Q&A: Chabadniks and Invasion of Privacy
Chabadniks and Invasion of Privacy
Question
Do you see something wrong with the fact that Chabadniks come to IDF bases and everywhere else and light candles / offer tefillin / suggest giving a name for a letter in a Torah scroll, and the like? I feel a kind of aversion to this every time I encounter it, and I wanted to ask whether that’s rational and has a reason, or whether I’m just a leftist.
Answer
I don’t see anything wrong with it in itself, although to me too it does evoke a certain aversion. It is missionary activity, and an appeal to the lower parts of the psyche at the expense of the higher ones.
Discussion on Answer
Why is this supposedly missionary? They aren’t coercing or persuading. They’re just offering.
I know what they think, and I wrote that it’s legitimate. I explained why the feeling of aversion is understandable to me. Missionary activity is not a persuasion seminar, which is proper and legitimate, nor is it coercion, which is wrong. Missionary activity is an appeal to emotion and sentiment, or seduction in some way, and therefore in my view it is a problematic approach.
Chabadniks are not all cut from the same cloth. I knew one Chabad engineer who appointed himself the Chabad emissary at work. It didn’t hurt his work. His manager was happy with him and everyone was pleased. He really did bring people closer to the practice of putting on tefillin, praying with a minyan, and more. Sometimes people believe but in practice don’t know what to do. It helps when there is guidance and support.
For all the differences, how is this different from a company or institution marketing itself? They think the truth is with them, and they want to give Jews the merit of commandments. What’s the problem here? Why does it arouse aversion in us?