Everyone connected to ‘Chabad’, has a Chabad Story, and I suppose mine began on my second trip to Israel in the summer of 1970, part of a group organized by the Prozdor High School of Hebrew College & Camp Ramah.  This was my first visit after living there in ’65 at age 8, when my father spent a year at the Tel Aviv University. 

 

It was after The 6 Day War, and Israel was jubilant.  It was also after my Bar Mitzvah which fueled my own excitement.  Because we davened in the morning and evening, and spent a lot of unaccompanied time in Jerusalem it unexpectedly became a religious journey.  (Google Jerusalem Syndrome).  Even at such a tender age, it was the first time I consciously ‘returned’ to a place I had once known.  Forty years later, and nearing his inevitable death-bed my brother Robert would aptly coin a term referring to me as a "nostalgicist".

 

Fast-Forward to 2000, and having returned to the US after a trip to Israel that lasted 20 years; late in an October day I was walking down a street in Sherman Oaks California with my (then) 11 year old, Ben.  We had just exited a 'Tower Records' on the way to a birthday party of Dugan his friend, and just as we hit the sidewalk, we were approached by a Jew carrying a lulav and etrog.  Turning to me he asked: "are you a Jew"?

 

This was a test; I knew it.  For my 20 years in Israel, aside from random visits to the Kotel I never once entered a shul or temple, and the closest I came to a religious gathering of any kind was riding my bicycle dangerously close to the Chabadnikim on the sidewalk near my studio who typically on Fridays (Erev Shabbat) would solicit strangers to lay tefillin.  To me they were no different than the hippies of the late 60s who congregated in Harvard Square preying on young wannabees for spare change.  I was cynical about the fact that Israel - for all of its personal freedoms - had not/has not separated church from state, which translates into disproportionate political power for religious parties while the secular Jews ‘running the asylum’ rely on these religious parties for the balance of power in a (British) Parliamentary system that hinges between right and left.  For their small numbers they carry a mighty stick and much of their legislative initiatives are religion based, which is contrary to the way I was raised in leafy, liberal Newton.

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Back to Chabad. 

After picking up a ‘Best of Cat Stevens’ CD for his musician buddy, Ben and I have just exited the ‘Tower Records’ that used to be off Ventura in Sherman Oaks, and approached by a Jew draped in a tallis who could have been one of my ancestors 100 years ago in Russia or Lithuania in a schtetl walking hurriedly to an evening service, or in more recent years a neighbor of mine in Tel Aviv (a city that never sleeps); the secular capital of modern Israel.

 

The first thing I noticed was the color of his eyes.  Blue like Aqua Velva aftershave.  A blue so light they were nearly white.  The citrus smell of the Etrog was a blast reminding me of the citrus fields of the kibbutz (Beit Alpha) where I spent time in my teens getting connected to the (actual) Land of Israel. 

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Standing there on that perfectly coiffed sidewalk in Sherman Oaks not surrounded by the bustle of Tel Aviv with its strange juxtaposition of Hebrew and Hipster culture, it was a test, and for a moment I was Noah, or Abraham, or Moses.

 

‘Are you a Jew’ he repeated, and I answered; ‘yes’ for my son, my father and mother, for the 6 million, for the 30,000 Israeli families that grieve daily the lives of their loved ones who have fallen since 1948 in defense of their only homeland, and for the Jews around the world who hide their Judaism in countless ways.

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‘Yes we are’ I must have repeated, and asked ‘you want us to daven with you right here on this street corner?’  What happened next I don’t remember other than it lasted less than 10 minutes, and as I watched him hurry away, Ben and I were ‘Alice in Wonderland’ watching the rabbit character with the pocket watch.  Most significantly; we passed the test.

 

At the time, we had been living out of Israel nearly two years, and while we socialized primarily with Israelis we had no contact with a synagogue.  Being a Jew/Israeli was one thing, belonging to a synagogue was something else.  At around this time, in the mail we began receiving promotional flyers for a Jewish Community Center named for Menachem Mendel Schneerson.  The Rebbe.  The late spiritual leader of the Chabad Movement. 

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If one divides the daily mail into 3 piles, these flyers would belong in the second pile (to be read prior to throwing into the ‘blue barrel’).  Lavishly designed and printed with colorful egalitarian illustrations; while they were about Jewish education and the Jewish cultural experience there was nothing about ‘membership’ a word I have always dreaded for the most obvious: who would want me as a member?

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Ben was approaching Bar Mitzvah (preparation) age, and being Israeli was not enough.  I was beginning to feel the need for a Jewish community to provide education for our Bar Mitzvah boychik and his sister 4 years younger.  I picked up the phone and called the number for contact on the bottom of one of these flyers, and found myself in discussion with a Jew who by his inflection and accent I detected he was from ultra-orthodox Brooklyn.  His Hebrew was fluent so we moved freely between the two languages with an occasional Yiddish expression for added spice.  On the phone I arranged for the kids to attend a Hebrew school on Sundays for a few hours, and possibly one other afternoon during the week.  I don’t remember the specifics.  There was never a demand for fees or tuition and from the lengthy chats with the man on the phone I grew to trust they he/they/Chabad was really into Judaism; so into it that their practice was in it’s essence to make Judaism available to Jews wherever they may be.  Jews are everywhere by the way.  Judaism is in the DNA of the Universe.

Over the next few months I regularly engaged the man on the phone; all leading up to Ben beginning preparation for his Bar Mitzvah loosely scheduled for the spring of ’02.  The conversations were always warm, friendly, and infused with just enough Yiddishkeit to assuage my (instinctive) mistrust of any form of established religion, or worse – my inherent suspicion of anyone seeking my membership to anything.

 

A year and a half had passed from the Lulav/Etrog reckoning on the street corner; 30 years had passed since Meyer from the Kotel invited me and my young Jewish friends to spend a Shabbat in a Yeshivah, and then for every subsequent visit (to the Kotel), Mr. Meyer - still there - just a little bit older remembering me by my Jewish name Peretz Zelig again invited me and my barefoot Kibbutznik friends to a Shabbat weekend at the Yeshivah, and I politely declined, again for reasons aforementioned. 

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In 2004 five years had by now passed since leaving the lively streets of Tel Aviv, in exchange for the quiet anonymity of Los Angeles. On that particular day it was my turn to pick up the kids from the Chabad Center on Ventura Blvd. (which during this whole time I never once entered), and aside from picking up the kids, on that day I was to go in and for the first time face the voice I had been conversing with over the recent months.  I pulled the mini-van into the parking lot and upon entering through the back door I was approached by a young woman who asked to my business, and after telling her I was there to pick up my kids, Ben and Zoe, I told her I was hoping to meet a man who’s name I never learned but I had been on the phone with him all these months. 

I had no way of describing him so I described our conversations and how they inevitably turned from the material to the spiritual and she cut into my words: ‘that sounds like Rabbi Lipskier’.  I couldn’t believe that all these months he never introduced himself; never mind as a ‘Rabbi’. 

In all my years of Jewish Education, no Rabbi had ever taken the time to converse with me.  In and of itself that was a near miracle, but what sealed it was upon opening the door to his office crammed with all manner of books, papers, and folders the ‘Rabbi’ I realized was the very same Jew who had asked me on a street corner in Sherman Oaks in front of my son if I was a Jew, and I answered, ‘yes , I am’

 

Enough said.