May 13, 2005/Iyar 4 5765, Volume 57, No. 37
Chabad broadens reachGroup's growing presence inspires pride for some, tensions with others
TOBY AXELROD
|
|
"Battling for Europe's Jews" is the product of nearly a yearlong investigation by European correspondents of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency into the growth of Chabad in Europe and the impact that is having on Europe's Jews and its established Jewish communities. The issue is shaping up to be a highly critical one for European Jews, and it is a story that has never before been told. This week's articles provide an overview of Chabad and a look at Hungary. Next week, the series continues in Berlin, Brussels and Venice. |
 A menorah is displayed in front of the Brandenburg Gate during Berlin's first public Chanukah celebration, sponsored by Chabad and the Jewish Community of Berlin in 2004. Photo by Toby Axelrod/JTA |
| Related stories |
| Chabad expands operations in Hungary |
A group of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants can barely contain their joy. Never before had they seen such a public Chanukah display, and they'd been here 22 years. "It's a miracle," says one.
The scene - repeated 1,843 times last year in 559 different cities in 65 countries around the world - is laden with a symbolism that is particularly poignant in places where recent Jewish history has been filled with such tragedy. And the publicity surrounding these lightings only boosts Chabad's fast-rising star.
Across Europe an extraordinary success story is unfolding: The growth and expansion of the 200-year-old Chabad-Lubavitch movement, occurring alongside - and in some cases in competition with - the revival of the remnants of local, prewar Jewish communities.
While Chabad, a Chasidic movement whose focus on outreach to non-observant Jews has led them to create a multibillion-dollar, worldwide network of emissaries, is still on the margins of the Jewish establishment in the United States, the group has become a big player in all the major countries of Europe. In some places, Chabad is well-integrated into the Jewish mainstream: Chabad rabbis fill virtually all the pulpit positions in Holland, for example, and nearly half in England. In France, they run many Jewish schools.
In other countries, Chabad and the traditional Jewish communities are fighting over major donors, holiday programming - and who is the chief rabbi.
How this relationship develops may determine the face of European Jewry in the 21st century. Will Chabad edge out the established centrist Orthodox organizations that have dominated the European Jewish landscape in recent decades?
The positions of Chabad and the established communities will also determine critical issues such as which groups get both government and private funding, which institutions survive and thrive to attract and serve Jewish souls, who represents Jewish interests to the political establishment and, in some countries, which groups receive property and funds as part of Holocaust restitution.
Chabad leaders say it's not about competition for Jews or influence. In Europe and around the world, Chabad reaches out to assimilated Jews looking to reconnect with their Jewish roots. Assertive emissaries attract both tourists and local Jews seeking a spiritual home.
"The real reason for Lubavitch success is the love, selflessness and extraordinary spiritual energy its philosophy holds for every single Jew," says Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, the movement's chief spokesman and one of its administrative leaders in New York.
But for many in the established Jewish communities, the perceived competition poses a major problem. They see, in some cases, duplication of services instead of complementary activity.
"European Jewry cannot afford to have established communities and Chabad pitted against one another," says Serge Cwajgenbaum, secretary-general of the European Jewish Congress, a representative body of European Jewish leaders that is affiliated with the World Jewish Congress.
"It took us a long time, about 60 years after the Shoah, to rebuild Jewish communities and Jewish life in Europe, and to endanger the status quo, or to change the status quo could affect Jewish life at large," he says.
While the growth of Chabad's Jewish schools and outreach centers in Europe poses a challenge to other Jewish institutions, its impact on individual Jews is just as tangible. For some, it can mean new educational options for their children. For others, it's an uncomfortable alternative that tries to draw Jews - as well as financial support - from their own synagogues or institutions.
One modern Orthodox father in Berlin said that even though Chabad isn't his way of life, he found that when he was searching for a Jewish education for his young child, the Chabad school was the "only place" where he could be assured of getting kosher food.
For others, the presence of Chabad causes them to reassess their Jewish affiliation, something they may not have done when there was only one Jewish community.
Sylivie Kajdi Frajman liked the Chabad Passover seder she and her family attended in Berlin last year, and was considering sending her twins to the Chabad preschool program. In the end, she opted for the official community's day-care center, because she felt she'd have to affiliate with the Chabad congregation, and it "made me a little anxious," she confesses.
