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

3 rabbis in training make a stop in Utah during cross-country trip

SALT LAKE CITY -- From New York City to San Francisco and back again in a van, the traveling troupe is three young rabbis in training.

These young men came through Salt Lake City because they are members of the Lubavitch Youth Organization, and Rabbi Benny Zippel of Chabad Lubavitch of Utah welcomed them. We found them meeting and greeting downtown.

They say they are spreading a message of unity and doing good deeds. They say they are pleasantly surprised at how receptive and friendly people have been in Salt Lake and all along the way.

They give wristbands which say "I've met the Road Sage, and I've performed a good deed." For those of the Jewish faith, it's called a Mitzvah--the pay it forward concept.

And although they follow ancient principles in their faith, the young soon-to-be rabbis have jumped into the technology age. Dov Barber, the Road Sage, said, "We've set up a website. We've set up a blog. We upload photos, Twitter. You know it's all that social networking nowadays. We Twitter a lot, blog. People come, they follow you, and also the idea, is really, you speak about traveling across America. It's only us three, people wanted to come along, so you have virtual followers."

Inside the van, there is a board for signatures, for people they have met. Most of them are campers along the way, but in Salt Lake, some young people they greeted downtown wanted to add their names. The Road Sage group will be in San Francisco Friday evening to celebrate the Sabbath there.

RELIGION - Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis visiting Guam

Two young Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis are visiting Guam from July 28 to Aug. 17 as part of a community outreach program.

Rabbis Chesky Klein and David Loksen will be distributing videos, brochures, books, Shabbat candles, mezuzahs (a religious scroll placed on doorways) and will be working closely with the local Jewish community, according to a news release. The pair will teach classes, including one on Kabbalah, and host Shabbat dinners.

The two rabbis are part of a worldwide program sometimes referred to as “the Lubavitch Summer Peace Corps,” in which some 400 young rabbis and senior rabbinical students visit thousands of locations worldwide, including countries like Bolivia, Bosnia, Cambodia, Croatia, Fiji, Guadeloupe, Ireland, Portugal, Sri Lanka and Uruguay.

The search for Jews in Ireland

Many New Yorkers buy airline tickets to Ireland to find long lost relatives and connect with their heritage on the Emerald Island. But for two young men Baruch Davidson and Pinny Raitman the goal was not to find family in the strict sense, but to connect with people in the faith.

Davidson and Raitman, both in their mid-twenties, are rabbinical students in a large Hasidic movement within Orthodox Judaism: Chabad. Over the past 60 years, Chabad has been sending pairs of young rabbis to far-flung points of the globe. The Roving Rabbis program aims to provide hands-on experience to rabbis in-the-making whose assignment is to “spread the light of the Torah,” seeking out unaffiliated Jews and helping them find a way back to their faith, a mission that is not a priority for most mainstream Jews.

But finding Jews in Ireland was not an easy task. Of Ireland’s 4.4 million people, only 2,000 are Jewish. Once on the island Davidson and Raitman walked off the beaten paths. They rented a car and instead of large cities, where the large communites are to be found, they opted for small towns and tiny villages in their search for Jews. “We would go to any local stores or pharmacies and asked ‘Do you know any Jews here?” said Raitman. “They would get all excited,” he remembers, “yes we know this lady, they said, lets call her. So they went to the phonebook and started to calling up people. We found people who were off the radar,” maps were of no help, “we had to ask them for their exact directions.” Here are some of the Jews they met:

Rebecca Grinblat is an Australian native who grew up in an Orthodox Jewish home and married to a Catholic Irishman. It was not until she moved to Limerick that shelearned to make hamentashen – triangular poppy and prune filled pastries – a special holiday treat. In Melbourne there was no need to worry about holiday pastries, which could be conveniently purchased in one of the many local kosher bakeries. In Limerick, however, she has to bake it herself as the nearest kosher bakery is 2.5 hours away by train to Dublin.

Gerard Hunt, a Dublin-born businessman said it was not a long ago that he began wearing his kippah in Wexford, where he is one of the four Jews of 10,000 people. He said he feels isolated from other Jews and that the only way to learn about his religion was to take a-year-long web course.

Eva Coombes grew up in a Jewish community in France but today drives an hour from Castleroy, a leafy suburb of Limerick, to the synagogue in Cork, the closest point to celebrate and pray together with fellow Jews.

