How DO we judge success? thoughts on the 50th anniversary of מבצע תפילין

Received via e-mail:

"We did not hear that there were some people abstaining from eating treife food or refraining from desecrating Shabbos or that they were educating their children in religious schools, not under the heretics; I only heard that they put on tefillin." These are the words of the build up to סאטמאר רב'ס condemnation (tirade) against the big התעוררות for תפילין in Israel after the miraculous 6 Day War. See "על הגאולה ועל התמורה דף ק"א, ברוקלין תשס"ו". The argument on its own is very weak; After all, did he hear how many people became נוטרי הברית after his annual שובבי"ם campaigns? since when does a התעוררות get measured by its success? He was leading an anti אגודה campaign smearing all גדולי ישראל who did not see everything going on in the Holy Land as heresy..... it was a big machloka and caused lots of infighting between frum Jews, who were thus being עובר on many איסורי תורה. (not some sins sourced in non halacha) Did he ever decide to close shop on his anti Israeli election campaign, since it got nowhere? Every year more than half a million frum Jews participate in the Israeli election and it's only growing... why does only מבצע תפילין need a consequential success statistic? All the above aside, what will we do if we will help him in his quest to find Jews that did change because of tefillin ? I think we may have done just that. Or rather we discovered it, the actual work was done by others. This פסח the Mishpacha magazine ran a long article on a popular right wing conservative talk show host, who is leading an Orthodox lifestyle, eating kosher, Orthodox schools for his kids and Shomer Shabbos, all because of his one act of putting on tefillin. It was the holy soul "Schwartzie" ע"ה,  the Chabad shliach Shlomo Schwartz at UCLA.  In Michael Medved's words "Tefillin is the key metaphor for his Judaisim." That was what started him on his path to a life of full Torah & yiddsihkiet. This is not a 770 paid PR stunt. Will this story and thousands of other similar stories change a mind in that camp??? I do see that a harsh anti religious and anti Zionist Haaretz columnist who wrote an anti tefillin rant 9 years ago, did change his mind on tefillin, (See below)

 Maybe. Just Maybe our "frum" brothers will also get a הרהור תשובה.

לפני תשע שנים, כתב העיתונאי בני ציפר מאמר חריף נגד הנחת תפילין ברחובה של עיר

אלא שנראה כי מאז ציפר שינה את דעתו בעניין... הוא עצמו הגיע לא מכבר אל הכותל המערבי ונענה ברצון לפנייתו של אחד משלוחי חב"ד במקום שהציע לו להניח תפילין. התמונה שמפורסמת כאן, הינה באדיבות העיתון כפר חב"ד שמקדיש השבוע כתבה נרחבת לנושא מבצע 'הנחת תפילין' שאותו יזם והגה כ"ק האדמו"ר מליובאוויטש, לפני 50 שנים ערב מלחמת ששת הימים, ומאז ועד עתה הוא נחשב לאחת הפעילויות החשובות שמבוצעות ע"י חסידי חב"ד 

מאתר 'לדעת' פנו לבני ציפר בכדי לקבל תגובתו, ואפשר רק לברכו על המהלך וגם על תשובתו הקצרה והיא: כן, שיניתי את דעתי. אשריכם ישראל

2 letters full of love for a fellow Jew from the last REAL Vizhnitzer Rebbe

First let me thank the person who shared these letters; then some background: The first letter is a response to a bachur with some breitkeit, to say the least. ראה מעשה and he wanted to know מהיכן דנתוני. A young bachur was called up on Shabbos to serve in the "טמא'נע מיליטער זייערער" as the KJ Satmar Rebbe likes to so eloquently put it. This was during the buildup to the Six-Day War. He knew he would be there for a while - he didn't think there would SUCH great nissim - so he approached the Sereter Rebbe during the tish and asked him whether or not he should take his tefillin with him. This being Shabbos and his Tefillin are muktzah and all. The Rebbe told him to take his tefillin. The bachur was a talmid there but not necessarily such a chossid, and he saw the story unfold. He wrote the Sereter Rebbe a letter asking him why, I'm not quite sure what his arguments were. Maybe since Shabbos is an אות by itself and the tefillin he needs are for a weekday. Here is his response:

The second letter - also to this bachur - is in response to a letter he wrote about being yelled at during a tish as well. Maybe even asked to leave. Seems like he said something to his friend and the latter laughed. At that time maybe they were a still bit uneasy in Seret with the new Rebbe. This was less than 3 years after his father passed away and the transition was a bit - shall we say - unsmooth. So they accused him of laughing at the Rebbe. The young man sat down and wrote a letter explaining what happened and this is the response he received. No excuses. Torah is all about love of fellow Jew and kiddush Hashem. And this why I said what I did in the title. Because Vizhnitz was all about love of fellow Jew, not so much about hats and glasses and socks. I have always had a secret affinity for Reb Lazer of Seret, and these letters just make it so much stronger. This was his manner of leading his flock from the very beginning until his last day on earth.