translation:
another small item about Chabadnikim, tefillin and airports..
Once I was with Natan Sharansky in a European airport. Early on Sunday morning we flew to a conference of Jewish students from across the continent. The local Chabad rabbi accompanied us.
In the airport he pulled out tefillin and offered them to Sharansky to lay.
I got upset about this. How does he know if the minister had put on tefillin or not? (I did not know and it would have never occurred to me to ask. A persons relationship with the Creator is in the realm of the intimate and private, in my opinion).
I mumbled some angry words in the ear of the minister, that maybe he should also offer me to lay tefillin, and I might be very happy to!
After he lay the tefillin happily with a smile, and after he looked at me as if under my appearance of a good girl I am actually a "bandit", Natan said to me:
You should know that when nobody else was in Russia, when we were there in the big prison, completely disconnected from the rest of the Jewish nation, when nobody else dared to try to communicate with us, not Israel, not the USA, Chabad was there. With mesirut nefesh and putting themselves in grave danger. So, always, anything a Chabadnik asks of me, I will do.
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Good for you. This is the perfect antidote to the so often encountered foolish antagonism to Chabad.
ReplyDeleteFor all the Good that Chabad promotes and does , the religious[dati and charedi ] dub them in askance due still to 2 recurrent deficiencies:
ReplyDelete1)Many or most(Israelis,russians,etc.) who gravitate to Chabad would agree with Eric Yoffie. Eric Yoffie , former leader of Reform once was asked to explain why of all the orthodox, the ones that gets along fine with is lubavitch. Because they are, he said, " a cut-rate minimalist judaism”.
Of less import,
2)When asked a half century ago how come chabad is so superb in international relations and media ,a Jewish revered Rabbi responded [translated]: It is because they were the last left with the Bolsheviks.
This obviously is in addition to their messianism.
ReplyDeleteThis is nothing wrong with injecting a little messianism into our mitzvot .The problem is "accept their messianism or else"
To pre-empt those with an ax to grind "This is nothing wrong with injecting a little Jewish Old Testament messianism"
ReplyDeleteBecause they are, he said, " a cut-rate minimalist judaism”.
ReplyDeleteChabad is not at all minimalist. Have you seen what they do for food on Pesach?!
What they offer to non-Orthodox is tolerance not seen from any other group of Orthodox. If you are amenable, they ease you in to practice. They don't insist it's all or nothing.