Grinblat, Hunt and Coombes were just the kind of people the young rabbinical students were hoping to meet. The Irish, famous for their friendliness towards strangers, gave the Americans a warm welcome. “They were open and helpful,” said Davidson. Some families had even kept guest books in which they found the signature of Chabad rabbis who had come before them stretching back 50 years. At some places all they had was a chat. “We are not going to impose religion in a cunning way, to get people more religious,” said Raitman “either you are Jewish or your are not. We are not making anyone Jewish. We are there to raise the Jewish spark.”

At other places, like in the Limerick region, they managed to bring a small company of nine Jews together. “They put me in contact with another woman Eva and a man called Eric who also lives nearby,” said Grinblat who became friends with Coombes through the Chabad mission. “People in our group all have non-Jewish partners but we celebrate the holidays together, which is a nice way to maintain traditions in a small community.”

The rabbis of the local synagogues share the outreach mission of the roving rabbis but their congregations do not have the resources to engage congregants in the outside areas. “The only way is to send out a team to the field,” said Rabbi Zalman Shimon Lent of the Orthodox synagogue in Dublin. “If somebody integrates new people into the community, it remains strong,” Davidson said, who, together with Raitman, collected contact information from everyone they visited during the trip. Despite the low population figures, Rabbi Lent is optimistic though realistic about the future of Judaism on the island. “A lot depends on the economic situation of the country - which at the present is in a difficult state,” he said. As for now both roving and rooted rabbis work hard not to lose a single soul from their flock.

Grinblat, who hosted a dinner for the rabbis at her Limerick home attended also by Eva Coombes, said she looked forward to the annual visits. “No matter what else is going on, once a year Chabad is going to come and chat and should you need something they would get it for you and you do not feel you lost connection.” Though the rabbis did not accept the food from her “half-kosher kitchen” they neither attempted to convince her to change her life.

Hunt had the rabbis over in his Wexford shop, where he experienced what he called a spiritual awakening. “Their effort had an effect on me,” he said, “now I am celebrating Purim and Hanukkah and taking online study classes on Judaism.”

Coombes enjoyed discussing points of religion that “I could not discuss with the people among whom I live at the present,” she said adding, “I think outreach is the best thing since handmade Matza.”

The rabbis brought a suitcase of Jewish books and religious objects like mezuzahs, but what turned out to be the most useful thing was ping-pong knowledge. The rabbis recalled meeting Richard, a secular Jew they met in West Cork who initially avoided them and only for his friend’s insistence did he finally agree to join a table tennis game. Raitman, who is originally from Australia where he would participate in table tennis competitions, was happy to play.

“We drove down to a little community center in the middle of nowhere, because Richard was part of a local team,” Raitman said. “We played for hours, which was a great occasion to connect with someone non-religious. We spoke about Jewish things, experiences that he had had as a child that came up in the conversation, which in itself was something special to him. I realized that any talent a person has can always be used to create bridges with another person.”

The Boys (of Chabad) are Back in Town

I was totally bummed when an e-mail arrived from Chabad's Africa headquarters announcing that two more rabbis would be coming to Tanzania for Pesach if only because I would miss a prime blogging opportunity. So while the kids and I continue to enjoy a bit of vacation in the US, my friend Ruth has gratefully agreed to guest blog for me about the latest rabbinical mission to Tanzania for Passover. Thank you, Ruth!

Finding a vibrant – if small – Jewish community in Tanzania has been one of the many pleasant surprises that has marked my time here. As has been recounted on this blog, the focal person of this community is incomparable Penina, Israeli matriarch and owner of the atmospheric Middle Eastern restaurant Nargila on the peninsula.

Penina most recently gathered the tribe at Yom Kippur, but sadly I was out of town so did not get to take part in Shmuli's Big Yom Kippur Adventure. So, I was happy last week when Hally forwarded me an email from the "boys of Chabad" (as they called themselves) informing her that they were coming for Passover and asking her to tell all the Jews of Dar.

For the uninitiated, Chabad is a Hasidic movement of Orthodox Judaism. As far as I can tell, Chabad is the closest Jews get to missionaries. While they don't proselytize, they try to gather "lost" Jews and help get them on track to be more observant. The rabbis that Chabad dispatches to far-flung places such as Tanzania tend to be young and still in rabbinical training. As I joked to my housemate Michelle, Chabad is a bit like Peace Corps for Orthodox Jews. She informed me that Chabad actually does have a program called "Mitzvah Corps."

Two years ago, I attended my first Passover Seder at Nargila with the Jews of Dar. This Seder was officiated by two timid Chabad rabbis from Brooklyn who were no match for Penina. It did not help when one of them clearly began showing symptoms of malaria as he was supposed to be leading us in prayer. The official business was cut short after the rabbis finally gave into complaints from hungry Israelis that the food was burning and would they just get on with it.

