Sunday, November 6, 2016

Of all the groups

Rav Yaakov Kamenetsky advised outreach people to help newcomers to take on the commandments but not to try to rewrite their minds or control them. Before you didn't keep commandments. Now you do. The rest is a slow and complicated process full of all kinds of choices. Of all the groups, Chabad, at least many of the Chabad houses, are often best at allowing that to happen. They let you be. Chabad looks at you as a neshama. You are a soul and souls all have their own journey. If ever the Chabad rabbi gets a bit pushy with non-halachic stuff like gathering for Tehillim at midnight, just tell him to lay off with that stuff. You don't have to be Chassidic to daven at Chabad. Many of the other groups are too controlling, try to make you too much like them. This includes Modern Orthodoxy which these days is chock full of agendas. Also, they honor returnees in part because they put so much energy into outreach and because the Rebbe called for outreach so passionately. Also nice about Chabad is that they have lots of well written material describing the basics of Judaism. And they describe it in a positive, happy way. You might want to supplement their writings and talks with those of people outside Chabad because Chabad definitely is Chabad centric. You might like the writings of Samson Raphael Hirsch. Also, nice about Chabad is that there's a Russian warmth to their culture.

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