After arrests, Orthodox groups stress importance of obeying the law

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- In the wake of last week’s arrests of several prominent rabbis, some Orthodox leaders are working to ensure that their institutions are following the letter of the law.

At a Chabad-Lubavitch regional conference over the weekend in northern Virginia, several of the Chasidic movement’s senior rabbis stressed the importance of obeying the law, according to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch.

The movement's late spiritual leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, "clearly instructed all emissaries of Lubavitch that all activities, particularly those undertaken in the name of the movement, must be lawful,” Shemtov said. “The Talmud clearly rules that the law of the land, especially in the case of a government which allows Jews to live freely, takes on the force of Jewish law.”

In New York, a leader of Agudath Israel of America, an umbrella group bringing together several Chasidic and non-Chasidic communities, helped organize a meeting to stress the same theme. The meeting was to feature two prominent rabbis and two well-known New York lawyers, Benjamin Brafman and Jacob Laufer.

The meeting was announced in an e-mail sent out by Agudah’s executive vice president, Rabbi David Zweibel, to the organization’s supporters. Titled “An Urgent Gathering,” the e-mail said the meeting would be “focusing on the timeless (but also all too timely) theme of ‘Vi'asisa hayashar vi'hatov,’ or making sure one is doing ‘the good and honest thing.’ "

“In the wake of recent headlines and front-page photographs that made every feeling Jewish heart ache, it is even more timely for us to take a good, hard look at our obligations to our fellows, to our society, to our government,” Zweibel said in the e-mail, adding that “I am confident that you realize how vital it is that we hear words of mussar [taking stock] and chizuk [reinforcement], and that we learn to distinguish between conduct that conforms with dina d'malchusa [the law of the land] and conduct that does not.”

The meeting comes less than a week after five New York and New Jersey rabbis were arrested July 23 on charges of money laundering. Authorities say the rabbis accepted large checks made out to tax-exempt charitable organizations associated with their synagogues, usually keeping 10 percent of the money and returning the rest to the donor in cash.

The charges somewhat echo a case involving the spiritual leader of the Spinka Chasidic sect in December 2007, in which religious leaders in New York and Jewish businessmen in Los Angeles were charged with soliciting “tens of millions of dollars” in contributions to their charities while secretly refunding as much as 95 percent of the donors' money, allowing the contributors to claim improper tax deductions.

The head of the Spinka group, Rabbi Naftali Tzvi Weisz, agreed to plead guilty to the charges earlier this month.

A criminal defense lawyer familiar with the Jewish community said he doubted that the New Jersey and Spinka cases signaled any kind of targeting or trend among federal prosecutors of Orthodox Jewish groups.

“I think it's a coincidence,” said the lawyer, who did not want to be identified. The cases are “instances of somebody trying to reduce their own sentence” by telling the government what he knew about other possible criminality, he said.

In both scandals, a defendant charged with serious financial crimes unrelated to the Jewish community became a confidential informant for the government, wearing a wire to implicate rabbis.

A U.S. Justice Department spokesman declined comment on both affairs and referred a reporter to the individual U.S. attorneys offices that brought the charges.

The Orthodox Union declined comment on the New Jersey scandal.

One expert said the best ways for charities to avoid getting caught up in any trouble with the law are pretty basic.

First, “stick to what the mission really is” of the charity and don't start freelancing, said Kenneth Ryesky, an attorney who teaches tax and business law at Queens College in New York.

One rabbi who did not wish to be identified said he periodically gets a request from a potential donor similar to what the Spinka rabbis were allegedly doing -- accepting a large check and returning most of the money in cash to the donor -- and always rejects the offer immediately.

That's the best reaction, Ryesky said.

“If it doesn't pass the smell test," he said, "don't have anything to do with it.”

NYC man recalls phone ordeal with Mumbai attacker

NEW YORK (AP) — The gunman on the phone in Mumbai said his name was Imran, he wouldn't put the hostages on the phone and besides, they were fine — they hadn't even been slapped around.

