Lucette Lugnado has written a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal on the Hasidic Chabad movement with which we have become acquainted because of the murders at the Chabad House in Mumbai. Since I knew very little about the Chabad movement, I am glad to have read Lugnado's article.
I am absolutely certain that Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his
pregnant wife Rivka, massacred by
the terrorists, had also set up a
safe-haven. Theirs was a retreat for Jews living in and around Mumbai
or even those who were merely passing through.
I would venture that's one of the secrets behind the Chabad movement's extraordinary growth -- that they build little sanctuaries for lost Jews, alienated Jews, secular Jews, Jews who have no interest in traditional religion.
Chabad has redefined religion in part by getting away from the notion of large, formal temples to establishing places of worship that are small, intimate and, above all, deeply comforting; they have made religion personal.
And so, even as some other branches of Judaism and other religions have withered, they have ventured to the far corners of the earth: Siberia, Alaska, Kiev, Odessa, Ho Chi Minh City. But no matter where the Chabad house the philosophy is always the same -- to bring even the most alienated Jews back into the fold.
You go to a Chabad house and you can count on being invited to Friday night dinner by the rabbi and his wife. The model emphasizes old-fashioned notions of community and home -- the sense that religion is not a once-a-year affair but a way of life. . . [Read more. . .] (HT: Stan Guthrie at Christianity Today]
From the Wikipedia entry [which is comprehensie and excellent], I learned that Chabad (חב"ד) is a Hebrew acronym for Chochmah, Binah, Da'at (חכמה, בינה, דעת) meaning Wisdom, Understanding, and Knowledge.