We’ve obviously never met:) (I’m from the scraggly bearded ones) I was merely playing devils advocate – Even Freud concedes that sometimes a kugel is just a kugel!

The opposite is also true: Chabad Shluchim are highly educated (in Jewish thought and practice), street smart and tech savvy… By contrast, the 20-somethings you refer to have less than an eighth-grade knowledge of Judaism, so far from being “seduced” (a loaded word), I think that there is the potential for real acceptance.

Your reference to the “scraggly beards” and “wigs” implies that you choose not to look beyond the superficial… Thankfully, we live in a post-superficial age, where beard-length or skin tone are not critical factors in deciding to choose a rabbi or a president.

Thanks for the teaching — gematria one of my favorite disciplines of Torah study.

And you hit the nail on the head: is Shabbos the same level of spiritual and communal importance as a bike ride? *Should* we be printing Shabbos swag? Just to take this to an extreme: a water bottle for every participant, a jersey for each meal planner, and a 15-speed bike for each set of newlyweds.

What was it about Jewish life that survived millenia without swag? And what DOES motivate those Chabad shluchim (emissaries) to move to disparate corners of the globe to hold Shabbos dinners for any Jew who wishes? I feel the questions are linked. If examined, I feel it would yield better models for outreach than a $25/head dinner reimbursement.

You tell me.

(I love a good discussion!)

Respectfully,

Ben

That being said, I have a couple of problems with the post. Firstly, how is paying kids to host a Shabbos meal different than bribing fund raisers with Hazon water bottles, little bike sockees and jerseys at different levels of fund raising? If environmentalism is the ultimate “tikkun olam” why does there need to be so much swag involved in motivating people to get behind it? So may I assume that you’ll pass your disdain for “pyramid schemes” on to the powers that be at Hazon?

I was not insulted by your rant. Nor would the many dedicated Chabad shluchim and shluchos that I know be. But don’t you think it’s a bit insulting to your peers – the prospective beneficiaries of your wisdom – to claim that they – 20-somethings who are highly educated, street smart and tech savvy – could be spiritually seduced by a kid barely older than them with an 8th grade secular education and a scraggly beard? And what of his his wig wearing wife?

On a positive note I thank you for the hyperlinks – the articles were quite informative. But perhaps it is precisely that “zaidy factor” that does appeal to college students. Just because your personal mission is to pry Judaism out of the . . . doesn’t mean that zaidy wasn’t right.

Two comments:

First – We live in a world chock full of what you have called “ethno-nationalist states.” (And I would argue that this is a misunderstanding of Israel which is a multi-ethnic state on a number of levels) In fact, I have yet to see a state that did not privlidge certain ethnic groups in its citizenship laws. And yes, it got that way for a long host of reasons like war and discrimination and racial ideas. My sense is that it is because humans, like other creatues, mark territory. That ain’t changing anytime soon.

Second – Jews have bodies. Speak with people who study genetic disease and you will find that alot of those bodies have unique features. If I learned anything from second wave feminism, it is to see the false dichotomy in talk of “bodies” and “meaning” as separate entities. When you turn Judaism into “meaning” you negate bodies — you actually turn Judaism into a Western religious system rather than a spiritual civilization. (please read Kaplan, all Jcarrot lovers!)

And now I will speak personally — I celebrate the fact that young Jewish people find one another and fall in love. After years of dating folks outside of the Jewish world, I finally found my beshert — who shares (and even exceeds) my commitment to both a creative and serious Jewish life and an authentic and eccentric Jewish home. My friends who married people outside of the Jewish world are all wrestling with the difficult task of how to do that, and it hurts me to see how hard it is. Their kids want to love mommy and daddy (or mommy or daddy and daddy) and they can’t get deep into either faith because of this. And I have one friend who this very week is heartbroken about it. I won’t mention the divorces I have seen in my time serving as a congregational rabbi. The goal of rabbis should not be to build communities of non-zionist multifaith people. But can we support such people in their desire to connect Jewishly? yes. But, no, that is not our goal, so apparently you will never be happy with my work. My goal, as outlandishly traditional as it may be, is for Jewish people to find other Jewish people that they love and for them to have a connection to Israel in a way that is not superficial, but actual – and expressed in all sorts of ways. And every Friday they should bake challah and dip it into kibbutz-produced honey imported direct from the Zionist project.

Why Amazon? When you have cut hundreds of checks and processed them, you begin to realize that it is a huge waste of paper, resources and time and you understand very quickly why Amazon cards are a better alternative. And another thing — people like them. Find me a serious social research institute that does not comp for hour long interviews with an online gift certificate and I’d be happy to learn from them.

I host, when stateside, Shabbat dinners regularly as potlucks and find them well attended for the most part. We don’t hold to ritual much, but the concept of lighting a few candles, cooking good food and discussing relevant topics from a Jewish point of view as a regular event I’ve found to be very appealing to other Jews like myself (tall, incredibly handsome, etc.) who are largely secular but very into our tribal/ethnic identity. One benefit of this is that almost to a person, none of us are very involved in the organized Jewish community in the U.S. but are instead activists, co-workers, friends of friends and the like, that is to say, those who the paranoid fear are being “lost” to assimilation. We even use torah sometimes if we’re talking about something with a relevant historical parallel (for example, we did NOT use torah during “Us Jews in Comics History” night, which I definitely want to do again; but very much did use Exodus in the dinner I hosted before Pesach last year…) So the community is out there and willing to be built, willing to participate, and it definitely doesn’t require bribes, just creativity in finding people to be involved. That said, if NEXT wants to give me money to do what I’m already doing, I’d sure as hell take it and then over the next dinner we’d decide what to do with it. Beware NEXT, the answer to that question will probably just be more beer or a donation to a leftist Israeli or Palestinian group!

b’shalom, Jimmy