No one at Chabad House wanted food, he claimed, his calm demeanor finally breaking into some irritation. "We haven't come here to eat and drink," he said.

On the other end of the phone, a New York City professor forced himself to keep his focus as he spent hours on the phone as a translator for Orthodox Jewish officials trying to talk to one of the attackers who had taken over their religious headquarters in India's financial capital.

"At the beginning, I didn't know what to be thinking, I didn't know what would happen," Pace University finance professor P. V. Viswanath told The Associated Press on Monday. "I had a lot of trepidation when I got on the call."

Viswanath, who grew up in Mumbai and is an Orthodox Jew, was in his office preparing his class lessons when he got word last month that gunmen had attacked a number of sites in Mumbai. He heard Chabad-Lubavitch officials were looking for help because one of the attackers at Chabad House was answering Rabbi Gavriel Noach Holtzberg's cell phone but would only speak in Urdu.

Viswanath, who counts Urdu among the numerous languages he speaks, offered his assistance. He had visited Chabad Houses around the world and had even been to the one in Mumbai and shared a meal with Holtzberg. He was connected to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch. Shemtov set up conference calls between Washington and New York and Holtzberg's cell phone in Mumbai.

Shemtov described the man on the phone as "hauntingly calm." Viswanath said he didn't hear any of the vitriol that he might have expected.

"They had clearly attacked a Jewish center so presumably they were anti-Jewish, anti-Israel, I would not have been surprised if the voice sounded angry, sad, filled with hate, making statements about what Jews might or might not have done to Muslims," he said. "He didn't say anything about Israel or make any anti-Semitic comments."

In fact, Viswanath said, the man didn't say much of anything, refusing to say how many people were in the building. In successive conversations, they repeatedly asked about Holtzberg and the others in Chabad House and were told they were fine. When they asked Imran what he wanted, he said he wanted to speak to someone from the Indian government.

Viswanath said Chabad-Lubavitch officials finally got someone but couldn't get through to the attacker because of technical problems. At another point, Imran asked for someone who had been taken into custody in Mumbai to be brought to him, but that didn't go anywhere either.

Then, finally, just after 5 a.m., the man said the phone battery was weak and hung up, according to Shemtov. "The next time we tried to reach him, we couldn't reach him anymore," the rabbi said.

Viswanath remained waiting on the phone for several hours. It was only later that he found out Holtzberg and his wife were among the 171 killed in the attacks.

Looking back, he doesn't know that any amount of conversation would have changed the outcome, given that the calm and collected voice on the other end didn't change.

"He was going to do whatever he was going to do, or had already done," Viswanath said. "So if the plan was to kill everybody, that was what he was going to do. Our talking to him I don't think would have changed events in any way."

Jewish and Indian groups mourn Mumbai at American University

WASHINGTON - A week after the attacks in Mumbai, India that killed 171 people, Jewish and Indian groups held a memorial service on the campus of American University to remember the victims and pledge they will continue to work together.

Several of the victims lived and worked at the Chabad Lubavitch House, an Orthodox Jewish center in Mumbai.

"These terrorists had only 10 people, but the decent people of the world have billions of people," said Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of the Washington office of American Friends of Lubavitch.

Shemtov was a friend and colleague of Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, director of the Chabad House in Mumbai. Gavriel was a victim of the attacks.

"Those who seek to destroy us will know sooner or later that they could never succeed," Shemtov added.

Among those attending the packed gathering were representatives from the Indian community who say they don't want to be targeted as so many Muslims were after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

"We have thought about that. India is a very tolerant country and the world's largest democracy," said Partha Pillai of College Park.

"It is the only country in the world where all religious leaders are together. Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Jews, they are all together and they live together. We feel sad and angry that this kind of thing happened in India."

Lazarus Borgai is a native of Mumbai and currently resides in the Washington area. He tells WTOP these attacks were perpetuated by a small group of people and do not represent the greater Indian community.

