By COLlive reporter
Mark Oppenheimer, Stephanie Butnick, and Liel Leibovitz are the hosts of “Unorthodox,” a weekly take on Jewish news and culture on the American Jewish online magazine Tablet.
Episode 143 was titled “The One With the Mitzvah Tank” in which the hosts joined a group of Lubavitchers who gitting the streets of New York City on the staple Mivtzoim outreach work.
Here’s their description:
“Hi, are you Jewish?” is a question you may have been asked in any number of towns or cities by a smiling bearded man wearing a yarmulke. It’s one of the trademarks of Chabad, the Hasidic movement that dispatches its young men around town to help Jewish strangers perform a mitzvah—Jewish women are offered Shabbat candles, and Jewish men are encouraged to put on tefillin.
We’ve always been fascinated with this practice, with some of us finding it charming and others, frankly, terrifying. So we did the only thing we could do: We went to Manhattan’s crowded Union Square during lunchtime, accompanied by our very own Chabad Sherpas, to see what it was like to talk to absolute strangers about religion.
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indeed, mivtzoyim doesn’t just give another Jew the opportunity to do a mitzva. It trains the chossid himself to:
-always see anyone as possibly Jewish no matter what he looks like
-to confront fear and social awkwardness when dealing with the unknown
-to always act like a mentch
We were out camping last night and bumped into the editor of this podcast!!
what a great idea! To see how other people feel about doing mitzvot in the street!
But didn’t The Rebbe say that boys should teach boys and girls teach girls?! It is not very tzniut for boys to speak to girls on the street, Let the girls speak to girls!
Great. Doesn’t change the fact that Mivtzoyim training should be a thing. On the job experience gets 70% of it done. The other 30% (how to approach, how to react, how to be confident, etc.) really should be taught by schools and Yeshivas. A simple once per year course is enough. I’m saying that as a successful bachur-shliach who had to learn how to do mivtzoyim the hard way.
That was so interesting! Thank you!
I
t brought happy memories of when I did that with my friends many years ago. May I add that it seems most appropriate for guys to approach the guys and for girls and women to approach the girls… the girls would feel more comfortable.
kol hakavod!
thank you to all involved
Don’t say anything negative about Mivtzoyim. Several times, bochurim had not-so-positive experiences in outreach with me, and I eventually, in my own sweet time, became a full-fledged Lubavitcher B”H.
that is what Noahide cards are for!
breath… there are bigger issues in the world!
I am partners with several NON-JEWS (who are pretty influential) who once told me whats with thse kids at the Rv’s when they reply to the kids they ate NOT Jewish they just run away… I think its a BIG issue !