It’s clear that the Rebbe”s “standing orders” have reached far beyond the Chabad community. The core of the Rebbe’s agenda has risen to center stage in contemporary Jewish life. Many are emulating Chabad with a wide variety of outreach and educational projects. The Rebbe’s first initiative when he arrived in the United States in the early forties was to start the first national network of Jewish day schools. Today the communal consensus is that the key to Jewish survival is Jewish education.
Spirituality has become paramount in some previously unlikely segments of American Jewry — a development that has fostered a greater appreciation of Jewish traditions. There is a new emphasis on mitzvah observance even in the more liberal segments of the community. To my mind this is all a clear indication of the Rebbe’s impact.
The Rebbe changed the way many of us think about ourselves as Jews. He taught us to value every single person, to look beyond the labels to the essence of each person as being good and holy. He wanted to shatter the divisions in Jewish life and empower each of us to make a difference.
The effect has been profound, and not just on his own chassidim or other Orthodox Jews. Recently, a friend of mine, a local Reform rabbi, was telling me of his upcoming retirement in Israel. “I am taking a page from Chabad,” he said. “I am buying a big Shabbat table and every week it will be filled with guests of all kinds.”
Even the Rebbe’s vision of the final goal of his “standing orders” has seeped into the consciousness of the Jewish community. Just last week I heard a prominent Conservative rabbi finish his remarks with a reference to the coming of Moshiach. It was the Rebbe who removed this central Jewish tenet from the theological closet and planted it firmly as the goal of the orders he left to all of us.