A Chabad Odyssey

Danielle Weiner Bronner*   

These are, hands down, the best–behaved school bus riders I have ever seen. My eardrums are not being shattered by high–pitched renditions of “Sk8r Boi;” I am not covered in neon Doritos crumbs; and I have not spent hours listening to someone complain about how she is “literally, about to throw up.” Perhaps that’s because I am not on a field trip, and my fellow riders are not excitable middle schoolers but adults who, like most reasonable people, would not be caught dead even humming along to Avril. From my vantage point I can see nothing but a sea of black hats, and the video documentary that is simultaneously playing on six small screens.

On this particular March day, I ride with twenty–five Hasidic Jews to the resting place of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson. The shuttle transports members of  Brooklyn, New York’s Crown Height’s Chasidic community from a busy commercial street, Kingston Avenue, to the Rebbe’s grave, leaving daily at 10:30 A.M. and returning at noon.

The video is a history of the Lubavitcher movement. With production quality that easily rivals a PBS documentary, this brief, biographical account of the Lubavitcher rebbes leads the camera through various small towns in Russia, tracing the geographical migrations of the fourth and fifth Lubavitcher Rebbes.

Reflecting on my position as someone outside of the close–knit Hassidic Jewish community, I lean back into my seat, and think about the stroll I took along Kingston Avenue when waiting for the shuttle. The video announces that the Lubavitcher movement—otherwise known as Chabad— originated in the Russian town of Lyubavichi. Its Eastern European heritage is on full display across Kingston Avenue. Home to a bustling, lively community, this small pocket of Brooklyn is lined with stores selling Judaica and Kosher food.

Billboards advertise the services of highquality midwives and attorneys named Avraham and Moishe. A bricolaged telephone pole sports a faded flyer advertising Passover cleaning services. Parked in front of me was a truck embellished with the hopeful refrain “Moshiach is coming!” and the more assertive, if less ideologically tenable, “Moshiach is here...now!”

The video jolts me out of my daydream as I hear the narrator pleasantly inform us that one Rebbe married his niece, and, after losing his first wife to an unidentified serious illness proceeded to wed his first cousin. This casual mention of incest is nearly outdone minutes later as on screen tour–guides offhandedly declare that the name of the German people “be blotted out.” Although this is a common Jewish curse for previous enemies, my censors for political correctness bristle. The bus remains eerily silent. I seem to be alone in my doubt.

Yet, the most striking aspect of the ride from Crown Heights to the Rebbe’s tomb in Queens is, indisputably, the lack of enthusiasm. Despite the fact that the voiceover on the screen informs us that that Chasidic Jews in Eastern Europe used to travel for two hours by horse and buggy every day to spend even a few minutes with the Rebbe, my fellow riders take little notice, not so much contemplative as they are distracted. Our ride today marks the triumph of a fringe group oppressed by Jews and non–Jews alike, and yet there is a profound lack of pathos upon this holy shuttle. These are not so much pilgrims as they are commuters, isolated from one another, running one mundane errand in a series of many. The only sounds come from hushed, rapid mumblings into cell–phones, business sounds seemingly out of place on a voyage to the burial site of such a revered man.

Our journey comes to an end as we arrive at the Ohel, Hebrew for tent. It is just that: a large white tent, poorly furnished with a few long tables, a vending machine, and some free coffee and tea. Each table is bare except for a stack of notepaper, pens, and Chabad business cards. We exit the bus, and go through the Chabad house (adjacent to the Ohel) to take our seats at the long table. The room rustles, not with the sound of clicking cell–phones, but with the flattening of paper and deliberate scratching of pens. The purpose of this long trip is to write a letter to the Rebbe, and as we begin to do just that, the heart–wrenchingly absent group dynamic begins to take shape. After glancing around for a few minutes, I confront my own blank sheet of paper. Slowly at first, but picking up speed, I jot down what’s been on my mind, and find, to my surprise, that after a few short minutes I have run out of page.

I finish my letter and spot a shoe–rack in the corner of the tent. Next to it a small laminated piece of paper explains that it is customary not to wear leather shoes when visiting the Rebbe. I exchange my boots for a pair of over–sized croc sandals, and read another laminated sheet, which, to my relief, lists the proper etiquette at the grave. It is customary to knock before entering, recite a few prayers at the site, and then recite one’s letter over the mound. Then, one is asked to tear the letter and scatter it over the Rebbe’s tomb, after which one should exit the burial site backwards. In death, the Rebbe remains as respected as he was in life.

The gravesite is quaint, an open–air, outdoor room. It is connected to a small antechamber, in which there are prayer books and votive candles. I follow a man into the antechamber, but, am required to proceed on my own, as men and women use two separate entrances. Perhaps twelve people can fit around the intimate shrine, which is a three–foot wall surrounding the Rebbe’s mound of dirt. Once beside it, I am struck by its thoughtful and beautiful design. The sun shines down upon us, and space heaters warm the chilly air. Rather than disturb the silence, the murmurings of people praying and the occasional flutter of paper falling through wind somehow seem to deepen it.

The spiritual part of my journey finally stirs to life as my torn letter mixes with the hopes, dreams, and concerns of my fellow travelers. I begin to comprehend the unique, somewhat bizarre mix of the ordinary and extraordinary practiced by these devoted men and women. A glance across the room reveals a man whose trembling shoulders and downcast eyes suggest that he is close to tears.

We stand there, alone together, and I realize that in making this pilgrimage routine, the Lubavitchers have not robbed it of its importance. They have formed a community that can exist in the urban whirlwind that is New York, seamlessly wedding the traditions of their ancestors to their own. Maintaining the pace of modern–day Manhattan, these coffee–sipping, child–toting men and women hardly have the time to nod a quick hello as they pass each other on the street. And yet they have managed the near impossible—they’ve rescued the practices of their ancestors, and brought them from a cherished past to a lived present.

*Danielle Wiener Bronner is a sophomore at  Barnard College in New York.  This account originally appeared in the Summer 2008 edition of the Columbia University quarterly  The Current..