Roving Rabbis seek out Jews who are not religiously active

ARLINGTON — The Roving Rabbis aren’t a band, but they are looking for an audience.

Sponsored by the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement and based in Brooklyn, N.Y., the program aims to bring together Orthodox rabbinical students and Jews who are not active religiously.

"The challenge is . . . people don’t know what we want from them," said rabbi Shaya Lowenstein, 22, who’s half of the visiting two-man Roving Rabbi team that’s spending about three weeks in Arlington this summer. "We’re just looking to give them the opportunity to do something religious."

That opportunity is a matter of some urgency to many: The birthrate and number of American Jews have fallen since 1990, and intermarriage is up. One prominent rabbi recently urged his followers to embark on a "rescue mission" to prevent American Jewry from disappearing.

The Roving Rabbi program, now decades old, has about 4,000 emissaries worldwide working during the summer. The point is not to proselytize non-Jews but to kindle participation among those born into Judaism.

"As a general rule, Tarrant County is not a very Jewish area," said rabbi Levi Gurevitch of Arlington, who is supervising the work of Lowenstein and Shmulik Raices, also a 22-year-old rabbinical graduate. "I applied to bring them to Tarrant County to help me with my outreach. They’re finding quite a few people, which is why I brought them here."

But the goal isn’t simply to bring more people to services.

"We haven’t survived by increasing our numbers but by increasing our faith," said rabbi Dove Mandel of the Fort Worth Chabad, which he and his wife started in their house in 2002. "I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."

Lowenstein and Raices are staying in the Arlington Chabad center near Lake Arlington, which doubles as the home for Gurevitch and his wife as well as being a synagogue. He provides room and board; Roving Rabbis covers transportation to Texas, he said.

"Hopefully, we’ll grow into a full-fledged center," said Gurevitch, who co-directs the center with his wife. "Right now we’re just in the baby stages of that."

Rabbi Menachem Block served in Berlin and Iowa when he was a Roving Rabbi. He now directs the thriving Plano Chabad center.

"The Roving Rabbis are able to get to communities that don’t have an established rabbi," Block said. "When you’re by yourself there’s only so much you can do."

Counting the Arlington center, Gurevitch said, there are six Chabad centers in North Texas. To locate local residents who might be receptive, Gurevitch bought a sales list, from which names that appear to be Jewish are culled.

"We don’t seek converts," Gurevitch said. "It’s very targeted."

The temporary help, even if it’s just for a few weeks in the summer, is valuable in making contacts and establishing relationships, particularly with younger people.

"Unfortunately, in America the younger generation seems to be very, very assimilated," Gurevitch said.

Mandel said: "It’s important, because the majority of Jewish people have little contact with their own synagogue. By having energetic young rabbis show up with a smile on their face, it sort of fans the flames of their Jewish spark."

Working as a Roving Rabbi can be as important to the young participants as to those they’re trying to reach, Block said.

"The experience you have . . . is tremendous," he said, calling it "a great program."

"It’s very inspirational."

Mandel, however, laughed when he talked about the reaction the Roving Rabbis can evoke in some quarters.

"You see two young rabbis wearing black fedoras; they’ve got their fringes at the corners of their garments," Mandel said. " . . .  It’s something you see by the thousands in New York City, but not in suburban Texas."

That’s something that struck Lowenstein, who did his rabbinical studies in New York. He hopes to get married and start a family before he settles down with a congregation of his own.

"You never know" where you’ll find the right girl, Lowenstein said. "But the chances may be a little better in Brooklyn. The numbers work out a little better there."

I’m mainly looking for Jews to fulfill their faith. It’s about every Jew fulfilling their covenant with God."

Rabbi Dove Mandel,
Fort Worth Chabad

Texas A&M Chabad takes part in NYC Shabbat weekend

On the first weekend of November, the International Student Shabbaton was held in New York City, where Texas A&M students, together with the directors of the Chabad Jewish Student Center, Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff, joined over 750 other students from around the world for a weekend of inspiration and student leadership.
The weekend began with a student leadership conference where selected students from different universities gathered in Manhattan for two days of intensive student leadership training. “We met many business philanthropists and marketing executives who really inspired us with the work they do and shared many ideas on how we can be good leaders on our campus,” explained Ryan Coane, the sophomore treasurer of the Chabad Jewish Student Group at Texas A&M and the director of finance of Student Government–Diversity at Texas A&M. “In addition, we got to meet other student leaders from other Chabads on Campus to share and exchange ideas.” The president of the Chabad Jewish Student Group, Naomi Heller, a sophomore majoring in animal science at Texas A&M, also attended the leadership conference. She said, “It is amazing to see so many Jewish guys and girls who want to help increase Jewish life on their campus!”

The Chabad Jewish Student Center at Texas A&M opened in July 2007. Since that beginning in the home of the Lazaroffs, Chabad at Texas A&M now owns, and operates out of, a 4,000-square-foot facility with plans to expand!

For Shabbat, the students converged into the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn at the world headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch and the Chabad on Campus International Foundation for a Shabbat Experience. With inspirational speakers and lively atmosphere throughout the weekend, the Shabbat experience was enhanced with the multitude of students joining in. “There was so much energy, I hope to carry some of that back with me to Texas A&M!” exclaimed Chad Davis, a senior Corps of Cadets member at Texas A&M.

Saturday night, students were treated with a live concert from YOOD, a band from Israel that is currently touring the U.S.A. A surprise guest, critically-lauded rock troubadour and Emmy-nominated film and television composer, Peter Himmelman, joined the evening.

“I loved the weekend with all the singing, dancing and touring New York City and, best of all, meeting so many Jews from all over the world. We are all family at Chabad!” Davis exclaimed.

The Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M is independently funded by friends and families. For more information or to make a donation, contact Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff at 979-220-5020 or on the Web at www.jewishaggies.com.