Last year, there were no Chabadniks, and so the Israelis ran the show, almost all in Hebrew, which made things less fun for those of us who only vaguely know the Passover story in English.

But this year, Chabad gave us Meyer. Big, friendly, joke-cracking Meyer, with the beautiful singing voice. I was particularly fond of Meyer after it was revealed within the first five minutes of our meeting that we had both grown up in the same neighborhood (Squirrel Hill) of the same city (Pittsburgh). And indeed he looked just like the guys I used to see going to Kosher Mart on Murray Avenue in big beat-up station wagons with "MOSHIACH NOW!" bumper stickers.

(Meyer came with another smaller, quieter rabbi, but so overshadowed was he that none of us can even remember his name.)

This year's Seder was particularly impressive in that there were nearly 60 people in attendance. I asked Penina's eldest daughter how they found all these Jews and she just shook her head and said, "They found us!"

The small American contingent included three 19-year-olds traveling the world on a "gap year" before starting college in the Fall. They seemed rather exhausted from their travels, but maybe it was just from the 8-hour bus ride they had taken from Moshi that day to get to Dar in time for Seder.

There were also two very sweet British couples, a Scandinavian woman, and a whole lot of Israelis. It was very amusing to observe the contrast between the rabbis and the Israelis, most of whom are very secular – at least in outward appearance. Whereas Michelle and I had taken care to dress "appropriately" in long skirts and conservative tops, many of the Israeli women sported tight pants, low-cut, sequined tops, and dark lipstick.

One particularly amusing tableau was at the end of the Seder, when Meyer was trying valiantly to finish the prayers. As he swayed and chanted in Hebrew, an Israeli woman who had left the table looked on from the bar with a bemused expression, cigarette in hand.

In addition to Rabbi Meyer, one of the more memorable characters was the guy sitting across from me, who I'll call "Jacques Cousteau." Jacques is a 40-ish freelance Scuba diving instructor, currently based on Mafia Island. He exhibited the classic Israeli trait of frankness, explaining that, "when most people think of Tanzania, they think it is going to be so exotic, but let me tell you, Mafia is a really shitty place."

When he was done complaining, Jacques showed off his party trick, which was to tell people what their "Jewish birthday" is. For instance, after I told him I was born on June 30, 1982, he screwed up his face for about two minutes and then pronounced, "Wednesday, Tammuz 9!"

And thus, I learned something new at the Seder, which is fitting with the spirit of Passover, and of Judaism, which encourages us to always continue learning and questioning.

Chabad on the prowl in former Aryan Nations stronghold

Two Chabad rabbis are in a former neo-Nazi stronghold in Idaho as part of an annual summer excursion.

The pair are seeking out area Jews around Coeur d'Alene, the largest city in the Idaho panhandle and once the center of a thriving neo-Nazi network anchored by the Aryan Nations, which operated from a compound in nearby Hayden.

Rabbi Yitzchok Steiner and Levi Slonim are seeking out the areas several hundred Jewish families, sometimes resorting to trolling for Jewish names in the phone book.

"We hope to meet as many Jews as possible," told the local Spokesman Review newspaper. "When we meet them and they do a good deed, we hope to bring them back to their heritage."

Rabbinical students visit Nyack on educational journey

By JESSICA SEMINELLI

SPECIAL TO THE JOURNAL NEWS

August 5, 2007

NYACK -

Two rabbinical students have been in the Nyack area for the past two weeks as part of the global Chabad-Lubavitch movement, which aims to educate and unite Jews in all communities.
Adam Epstein, a 24-year-old originally from Houston, and Toronto native Asher Schochet, 22, will be in Nyack and Piermont for another week while completing their outreach assignment. They are senior Lubavitcher rabbinical students in Morristown, N.J., and Crown Heights, Brooklyn, respectively.
Through meetings with local rabbis, appointments with Jewish community members, talking to shop owners and going to offices, the students have met with about 100 individuals already.
"We are here to speak with various Jews and learn about Jewish life in this community," said Epstein. "We're eager to listen to interesting family histories and stories."
They also inform the Jews with whom they speak about Jewish resources and programs in the Rockland area, such as Hebrew Learning Circles, a Nyack school run by Rabbi Reuben Modek.
"They have a very open-minded spirit," Modek said. "They have a real commitment to meeting people and speaking with them one-on-one."
Chabad-Lubavitch is a Hasidic group aimed at the promotion of mitzvot, or good deeds, and spreading of communication, understanding, aid, and unity. In areas without synagogues or Jewish community centers, Lubavitcher students establish acting temples.
"We're Jews for Judaism," explained Epstein. "We're not missionaries; we're not a member-seeking organization." For the past 63 years, students like Epstein and Schochet have traveled to all parts of the globe, observing and sharing with smaller Jewish communities.
"I applaud these two students for taking away from their vacation to share their time with the community," said Rabbi Chaim Ehrenreich from Chabad of Chestnut Ridge, who met with the pair. "They are providing an opportunity for the residents of the Nyacks to reach out to them if they have any Jewish needs."
This is the fourth consecutive year that Rockland has been assigned Lubavitcher students.

