To the group
We’re dancing around the subject of Chabad Kiruv so I’d like to inject a note of reality. It’s not possible for Chabad to “make people frum” because the Chabad belief system is incompatible with our Mesorah. I’ll explain by relating an incident. About 15 years ago, I attended the Jewish National Retreat, Chabad’s annual convention. At one lecture the Rabbi(don’t recall his name) related the following: “There was a Yemenite boy in Israel about 20 years old who decided to become religious. So he went to one of those “heh, heh, heh” Kiruv Yeshivos(he meant Aish Hatorah). The first day he was there the Rabbi said, “For every Mitzvah you do you get rewarded, and for every sin you get punished. And you know what they do when they punish you? They put you in hell and burn you with coals.” He came back the next day and the Rabbi kept adding more coals to the fire. Finally, at the end of the week the kid couldn’t take it any more and he told the Rabbi, “Why don’t you go to hell?” Then the boy came to Chabad and he found love and now he’s happy. When Manis Friedman said that no Jew can be punished today, he meant it literally because this is the Chabad tradition. But this flies in the face of everything the Torah holds true. Chabad ‘studies” Pirkei Avos but that’s all based on reward and punishment so it doesn’t mean anything to them. Just as they reject Rambam’s criteria for Moshiach. So all Chabad can do is encourage people to do Mitzvos, again emphasizing that Mitzvohs are not obligatory. It also follows that since there’s no punishment for sinners Chabad sees no distinction between those who keep the Torah and those who reject it. Two weeks ago, Chabad got the nonagenarian atheist Israeli judge Aharon Barak to put on Tefilin and now they’re celebrating. Their belief system is completely out of whack. However, this doesn’t mean that they shouldn’t work on the disenfranchised. They’re able to reach people who are out of the purview of mainstream Judaism.