"We never expected this to happen," says Borgai.

"India is a peace-loving country. (The attackers) are trying to create trouble between the two countries (India and the United States) and trying to disrupt the peace between these countries."

Chabad reached terrorist when they phoned Rabbi Holtzberg

I spent this morning at a memorial service in Westwood for Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife, Rivkah, who ran the Chabad in Mumbai and were killed in the terrorist attacks there last week. It was amazing to see more than 1,000 people, including some of Los Angeles’ top officials paying tribute to two Jews they’d never met before.

I spoke with a Chabad rabbi who went to school with Gavriel back in New York and with a scholar who had celebrated Shabbat at the Mumbai Chabad house the Friday before the attacks, but most the people there were simply grabbed by the power of the Holtzbergs’ story, by the personal mission that caused the young couple to relocate after marrying in 2003 to a foreign land—to, as one speaker said, “the spread of good and the destruction of evil.“

Despite the circumstances, the mood at the memorial was upbeat. And I was surprised to hear so many times the exhortation that Jewish men put on tefillin to honor Gavriel’s legacy and that they create a kosher house for Rivkah. I’m still amazed with how Rabbi Holtzberg and his rebbetzin have come to serve as the public faces of this tragedy. From everything I’ve heard about the couple, I think they’d be a bit embarrassed by all the attention. But so many Jews, and non-Jews too, felt like the attacks were an attack on them personally; when one suffers, we all suffer.

“All of the Jewish people are connected. They are part of us,“ Marilyn Greenberg, 71 and of no relation, told me at the service. “A young family, doing work for Klal Yisroel—and they were killed because they were Jewish. There wasn’t any other reason.“I have yet to find a clear report that the Jewish center was specifically targeted. But a man who had visited told me it was located down an alley, well off the street, and wouldn’t be the kind of boarding house you would just stumble upon while looking for hostages. And it’s not hard to imagine religious extremists including a small community of Jews in such a diabolical plot. I hear that’s been happening for centuries.

I’ll be writing more about this for this week’s Jewish Journal. The latest detail to emerge is this:

Chabad Rabbi Levi Shem Tov said he tried to phone Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg at the Chabad House in Mumbai during the terrorist attack that ended his life and that of his wife and four others Jews in the building. A terrorist, who indentified himself as Imram, answered the phone, and Rabbi Shem Tov heard Rivka Holtzberg screaming in English, “Please help immediately.“

The terrorist originally ended the first phone conversation, saying that he spoke only the Urdu language. Rabbi Shem Tov found an Urdu speaker and called again. The terrorist said the rabbi was alive and well and would be freed if demands were met.

Rabbi Shem Tov related that he told the terrorist he would contact the Indian government to give them what they wanted, but when the rabbi asked to speak with Rabbi Holtzberg, the terrorist replied, “You have already asked for too much.“

After another two or three phone calls, “Imram” said the phone was dying and he hung up.

© Copyright 2008 The Jewish Journal and JewishJournal.com

Jewish org provides new options

Chabad GW held inaugural event last week

by Ben Echitelle
Hatchet Staff Writer

Chabad GW, an organization dedicated to supporting orthodox Jewish life on campus, held its inaugural event last week, drawing more than 300 students to Kogan Plaza for a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot.

Nationally, GW has the eighth largest percentage of Jewish students on a college campus, according to statistics gathered by Hillel. Chabad aims to reach out to these students.

"The dream is to create a home away from home that will always be available to students," said Rabbi Yudi Steiner, who co-directs Chabad GW along with his wife Rivky. "My wife and I provide a welcoming, nonjudgmental, relaxing place for Jews to come and feel appreciated where they feel that they have a brotherhood that they can kick back with."

Chabad, an international Jewish organization, established a chapter in D.C. 10 years ago. The group organizes holiday celebrations for Jewish students at GW, Georgetown and American, including the annual Sukkot event and the lighting of the national Hanukkah menorah.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, Chabad's D.C. representative, said an increase in student interest in Chabad over the past few years spurred the need for the organization to expand, but it took two years and countless interviews for him to find the right people for the job at GW.

