by Shmuel Rosner for jewishjournal.comI was planning to write a post about Chabad way before the stabbing in NY last week, and without even remembering that last week was the "new year" of Chasidism according to Chabad calendar. I was planning to write about Chabad following my article on why the Jews of Miami are doing so great. The article was based on a study by Prof. Ira Sheskin in which one finding stood out as remarkable: 26% of Miami Jews have "participated in Chabad activity". That’s a lot. And it becomes even more impressive as one examines in more detail how Chabad got to this impressive percentage. Sheskin kindly shared with me some of the numbers.
For example, the following nugget: Chabad participants in Miami are not "Israeli" or "Orthodox". In other words: do not fall for the common prejudice about Chabad's constituency. According to Sheskin's study, 25% of them are indeed Orthodox, but 32% are Conservative, and 19% are Reform (23% are "Just Jewish" – more in line with common thinking). This means that more than half of the participants in Chabad activities come from a progressive Jewish background (you can add to that the 1% Reconstructionist). Think about it this way: a movement that is in many ways a part of the ultra-Orthodox world is able to attract Jews that are supposedly the arch-rivals of ultra-Orthodoxy. Of course, that is the genius of Chabad – without giving up on being ultra-Orthodox, it is able to convince other Jews that it is not really ultra-Orthodox. There is "haredi" – a term many Jews associate with groups that they find quite difficult to understand and work with – and there is "Chabad" – a brand with a positive image.
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