Yes, of course there were – and are – those kana’im who were unhappy with the coed events and other leniencies invoked in the spirit of Eliyahu but again, the record speaks for itself. We see the grandchildren of those NCSY pioneers establishing Jewish homes, learning Torah, and continuing our traditions.
Sixty years later, it’s easy to think the success was inevitable. It wasn’t.
Back in the 1950s, as Martin Nachimson recently pointed out in the OU’s JewishAction magazine,“Orthodoxy in America was fragile. In many cases, children came from homes where the parents were Holocaust survivors, traumatized immigrants struggling to find their way in a strange land. They were eager to Americanize, and had difficulty conveying the significance of religious life to their American-as-apple-pie children. Across the country, the decline of Orthodox Judaism was apparent, especially among the youth.”
NCSY “faced many challenges. It had to remain firm and uphold halachic standards in the face of opposition. NCSY leaders refused to host events that would feature social dancing or include services without a mechitzah. Shul members were skeptical: would the young people come if there was no social dancing? If there was a mechitzah? They came. By the hundreds. Eventually, by the thousands.”
And they continue to come, feeling welcomed and enriched by God’s great gift, the Sabbath.
NCSY, like the Rebbe, never shirked the need for zealotry. Like him, it is zealous for the health and betterment of the Jewish people. But the success of both in realizing these goals has depended on being more like Eliyahu and less like Pinchas.
As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks summarized it, “From the Rebbe, I learned how faith in God helps you have faith in people, challenging them to become greater than they might otherwise have become…. Believing in them, he helped them believe in themselves.”
Rav Soloveitchik also understood and lauded what Chabad was able to accomplish. “Chabad,” said the Rav, “has placed Judaism in the public thoroughfare, disseminating the Torah to the Jewish people on every street corner. I do not always agree with their methods but there is no question that Chabad has rejuvenated religious Jewry in America.”
Confronted by the power and grace of Judaism, it is possible for even the most secular Jew to become the most committed.
From the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s I was fortunate to observe firsthand the miracle of NCSY in Pittsburgh. I saw hundreds upon hundreds of youngsters inspired and supported in their search for authentic Judaism by volunteer advisers, young men and women, many from Yeshiva University and Stern College. These advisers traveled to Jewish communities large and small with energy and determination to awaken Jewish youth from their spiritual slumber.
With the backing and structure of existing Orthodox synagogues and local rabbis, NCSY was the newly paved derech to return not only youngsters but their elders as well. Nobody else came close to what NCSY was doing.
When “invaded” by hundreds of youngsters celebrating and experiencing NCSY Shabbatonim, congregations were given a vision of what the future could be. Local ba’alei batim looked on in wonder. “Imagine if it were like this every Shabbos,” they whispered to one another.
Imagine!
I have a thick file of letters and notes sent to me by hundreds of young people who experienced those Pittsburgh NCSY Shabbatonim at Congregation Poale Zedeck. Recently I was looking through the file and came upon a note from the late 1970s:
“Rabbi, as you were leaving tonight, right after the unbelievably emotionally uplifting Havdalah led by Danny Butler, culminating the most meaningful Shabbos of my life, you put your arm around me and asked, ‘Why are you crying’? I can answer with a long Megillah…. but let me just say, I was crying tears of joy as we sang about Eliyahu (I think that’s the name, right?) the Prophet during the amazing Havdalah…. I am sure he wanted me to be Jewishly fulfilled so he dragged me here to NCSY. These tears of joy will never dry up. My life now has meaning.”