"Chabad has had an ongoing presence on campus for over a decade, but with the arrival of Rabbi Steiner and Rivky, things are going to go to a whole new level with more visibility, consistency and quality," Shemtov said.

Last Friday's event was held inside a sukkah, a traditional temporary structure that represents God's protection of the Jewish people that has been in use since biblical times. Students shook the lulav - a bundle composed of the leaves from myrtle, willow and date palm trees - along with an etrog, the fruit from the citron tree. This tradition represents the concept of Jewish unity, Steiner said.

Holding with the theme of unity, the Jewish Students Association, the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity and the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority co-sponsored the event.

Steiner said that in order to attract Jewish students for their programming, Chabad must work with all GW Jewish organizations.

"Traditionally we work with Hillel, but really we like to work with every Jewish organization on campus because we are an umbrella organization for the entire Jewish population at GW," said junior Josh Abrams, president of the Jewish Students Association.

Several students at the event, however, felt that there may be some unspoken tensions between Chabad and Hillel, since Hillel has an established presence on campus and Chabad is a newcomer.

"Now that Chabad is here there is a stigma that there is a conflict with Hillel," said Alex Sasson, a junior who has attended Chabad services in the past. "Chabad doesn't want to tramp on Hillel's turf."

Other students are eager for another avenue to learn about their Jewish faith.

"I'm involved in Hillel, but I'm interested in exploring all my Jewish options," said freshman Alex Wartman.

Steiner said the difference between Chabad and Hillel is a "matter of style."

Rob Fishman, executive director of Hillel at GW, agreed with Steiner.

"We use different methods to achieve the same goal: supporting Jewish students on campus," Fishman said. "There is enough room on this campus for us both, but at the same time, it is sensitive."

Chabad GW is currently located at the intersection of 22nd and N streets in the Steiners' apartment, but there are plans to move into a much larger facility on or near campus within the next year.

Current programs are limited to dinners and study groups with about 15 students at a time. In the last several weeks, however, Steiner said at least 100 students have attended some type of Jewish program at his apartment.

Row In Rostov

Allegations fly between chief rabbis after 13 Chabad students are arrested in southern Russia.

