and secular-minded young people.

So if there is trepidation among the older members of the weather-worn Community Synagogue on East Sixth Street about the changes coming with the start of the High Holy Days this week, it is leavened with a sense of forbearance in the absence of alternatives.

Starting this evening with Rosh Hashana services, Rabbi Simon Jacobson, a Lubavitcher rabbi from Crown Heights and founder of the Meaningful Life Center — a project known for blending religious teaching with tai chi, introductory kabbalah and Hasidic rap — will become a kind of Jewish mystic-in-residence at the traditional, Orthodox Community Synagogue.

Inspired by the movement known as Chabad, a Hasidic sect with a missionary tradition around the world, Rabbi Jacobson said he would offer his programs — which until now has he operated on an itinerant basis around the city — at the Sixth Street synagogue in hopes of creating “a spiritual Starbucks.”

The plan is to attract people, regardless of their faith, from all over the city, he said. But the goal is to restore Jewish identity to those estranged from Judaism and, if possible, to add them to the membership rolls of Community Synagogue.

Like many Lubavitchers, Rabbi Jacobson embodies a paradoxical mix of strictly conservative theology and a freewheeling, nonjudgmental hipster style. He is partial to drum circles. He is friendly with the Hasidic reggae-rap-klezmer artist known as Matisyahu.

Of course, this is not everyone’s cup of tea.“Is there tension because we love things the way they are and he wants to make everything completely different?” asked Ruth Greenberg, 90, a member of the congregation, which had about 250 members when she joined in 1950 and now counts not quite 100. “Not at all, not at all. We may not like each other, but that doesn’t mean there’s tension.” [...]

“This area used to be a place with a deli or a shul on every corner,” he said. “There are lots of young, unaffiliated Jews living here. They just do not go to synagogue.” In terms of Jewish practice, he added, “It is a kind of tundra, and we are trying to figure out how to resettle it.”

The partnership of the Lubavitchers’ outreach tradition with more conventional synagogues like Community has invigorated several declining congregations around the country, said Jonathan D. Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

Gary A. Tobin, director of the Institute for Jewish and Community Research in San Francisco, said such partnerships marked “the convergence of the two major trends in Jewish life: the expansion of the most successful movement in world Jewry, which is Chabad, and the undeniable fact that Jews are becoming birds of passage like everyone else, less likely to belong to a synagogue but still searching for the authentic religious fundamentals.”

5 comments:

  1. It has been my experience that few of the "new" members would be able to register as Jewish in Israel.

    My grandmother's shul, Rodef Shalom was a typical example. The older members started to notice that the new members were all either Hispanic or African American. When they questioned the Rabbi, they were accused of being racist.

    When they questioned the new members they were told that they had Orthodox conversions. The truth was that none of these people were Jewish at all, by any Orthodox standard.

    This might explain the prevalence of Chabad messianism. Belief in the Second Coming of a dead Messiah is not a foreign concept at all to those who were raised with it.

    When Rabbi Jacobson says "The plan is to attract people, regardless of their faith, from all over the city, he said." He fails to mention that outreach to Gentiles has become the norm for Chabad all over the world. When Chabad is not talking about, but is well known within Chabad is that they are doing thousands of conversions each year, none of which are recognized in Israel.

    I heard a story just last week from a man who belongs to a Conservative shul who had been sitting on a Bais Din with a Conservative Rabbi and an Orthodox Rabbis and that they had done numerous "conversions". They were shocked to learn that these "conversions" were not accepted in Israel.

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  2. I wonder why you edited this part of the article:

    "He described one former student, who announced” after many years of attending his classes, "Rabbi, you have given me the courage to discover my true identity, and after 27 years of marriage I have decided to leave my wife and move in with my boyfriend."

    Utterly disgusting!

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  3. lev's comment motivated me to read the full article. I have to say that there is much about this story that is deeply disturbing. It is illustrative of the lines that are increasingly being crossed by some kiruv groups, especially Chabad and its imitators.

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  4. Former Lubavitcher obviously has a personal axe to grind with Lubavitch or he wouldn't be a former Lubavitcher .Most of what he states is pure hogwash.
    "but is well known within Chabad is that they are doing thousands of conversions each year, none of which are recognized in Israel."
    This is a pure fabrication. Most if not all of Lubavitcher Rabbonim and most certainly shluchim will not touch giyur with a ten foot pole.There might be some exceptions but if yes they are a miut shebimiut.
    "This might explain the prevalence of Chabad messianism. Belief in the Second Coming of a dead Messiah is not a foreign concept at all to those who were raised with it."
    Again a bunch of hogwash and a figment of Former Lubavitchers imaginatin.Rabbi Simon Jacobson who is an aquaintence of mine is about far away from the meshichist camp as planet earth is from Alpha Centuri.
    The Rebbi did encourage his Chassidim to spread morality throughout the world by getting gentiles to perform the Sheva
    Mitzvos Bnei Noach.
    When questions of geirus would be brought to the Rebbi he would refer these questions to Rabbi Bomzer of Flatbush,a non Lubavitcher rov who was/is a expert on the topic.
    The very fact that the Rebbi used to shturem about "Mi hu Yehudi" can testify to the fact that Former Lubavitchers outlandish assertions are the result of animosity and a fertile imagination.

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  5. I LOVE LUBAVITCHERS!!!! they are they BEST !!!!! THEY SAVED MY LIFE!!!!! That's all I have to say. I used to be non-religious and Chabad found me and brought me to TRUE LIFE and Yiddishkeit, Baruch Hashem.

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