The Lubavitch movement now has Chabad Houses in 48 American states (only Mississippi and South Dakota are without permanent Chabad representation) and in some 80 countries, run by over 4,000 Chabad couples. The shluchim (emissaries), as these couples are known, go to countries as remote as the Congo and Cambodia and to cities with small Jewish communities like Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And, of course, there are the Chabad Passover Seders, the most famous of which, in Kathmandu, drew 1,100 participants in 2012, the large majority of them young Israeli backpackers trekking through Nepal.
It is for reasons such as this, I presume, that Rabbi Eric Yoffie, the immediate past president of the Union for Reform Judaism, referring, among other things, to Chabad’s outreach, once declared: “It is hard for me to say this but I will say it nonetheless: We must follow the example of Chabad.”
It is the Rebbe’s legacy that today there are few leaders of any Jewish denomination who would disagree with this advice.
(JTA)