by Walter Ruby

Special To The Jewish Week

Following the recent arrest of 13 visiting students in a Chabad-sponsored yeshiva in the southern Russian city of Rostov, charges flew among various Lubavitch factions.The chief rabbi of Kfar Chabad in Israel accused the chi ef rabbi of Russia of conspiring to close the yeshiva and thereby causing the arrest of the students. And the Russian chief rabbi shot back, charging “slander.”But after a Nov. 8 meeting in Crown Heights attended by both Rabbi Berel Lazar, chief Rabbi of Russia, and Rabbi Yosef Aronov, chairman of Chabad in Israel and head of the yeshiva in Rostov, a strained peace seemed to be holding. A statement specifying that the two will put aside their differences and work together for the reopening of the Yeshivat Tomchei Temimim appeared to have ended the controversy, although perhaps not all of the bad blood.The school was was closed by order of authorities in Rostov after they arrested the yeshiva students on Nov. 1, citing visa and registration issues.The students — most of whom were Americans — were held for two days in filthy and overcrowded conditions in a prison in Rostov, without access to kosher food for the first 24 hours of their imprisonment.They were released after the intervention of high-level diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. The yeshiva in Rostov is of special importance to the Chabad movement because it occupies the site where Sholom Dovber Schneerson, the fifth Lubavitcher Rebbe, lived during his final years.The controversy over the yeshiva is a potential embarrassment for Rabbi Lazar. For the past seven years he has been the most powerful Jewish leader in Russia and the only one to enjoy a close relationship with President Vladimir Putin. But last month, Rabbi Lazar was not invited to take part in a meeting Putin held with a delegation from the European Jewish Congress that included his archrival, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow. An exchange of angry letters reveals the animosity the incident has engendered between leader of the Russian and Israeli factions of Chabad.In his letter to Rabbi Lazar, written when it became clear the yeshiva was about to be closed, Rabbi Mordecai Ashkenazi, chief rabbi of Israel’s main Chabad enclave and a close associate of Aronov, did not assert that Rabbi Lazar was no longer influential enough with the Russian authorities to protect the yeshiva.Rather, Rabbi Ashkenazi claimed that Rabbi Lazar actively encouraged the authorities to close it, presumably because it operated under the aegis of the Israeli Chabad rabbinate, and not under his own Moscow-based Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia.After the Ashkenazi letter, which accused Lazar of mesirah (informing on Jews to non-Jewish authorities) became public, Rabbi Lazar fired back with a letter of his own. In it he accused Rabbis Ashkenazi and Aronov of “slander” and lashon hara, stating that the reason for the closing of the yeshiva and arrest of the students was that Aronov “never legally registered the yeshiva’s students. And where they did register, they did it under the name of a straw organization, using faked registration, a severe breach of Russian law.” Rabbi Lazar also claimed that he sought to intervene with Russian authorities on behalf of the arrested students, but was unsuccessful.Informed of the gravity of the situation Rabbi Levi Shemtov, director of Chabad in Washington and Mark Levin, executive director of the Washington-based NCSJ (formerly the National Conference on Soviet Jewry), worked the phones late in the afternoon of Friday, Nov. 2, contacting U.S. government officials. The following morning two high-level U.S. Embassy officials flew from Moscow to Rostov and managed to convince local authorities to free the students, who were immediately expelled across the border to Ukraine. According to Levin, “It seems to me that the most significant part of the story is that we were able on short notice to reach out to those in a position to help to free the students and thereby managed to prevent what could have been a tragedy.”At the Nov. 8 meeting of the top leadership of Agudas Chassidei Chabad (the umbrella organization of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Crown Heights), Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, chairman of the Executive Committee, said in the official statement that after reviewing the events surrounding the Rostov yeshiva controversy, the committee “became convinced that the insinuations and accusations [by Ashkenazi and Lazar] were erroneous and were a result of misunderstanding and confusion.” Rabbi Shemtov commended both Rabbis Lazar and Aronov “for their efforts to solve the problem of this crisis.” And he added, “We remain optimistic about Rabbi Lazar’s commitment to work with Russian authorities and ensure resumption of the activities of the Rostov Yeshiva.”Privately, however, high-level sources within Chabad acknowledged that it is likely to take months before the Russian authorities give the necessary authorizations to reopen the yeshiva.The sources confirmed that the results of the Executive Committee meeting in Crown Heights amounted to a reassertion of authority by the Chabad leadership in Brooklyn over the movement’s seemingly autonomous and often-combative Russian and Israeli branches.According to Rabbi Levi Shemtov, “Agudath Chassidei Chabad is the ultimate policy authority within the movement and the fact that it was involved helped to mitigate the situation.”

Chabad Gathering: No Jew Left Behind

Rebbe’s emissaries come back from 72 countries and 47 states.

