Open Door Policy Draws Newcomers To Shul

Sometimes it takes 40 years for Chabad’s open door, no tickets required policy on the High Holidays to bear fruit.

At Debbie’s Luncheonette on Troy Avenue in Brooklyn, in the 1960’s, there was pot roast on the menu and a young Jacob Roitman behind the counter, helping out whenever Debbie, his mom, needed an extra hand.  

Roitman grew up, said good-bye to Brooklyn and made his home in New Jersey. Five years ago, a little ad announcing a new Chabad house and an “all are welcome” High Holiday services caught his eye. “I have always had a sort of an interest in Chabad but never had really partaken of it,” said Roitman. “I just like their philosophy that they will accept Jews of all types of backgrounds and not question how they practice.”

What turned a news item into a visit to Monroe Township’s Chabad Center was a whiff of exoticism mentioned in the article. Rabbi Eliezer Zaklikovsky organized Passover seders in Nepal, and Roitman had been to Asia several times. But the Nepalese exoticism that attracted him to services was trumped by his Brooklyn roots, and Roitman, who joined another 30 the first ever High Holiday services led by Rabbi Zaklikovsky that year has been involved with Chabad ever since.

“It is difficult to go there and walk away and not come back,” said Roitman. The Zaklikovskys’ “approach to Judaism is so strong it radiates from them.”

Notices in small town newspaper “Worship” columns, flyers stapled on telephones poles, billboards, email newsletters with text-message style lines like Chabad of Branford’s “Will we c u?” proliferate this season as Chabad spreads the word  that there is no need to pay to pray. In 536 cities in 49 countries, Chabad’s doors are open to all Jews who want a place to connect with the High Holidays. Some remarkable Jews, who came because the prayers asked nothing of them but to show up have strolled through those doors.

Critics argue that this lowers the bar for participation. Cheapens the experience. Freebie seats, they say, are for penny pinchers, and do not guarantee continuity.  Not so, said Rabbi Zaklikovsky. “It is not the bargain that speaks to them, but the fact that you can walk in and be comfortable even though not a shul-goer. You can identify with message of Rosh Hashannah in your own way without having to conform.”

Rose Tyberg, the daughter-in-law of a cantor, said Chabad’s free High Holiday services are no aberration. Giving freely is what the Zaklikovkys do. Tyberg marvels that Chani Zaklikovsky resumed cooking for Chabad events days after giving birth to her fourth child. “Chanie teaches. She’s also tutoring. She’s cooking a luncheon for Sukkot. It is overwhelming how much she does for others.”
  
Free is no silver bullet on campus. Free t-shirts, free beer at Rush parties, free pizza at lame health fair events, college students have their pick of freebies. Convincing students to attend a free prayer service presents a challenge to Chabad campus rabbis. As the holidays fall out inconveniently at the very beginning of the college year, a High Holiday prayer service is a tough sell for students unfamiliar with Chabad. But many are packed. Homesickness draws out some. Others who attend are grad students, juniors and seniors already part of the Chabad representatives’ gang of friendlies.

Rabbi Asi Spiegel layers the services he runs at University of Oregon with eye-openers.  When Rabbi Spiegel tells students: “We are not blowing a shofar because our ancestors blew horns in the desert, but we are reliving the spiritual energy of the day,” many students consider it “a completely radical” idea.

Allyson Goldstein, a recent graduate of University of Oregon, in Eugene, gave in to friends who urged her to attend. “It was my first time fasting and attending Yom Kippur services, Orthodox or otherwise,” wrote Goldstein, “and I must admit it was an intense introduction to Chassidism. However, I cannot express how glad I am that I went.”