As Chabad grows, European Jews and non-Jews alike increasingly associate one kind of Jew with Judaism: not the acculturated, often non-observant Jew who makes up the bulk of Western and Central Europe's nearly one and a half million Jews, but the Chasidic Jew, which in today's Europe generally means Chabad.
"What appeals to many people is that the blacker the hat, the more 'pure' they are," says Diana Pinto, a Paris-based historian and former consultant to the Council of Europe who has written widely about contemporary Jewish identity in Europe. "Some think Chabad must really be the truth from which everyone else has deviated - which is ahistorical and not true."
But, she says, the movement's "kindness and open and embracing nature is what attracts people. Chabad manages to find a bed and warm place for every Jew."
Chabad has grown in leaps and bounds on the European continent, including all the lands of the former Soviet Union, spreading its brand of Orthodox Judaism. Its success is due, observers say, to the movement's aggressive style of outreach and determination, for which established Jewish communities are no match.
Chabad, which emerged in the late 18th century in Belarus, began its return in earnest to Europe soon after the late Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who had fled Nazi-occupied Warsaw for New York in 1941, assumed the leadership of the worldwide Chabad movement in 1951. He sent emissaries first to Italy, France, the Netherlands and England.
Austria and Switzerland followed in the early 1980s. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Germany, Scandinavia and the countries of the former Soviet bloc were added. In all of Europe today, Portugal and Luxembourg are among the very few countries that do not have permanent Chabad centers - yet.
In the four years after the rebbe's death in 1994, Chabad's outreach empire expanded at an annual rate of 27 percent. Today, there are 112 Chabad-Lubavitch centers in Europe, not counting those in the former Soviet Union, where Chabad's presence is largest of all. There, 104 Chabad centers exist, many of which house multiple institutions. Scores of separate Chabad schools also operate in Europe.
Chabad leaders say that when they move into a new town, their intention is to work in harmony with existing Jewish institutions. They point out that Schneerson always emphasized the importance of not duplicating existing Jewish services.
Other Jewish leaders, however, say Chabad tactics have changed. Today, instead of only bringing Judaism to places with little or no organized Jewish life, Chabad emissaries are deliberately moving into territory with established communities and, in some places, edging out existing Jewish institutions.
As an example, critics point to the growing trend of Chabad emissaries seeking the title of chief rabbi, even in places where chief rabbis already exist. The group has succeeded in doing this in several former Soviet lands, most notably Russia and Ukraine.
Although an anomaly in America, chief rabbis exist in most European countries as well as in some cities, such as Moscow and Prague. For the community, the chief rabbi, almost always Orthodox, serves as the spiritual and legal center for other rabbis.
In the past few years, conflict has broken out in some places where Chabad emissaries have sought the chief rabbi title. The most dramatic example is Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania, where Chabad Rabbi Sholom Krinsky has been demanding that the Jewish community recognize him as chief rabbi and that it fire the new rabbi it had hired, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein.
Beyond competing for Jews, there is money and politics at stake. In many European countries, the organized Jewish community has an official relationship with the state and can be eligible for government funding.
The opening of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union 15 years ago led to the institution of religious freedom and also opened doors to Western-based religious institutions. Chabad had maintained an underground network within the Soviet Union since the 1920s, but with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 the movement began its big, public push into the Eastern bloc, eager to win Jews back to Judaism and rebuild Yiddishkeit in the lands that gave birth to Chasidism more than two centuries ago.
Some observers fear that Chabad is planning to take its tactics that have succeeded so well in former Soviet lands west. Chabad supporters argue that political connections are necessary to anchor a Jewish community. They also say that by maintaining such high visibility, such as through public holiday celebrations, Chabad promotes a positive message of Jewish pride rather than the Holocaust-centered identity associated with the established Jewish communities.
Particularly young Jewish men find a sense of belonging in Chabad's embrace, as they are invited to join in a minyan perhaps for the first time.
Even some of Chabad's harshest critics suggest that the movement's success should inspire mainstream Orthodox leaders and communities to do a better job.
"Chabad will eventually force the whole Orthodox rabbinical and communal establishment to reorganize," says Moscow Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, a frequent critic of Chabad. "I believe that the position of the communal rabbi as an employee will have to be re-evaluated in light of its shortcomings compared to a freelance franchiser of Chabad. I think that we stand before significant historical changes in our communities."