by Jonathan Mark
Associate Editor

There is an old joke that Orthodox Jews tell: “What is the closest religion to Judaism?” Chabad-Lubavitch is the punchline. Everyone “gets it.” Everyone thinks they know about Chabad’s messianism, that a few Chabadniks believe that the rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who died in 1994, is still alive.In fairness, the rebbe’s messianism or divinity is not advocated in any of Chabad’s official literature; it’s even reprimanded. But fairness has nothing to do with it.This past weekend, just about all the shluchim, nearly 3,000 of the rebbe’s emissaries to 72 countries and 47 states, along with 1,900 of their philanthropic backers, returned to New York for their annual convention. The rebbe was spoken of in past tense, the messiah in future tense.David Berger, chair of Jewish studies at Yeshiva University, recently wrote in the YU newspaper that because of its messianic pretensions, Chabad is “an existential threat to the Jewish religion.” He says Chabadniks ought to be treated with the same halachic mistrust that “Modern Orthodox Jews [have for] traditional Conservative Jews.”But Conservative Jews also are dismissive of Chabad. Andy Silow-Carroll, editor of the New Jersey Jewish News, reported that earlier this year, at the Jewish Theological Seminary, “someone mentioned ‘Chabad,’ and the roomful of rabbis and professors broke out into knowing titters. Dr. Alan Cooper, the JTS provost, rode the titters into a wave of laughter when he repeated the old line: ‘Chabad is the religion closest to Judaism.’”This year’s conference was held in Crown Heights, with the plenary banquet in Pier 94, a vast, several blocks-long former docking hanger on the Hudson River. One shaliach, Rabbi Shlomo Matusof, 91, flew in from Morocco. In 1950, Matusof, a war refugee and former prisoner in Stalin’s gulag, was about to board a ship to join his rebbe in Crown Heights but the rebbe asked him to go to Morocco instead. In the wake of Israel’s independence two years before, Jews in the Arab world were about to experience an upheaval. Matusof built 70 Moroccan Jewish institutions in the last 57 years. He stayed, even when most Moroccan Jews left, tending to the few who didn’t.As God would have it, Rabbi Matusof passed away Saturday night, in the Crown Heights he once thought would be home.Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the rebbe’s emissary to the Bronx, said that Sunday morning they announced Rabbi Matusof’s funeral would be at 11 a.m. After all these years, New York would be his resting place, at the Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens, a few yards from his rebbe. Instead of a small funeral in Morocco, the old shaliach “had more than 2,500 shluchim at his funeral,” said Rabbi Shemtov.At Pier 94, Rabbi Shemtov remembered, “In 1985-86, 12 of us American boys were sent by the rebbe to be with Rabbi Matusof in Morocco. The dedication that we saw for Yiddishkeit, the love for Jews — now almost everyone of us is out somewhere in the world for Chabad. I like to think that we picked up some of his dedication.”Odd juxtapositions are the charm of these affairs. From the Bronx it was a few tables to Beijing, where Rabbi Shimon Freundlich, who was sent in 2001, is posted.Everyone knows Jews love Chinese food, often unkosher, and Rabbi Freundlich is the closest thing to those Jews, but with a twist. After opening a shul and a Jewish school, he opened a 75-seat Chinese restaurant in China — kosher, of course. They deliver anywhere in Beijing.No group ever displayed more antagonism to Chabad than Satmar. Yet Rabbi Freundlich was joined at the banquet by 20 Satmar chasidim grateful to have a chasidic port of call in China. To YU’s Berger, Chabad is “an existential threat to Judaism,” but when the uber-halachic Satmar businessmen come to Beijing, they happily daven and eat with Rabbi Freundlich. Satmars even contributed more than $150,000 to Freundlich’s new Beijing mikveh. The banquet is a place to renew old friendships. “We met last year,” says Congo’s Rabbi Shlomo Bentolila to a familiar face, “and here we are!”On holidays, the Congo Chabad sends circuit rabbis to Jews in Kenya, Nigeria, Lagos, Namibia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Angola, Rwanda and Zimbabwe. “There is no Jew in Africa who is out of reach,” said the shaliach. “We intend to offer something to every Jewish child, expatriate, or businessman, every Jew we can find.”In Kinshasa, “We have a shul, 40-50 people on a Shabbos. We have a kosher bakery, and 25 kids in our afternoon school.” From the podium, Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky called the “roll call” of every country and state, beginning with Chabad of Cyberspace, the chabad.org Web site with links to numerous topics and 900 individualized sites for every Chabad in the world.Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who 50 years ago first joined the rebbe’s secretariat and remains as the pivotal administrator of Chabad International, recalled that in 1984, when these gatherings started, there were only 60 shluchim, and only from the United States. It was always like a family reunion for the rebbe, said Rabbi Krinsky. After the roll call the room erupted into dancing, though there must be a better word to describe the prancing, leaping, pounding and stomping that had thousands of glasses on every table bouncing, rippling the wines, rippling the waters. Lev Leviev, the mega-philanthropist, was dancing with chasidim, hands on shoulders.Leviev had earlier addressed the gathering in Hebrew, recalling how the rebbe advised him in business, and praising shluchim who operate “behind enemy lines.” Nothing he said was as powerful as the joy in his dancing feet and smiling face.Hey, over there, were Tuvia Teldon and Anschel Pearl, shluchim on Long Island. And over there, hey, it’s Menachem Hartman, the 26-year-old shliach to Vietnam.On Shabbat in Ho Chi Minh City (old Saigon), Rabbi Hartman may be “the closest thing to Judaism,” or maybe there is no truer Judaism than his, in which no Jew is left behind. Surely, those who mock Chabad could get in on the action and find a young rabbi to devote the rest of his life to, say, the Beth Conservative Temple of Hanoi, or the Young Israel of Phnom Penh. While everyone’s joking, Chabad has also opened a Chabad House in Laos.Is there a future for Jews in Ho Chi Minh City?“For sure,” said Rabbi Hartman, beaming. “B’ezrat Hashem, we’ll be opening a kindergarten. Vietnam is the next tiger in Asia!”I was going to ask him what he thought about the jokes people tell about Chabad but I didn’t have the heart. Maybe on a sweltering Vietnamese night he might get to feeling lonely, and when that night comes I didn’t want him to know that Jews in New York were cracking jokes at his expense.This young shaliach would soon be on a plane, heading off to where most of us would never dare. He was the rebbe’s representative. He was pure, the closest thing to Heaven.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov

