Why Israelis Love Chabad
December 5, 2008 – 10:56 am
Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg
David Weinberg, director of the CIC’s Israel office, recommends The New Republic article, “Why Israelis Love Chabad” by Yossi Klein Halevi.
Klein Halevi writes that the outpouring of grief in Israel over the deaths of Gavriel and Rivkie Holtzberg, the young Israeli couple who ran the Chabad House in Mumbai, was in part because Israelis see the Chabad movement in a positive light: “Mainstream Israelis resent ultra-Orthodox Jews for separating from the state and its obligations even as they demand that it subsidize their separatism. Chabad neither separates nor demands, but gives. Israelis encounter Chabad’s embrace most often abroad. When our young people just out of the army travel the most remote corners of the world (because military service doesn’t provide enough dangers and thrills), they invariably encounter a Chabad house.
“Israelis also love Chabadniks for their courage: Rivkie and Gavriel weren’t yet buried when Rivkie’s father announced his intention of taking over their work in the Mumbai Chabad house. Though few Chabadniks are drafted into the army, they don’t avoid danger zones: Chabad activists rush to the front lines during war, providing religious services and dancing with soldiers to raise morale. One friend told me about her sister who was serving in a border post so sensitive that a visitor required special permission from the general in command of the front: ‘And then who shows up on Hanukah with jelly donuts? Chabadniks.’”
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