Thursday, May 10, 2007

Rebels within the fold

Levi Weiss never really fit into the yeshiva world. The lanky 18-year-old, who grew up in the Lubavitch community in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was a hyperactive child, and he was eventually diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. He bounced around from yeshiva to yeshiva — six in all in Brooklyn, Pennsylvania and as far away as Montreal. But no direction was home. “Getting kicked out and not having rabbis take care of me, it sort of pushed me off a little bit. It was a turnoff,” said Weiss, who is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a far cry from the typical Lubavitch dress code.

ALIYA: a relaxed atmosphere with a Chassidic twist. READ MORE.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

"dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, a far cry from the typical Lubavitch dress code..."

Um, ok, if they say so... but I know many Lubavitchers that are comfortable in jeans & a T-Shirt.

Anonymous said...

To fairfax: They said "dress code".

Hirshel Tzig - הירשל ציג said...

The fact that they're comfortable, "un davke leben yam" is a testament to a lack of education in the Meysdes. We'll leave that for another time.

Anonymous said...

I am sure I will be attacked for what I am writing. The article indicates that Aliya deals with several hundred Chabad young people who have "dropped" out. Logic dictates that there are plenty of others who have left chabad in a seemless manner and are happy in their new lifestyle , add hundreds of others who are probably somewhat off track. Given that there are about 10,000 Jews in CH, thats a lot of people leaving the mainstream of Chabad.
Perhaps its time for Chabad to spend more time, money , manpower and energy on maintaining itself than on embarking on new projects in communities where just about every Jew is intermarried.
Perhaps new yeshivoth, and extra attention should be drawn to internal needs (Anii Ircho - ruchniuth) before Chabad sends.shluchim to places where there work can hardly be very rewarding.Perhaps the post high school Lubavitcher yeshiva needs a revamoing and brought up to date with other yeshivoth in the uS and Israel.
Finally if this trend continues, Chabad will publically need to justify its attempts to spread its message, lifestyle and teaching s while at the same time having a hard time retaining those born to those teachings and in that lifestyle.