Rabbi Levi Shemtov is Washington office Director of American Friends of Lubavitch. Shemtov is a well known figure in political and Jewish circles in Washington, and his activism symbolizes the change Chabad's culture has gone through in recent decades from a limited Chasidic faction to a powerhouse working across the Jewish and non-Jewish world. Shemtov's highest profile event is the Hanukah Menorah lighting on the White House lawn. We will discuss with him the state of American Jewry, Chabad and other topics. Readers, as usual, can send their questions to rosnersdomain@haaretz.co.il.

Rabbi Shemtov,

Can you explain what is the Jewish education you refer to? is it educating people in the mode of Chabad or in the mode of Reform Judaism? These are two very different things.

Thank you for your reply,

Tzvi Noah
NY


I think the focus must be the education of many more Jewish people - particularly children - in the ways of Torah and yiddishkeit. The differences you mention, while indeed real, have sadly served all too often as a reason to end these types of discussions before they begin.

The need to reinforce and expand Jewish education is a vital one, regardless of a Jewish person's particular station in life, communally or otherwise. We need progress, not just process.

Obviously, I am most familiar with the Chabad-Lubavitch method, which seems to work to a large measure with open-minded Jewish people of a variety of affiliations. Too often I hear from participants - as do many of my colleagues - that specifically because they felt welcome, as they were, the possibility for their Jewish growth and that of their family became possible in a meaningful way for the first time. While this indeed is gratifying, it also pains the heart to know that others who seemed a "better fit" lost so much opportunity with these people for so long.

So, if someone is indeed serious about the issue, they need to address it for all the Jewish people. Distinctions instead of solutions is what we have way too much of already. They will only distract from the intended focus. We can and must do better than that.

RLS


Dear Rabbi,

I'll start with the topic of last week's dialogue, and with a general question of the state of American Jewry. Is it declining or thriving - is it in crisis or going through a period of renaissance? Give us, for starters, your list of "must do" for American Jewish leaders.

