Public Judaism: Chabad's Outreach Playbook

 

In the previous post, I discussed Charles Taylor's argument that the Protestant notion of privacy led to the rise of modern secularism. Here, I would like to use the example of Chabad as a model of how Taylor's version of secularism can be countered. Once one understands the extent to which modern secularism relies on the privatization of religion, Chabad’s style of outreach begins to make a lot of sense. In essence, the primary goal of Chabad’s outreach is to get Jews to do publicly Jewish things. By taking Judaism out of people's heads, into their homes, and out into the public sphere, it becomes possible to reverse the presumed slide into secularism where every generation is less religious than the last.

Chabad's strategy of bringing Judaism into the public sphere starts with the very idea of sending out shluchim in the first place to cities one would not normally associate with traditional Jewish observance. Back in the 1950s, the Lubavitcher rebbe actually had a difficult time getting his followers to become shluchim. You want me to leave the New York area, a place where I might have a fighting chance at keeping my kids religious to go where? It should be noted that an essential part of Chabad’s success has been that they have been able to keep the children of their shiluchim religious. In turn, these kids have grown up and have gone on to become shluchim themselves. At this point, Chabad has multiple generations of shluchim, making it a family business. None of this was obvious back in the 1950s and it is certainly foolhardy to believe that people are automatically going to be able to do successful outreach simply because they are thrown out into the secular world. I suspect that a large part of Chabad’s success with their own children comes from the fact that, since the parents are doing outreach, they are more likely to apply what they are doing to their own children without falling into the traps of believing that their kids are automatically going to be religious or that it is a lost battle so there is no point in trying. 

In keeping with the principle of "the medium is the message," the bulk of Chabad's message is quite effectively articulated by the mere fact of having someone with a hat, jacket, and a beard setting up shop in a place outside of New York or Jerusalem. By showing up dressed in their distinctive outfit, the Chabad rabbi is demonstrating that they do not accept the premise that Judaism is merely a set of practices relevant only to the privacy of one's home. In fact, they are going on the offensive and believe that a place with little previous association with Judaism can be claimed as a Jewish space. 

This can be effective as it takes away people's excuse to not be openly Jewish. One cannot argue that people over here do not openly do Jewish things. There is a friendly Chabad rabbi here who is doing Jewish things and he is now challenging you to not just claim to be Jewish but actually put that Judaism into practice. This usually involves simple actions that take only a few minutes like men wearing tiffilin and women lighting Shabbat candles. These street corner tiffilin and candle stands have their counterparts in Chabad's efforts to create major candle-lighting spectacles for Chanukah challenging the notion that a public space must be a secular space. What seems like a minor gesture can have large consequences. Human beings are fundamentally influenced by their lived reality; what you do controls what you think. 

It should be noted that, unlike most Orthodox outreach organizations, Chabad's model of outreach is not built around getting people to become Orthodox. Instead, Chabad focuses on small victories while they play a long game by establishing permanent Chabad house synagogues. These welcome all Jews even those who drive on Shabbat. Chabad rabbis are going to spend decades embedded in a community building personal relationships as opposed to looking for a more prestigious and more lucrative pulpit. If Chabad rabbis were looking for respect, in the traditional rabbinic sense, they would not be serving as shluchim in the places that they do. 

By establishing communities premised on Orthodox observance even if most of the people there are not observant, it becomes possible to reverse the expected trend of secular modernity and create a situation where kids are more religious than their parents. By taking their kids to Chabad programs, parents send the message to their kids that it is not just that they are Jewish but that they are part of a Jewish community and, regardless of what they personally do or do not observe, they are striving to become more actively Jewish. Children raised in such an environment are less likely to assume that the march to secularism is inevitable and, therefore, may choose to not follow that script.      

This interpretation of Chabad's outreach is effectively summarized in a far more entertaining fashion than I could ever offer in Benny Friedman's music video Ivri Anochi. 

The story that plays out in the video is someone being blatantly Jewish causing other people to shift their behaviors in subtle ways that add up to make the neighborhood a more Jewish place.