It takes a lot to distract the single-minded zombies playing Sin City’s slot machines.
But it’s a safe bet heads were turned when a brigade of bearded, black-coated Chabadniks passed through the Aladdin Resort’s main casino on erev Rosh Hashanah.
This was a few years ago, when Chabad had first come to Las Vegas, and a backroom at the Aladdin was the only place the group could find to hold High Holy Day services.
In her new book, “The Rebbe’s Army,” author Sue Fishkoff recounts that and many other amazing tales of the global phenomenon that is the Chabad Lubavitch movement.
When the charismatic Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson died in 1994, some wondered if the Chabad movement he steered for 50 years would die with him.
As Fishkoff reports in her new book, the answer is a resounding “no.”
A U.S.-based correspondent for The Jerusalem Post and associate editor of Monterey County’s Coast Weekly, Fishkoff had long held a fascination with Chabad and its tireless outreach efforts to Jews everywhere. Now in Pacific Grove, the author has also lived in Israel.
Her book chronicles the extraordinary success of the movement, crediting Chabad’s “army” of shlichim (emissaries) for much of that success.
Over the course of her research, Fishkoff learned much about the inner financial workings of the billion-dollar organization, as well as the soul-deep love of Jews and Judaism common to all shlichim.
But she never expected to find herself so personally drawn to the Chabadniks she met, or to experience such a strong resurgence of her own Jewish self-identity.
“Part of what’s attractive about Chabad and the world of observant Judaism was that I saw this warm Jewish family life that I didn’t have,” Fishkoff says. “The world we live in is so atomized, particularly for those of us who are younger and single, and who live away from our family.”
To write the book, Fishkoff spent more than a year on planes, trains and automobiles, traveling to Chabad outposts in Las Vegas, Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Detroit and a zillion other places.
She visited schools, adult Torah study classes, mikvaot and campus Chabad houses. She criss-crossed the dingy stairwells of “770,” Chabad’s famed Brooklyn-based headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway.
Everywhere she went, Fishkoff met with the eager young shlichim couples, veteran Chabad operatives and a gray eminence or two from the movement’s early days.
Fishkoff did more than simply interview them. She lived with them, celebrated Shabbat and holidays with them, and in the process, experienced firsthand the kind of observant lifestyle utterly alien to her own upbringing.
“I’m a typical subject for them,” she says, “in that I grew up in a non-observant household, was educated and intellectually curious, but intimidated by my lack of knowledge. When I first walked into the Lubavitch world, I was touched by their warmth and acceptance of me.”
As time went on, Fishkoff found her respect for her subjects growing steadily. She even reached the point of always packing a long modest skirt in her suitcase, ready for an appropriate quick change should the need arise.
Many Friday nights, she slept over in the homes of hospitable shlichim families, who wouldn’t hear of Fishkoff driving off on Shabbat.
“I wanted to write about the shlichim themselves,” she notes, “and what their lives were like. The best way to do that was to stay in their houses. Most interviews were done after midnight, because these people work nonstop until midnight.”
Of course, being an intrepid reporter, Fishkoff occasionally found herself sneaking cell phone calls to anxious editors, even on Shabbat. But as time went on, she stopped the surreptitious calls.
Says Fishkoff: “I didn’t want that dissonance in my own reality. I needed to be honest in my approach with them.”
Despite genuine affection for her subjects, Fishkoff did take exception to a few aspects of Chabad life. Back in the early 1990s, at the height of the movement’s campaign intimating that the Lubavitcher rebbe was the promised Moshiach (a claim Schneerson himself never made), Fishkoff was alternately intrigued and repelled.
Moreover, she felt a measure of modern feminist ire “the first time I went to 770 and was stuck in the crowded women’s section, staring down at the rebbe.”
Yet in the face of other strident criticism — much centered around Chabad’s powerful gravitational pull on limited charitable dollars, as well as the ongoing quasi-worship of the late rebbe — Chabad grows ever stronger, something Fishkoff views as positive.
“They are authentic,” she says. “They devote their entire lives to projecting this love they feel for Judaism and the Jewish people. All emissaries have chosen this lifestyle, and it’s a 24-hour job.”
Fishkoff’s reverential tone recently drew some barbs in an otherwise glowing New York Times book review. She concedes the point, but she adds: “Clearly I came to this book because I was fascinated with their success and admired their devotion to their work. Keeping that admiration at bay was a challenge I may not have completely overcome. But it is an investigation of Chabad’s success and what that says to the rest of the Jewish world.”
If that hard-to-come-by New York Times review is any indication, Fishkoff’s book should do very well. And while that prospect gratifies the author, Fishkoff has even higher hopes for the book itself.
“If it can help dispel some of the prejudices Jews have about each other, I will feel I have accomplished something,” she says. “Jews are members of the same family, and we need to be more tolerant of each other’s practices and lifestyle.”