Rosner

The Jewish people today live in a time of great triumph, but also great challenge. We are taught that G-d tests us either with the pain of poverty or the power of prosperity. We seem to be enduring both right now - the prosperity is material, the poverty is spiritual. But there is a bright spot as well, and reason for hope, if people are willing to act.

There is no way you can ignore the fact that there is presently a serious decline in the American Jewish community, with over half believed to be totally unaffiliated. And the organized community decries the apathy and ignorance of those who do consider themselves affiliated, and are anxious about how to reengage them in Jewish identity.

On the other hand, there is not only a simultaneous resurgence - or resuscitation - of Jewish life, with so many finding their way back or more deeply into their Jewish heritage, but those who for a very long time advocated a lesser degree of tradition in their life as Jews, perhaps thinking that the age-old Torah teachings and directives were no longer "as relevant" now realize and publicly state, emphatically, that ONLY through a return to Torah and mitzvos is there any real hope of Jewish survival. It seems as if all the alternatives ultimately give way to a return to Torah - sooner or later. It's been that way since Sinai

And this leads to the key point I believe the Jewish community must focus on as a most urgent priority: Jewish Education.

From our beginning and up until the latest National Jewish Population Survey, Jewish education appears and reappears as the core factor in Jewish continuity. I am loath to judge the previous generation or two for their failure to provide adequate Jewish education. Perhaps they thought their own Jewish identity would automatically transfer without the requisite strenuous effort to educate children properly. Or they didn't think they had the financial ability to do so. But that can't help us today, as we live with the painful results of the last few decades. Not enough energy was dedicated to afternoon Hebrew school and other similar programs once thought a panacea. They became an afterthought, even a joke, and then a disaster; barely better than nothing. And almost any Jewish adult I speak to indeed remembers that part of their lives with dissatisfaction, if not disdain.

If there is one thing above all others which Jewish communal leaders need to address urgently, this would be it. Reinforce and expand opportunities for affordable, quality Jewish education. After way too long, many Jewish philanthropists, who have collectively donated billions to causes that others beyond our community could easily fund, have now finally begun to realize the emergency and have started to (re)direct serious sums to Jewish causes. Those directing these initiatives need to further redirect these new funding sources toward ensuring Jewish education for all those in our community who can then avail themselves of it.

King Solomon taught us that a properly educated Jewish child will much more likely become a strongly Jewishly identified adult and then a committed member of the Jewish community, even into their later years.

And, for those who are already passed their childhood, innovative and quality programs and initiatives can help rectify a gap in this regard and refocus parents on the Jewish educational needs of themselves and their children. And the educational effortss and mitzvah campaigns for Jews of all or no (perceived) affiliation, which the Lubavitcher Rebbe, of blessed memory, initiated and which thousands of my colleagues throughout the world have developed (to the curiosity, sometimes disdain, then appreciation or even replication by so many others), have had a serious impact in this area. And much more remains to be done.

There are no doubt enough resources in our vast community membership to address this issue. That is what we have. What we don't have is a choice. The answer to this question when it is asked the next time lies absolutely in our hands today.

Saudi envoy attends Jewish event

Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to Washington attended a Jewish community reception for the U.S. special envoy on anti-Semitism.

Turki al-Faisal, who is completing his term in Washington, appeared Wednesday at the event in the Capitol building honoring Gregg Rickman, the State Department’s top official combating anti-Semitism. It was the Saudi’s first such appearance at a public event sponsored by Jewish groups, in this case the United Jewish Communities, World Jewish Congress’ American Section, B’nai B’rith International, American Friends of Lubavitch and NCSJ: Advocates on Behalf of Jews in Russia, Ukraine, the Baltic States and Eurasia. Al-Faisal also met privately in recent weeks with two dovish, pro-Israel groups.

Rabbi Levi Shemtov, who heads the Lubavitch-Chabad office in Washington, appealed to Al-Faisal and other Arab ambassadors in the room to recognize that anti-Semitism ultimately poses as much of a threat to their nations as it does to Jews. Al-Faisal announced his sudden resignation last month.