Roving rabbis promote unity

BENNINGTON — Two young "roving rabbis" will be visiting town this week, reaching out to the local Jewish community to reinforce pride and enhance education.

Rabbi Eli Rapoport, 20, from London, England, and Rabbi Yaakov Raskin, 19, from Burlington, came here on Friday afternoon. They paid a visit to Rabbi Joshua Boettiger of Bennington's Congregation Beth El and visited and prayed with a Jewish veteran at the Vermont Veterans Home.

The two men are traveling around Vermont for more than three weeks this summer as part of a program often likened to a "Lubavatcher summer Peace Corps."

"Basically it's pairs of students traveling the world. Each pair takes a state or country — Florida, London, Idaho, Wyoming, North Africa, Vietnam," Rapoport said. "We go around visiting Jewish families, Jewish communities, just to spread Jewish unity, Jewish identity."

The pair spent the weekend in Montpelier to observe the Sabbath at a Jewish center and will return to Bennington this week.

Rapoport and Raskin are members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, one of the largest branches of Hasidic Judaism. Since June 21 they have been traveling around the

state with brochures, books, videos, programming ideas and even kosher food.

The program was conceived more than 50 years ago by the Lubavitcher Rebbe ("leader") Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, who died in 1994. Part of Rapoport and Raskin's effort is to reach out to unaffiliated Jews to help them rediscover their heritage, and they have spent much of their time visiting people in their homes.

Both young men — each the son of a Chabad rabbi — are proceeding with their rabbinical studies. "We don't have rabbinical degrees yet, but we are getting there — soon, hopefully," Rapoport said.

"Learning never really ends," he added with a laugh. "We've just been together for five years. We were two years in Michigan, two years in Israel, and this past year we studied together in Brooklyn. Before that I studied in London, Yaakov studied in Montreal.

"And now we've come to the stage where they send us to other Jewish schools and Yeshivas to help out with younger students," he said. "They're sending me back to Israel and Yaakov to Chicago."

They reeled off a long list of Vermont communities they have visited so far. In the southern part of the state these include Rutland, Manchester, Wilmington and Brattleboro.

Besides visiting people in homes, they've also met many fellow Jews on the street. "Just on Main Street in Brattleboro we met many Jews. We actually met a Jew on Main Street who never had a Bar Mitzvah, so we made one for him," Rapoport said. "That was interesting."

They haven't gotten many questions from non-Jews so far, but were asked if they are Amish.

They explained what their religious movement means in terms of the Jewish religious spectrum ranging from Orthodox to Reform.

"What I say to people is our movement is just there to take away these things of 'Reform, Conservative, Orthodox,' and just (promote) Jewish unity," Rapoport said. "We're all Jews, and we don't need all these labels."

"I mean there are more observant and less and observant Jews," he said. "You can probably tell we are more observant."

The Lubavitch movement started more than 200 years ago. It is known for its centers around the world, known as Chabad Centers, essentially a Jewish community center providing education and outreach to all Jews, regardless of their level of observance.

Around the world there are about such 3,100 centers in 79 countries. Only a handful of U.S. states do not have permanent centers. There is a large Chabad Center in Burlington, which has been active for about 25 years, and another recently opened on campus at the University of Vermont, Rapoport said.

Raskin grew up in Burlington until age 11, at which time he left to attend a Jewish school in Montreal. "My father was sent as a Chabad rabbi in Burlington, and my grandfather was sent to Morocco as a Chabad rabbi."

This is the first summer as "roving rabbis" for both young men, and they hope to participate in the program again in the future.

"Hopefully the first of many (summers). It's a very nice place, Vermont, and who knows if I'll come back here — or, say, to Vietnam or to the Congo," Rapoport said. "Actually a cousin of mine was in the Congo three times in the summers. There are many Jews over there, believe it or not."

More information about the Chabad-Lubavitch movement can be found at chabadvt.org. Rapoport and Raskin can be reached at 917-825-9353.