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יום ט"ז תמוז ה׳תשס״ג
16.07.2003
'חב"ד - ארגון ההפצה הגדול ביותר בעולם'
ג'ורג' רוהר הוא איש עסקים, לא רב. אבל הוא מבחין היטב מהו טוב ליהודים, וכך הפך לאחד מהתומכים המרכזיים בפרוייקט השליחות של תנועת חב"ד-ליובאוויטש, השולחות את בניה לקהילות מסביב העולם להחייאת היהדות. כך נפתח הכתבה של העיתון jewsweek על ר' יקותיאל רוהר, תומך נלהב של חב"ד וידידו של הרב משה קוטלרסקי מהמרכז-לענייני-חינוך.
הכתבה על ג'ורג' רוהר עם צילומים של שלוחים חדשים שיצאו לאחרונה מקראון-הייטס לרחבי העולם
העיתון שמכנה את חב"ד - "ארגון ההפצה היהודי הגדול ביותר בעולם", טוען כי תרומותיו של איש ההשקעות רוהר מגיעות לסכומים של עשרות מיליוני דולרים, המועברות בעיקר לשלוחי חב"ד בקמפוסים ואוניברסיטאות בארה"ב ולשלוחים הרבים במדינת חבר-העמים.
"מה שהפליא אותי היא עובדה שהבחורים הטובים והחכמים של חב"ד אינם הולכים לרפואה, משפט, עסקים או תקשורת. הם הולכים לשליחות. לדאוג ליהודי אחר - זה מראה על דרגה גבוהה של אחריות שהם מרגישים", התבטא רוהר בכתבה.
הכתבה המלאה באנגלית:
Money man
George Rohr is the single largest donor to the Chabad movement. He's given them tens of millions of dollars. Who is this guy?
by Holly Lebowitz Rossi/Jewsweek.com
George Rohr is a businessman, not a rabbi. But he knows a good Jewish thing when he sees one.
Rohr, the Harvard-educated, modern Orthodox president of the largest Western investment firm active in the former Soviet Union, is one of the chief donors to the Lubavitch "shlichut" program, which sends emissaries to communities around the world to revitalize traditional Jewish life by reaching out to the unobservant.
One of the largest donors to the shlichim program is not himself a Lubavitcher. Rohr, an investment manager with the posh New York firm NCH Capital, started donating money with his family in the early 1990s to Lubavitch shlichim who are working in more than 100 places in the former Soviet Union.
Through his financial work in the region, Rohr saw the struggle that Jews were going through to re-establish Jewish communal life after decades of oppression. "We had a responsibility to try and help rebuild Jewish life there," said Rohr, who has never before publicly discussed his charitable work.
"There was no Jewish infrastructure. And who was there, who was making things happen? Chabad," he said, using the name -- an acronym that stands for Hebrew words meaning wisdom, knowledge and understanding -- that is interchangeable with Lubavitch.
Rohr, who was raised in an Orthodox home in Bogota, Colombia, says that the Lubavitch model is one that could save the ailing U.S. Jewish community as well, which he says is starved for meaning and a traditional anchor. Two years ago he began giving grants to establish Chabad houses on college campuses, starting with his alma mater, Harvard.
How did someone who is not officially part of the Lubavitch movement come to be so involved with this type of work? He says it's partly because he eschews denominational labels and believes Jews should work together, and partly because he identified in Lubavitch a good, solid business model.
"What we needed was to team up with a partner who knew what they were doing," said Rohr, who uses the metaphor of a business partnership to describe his family's philanthropic relationship with Lubavitch.
"If you're a businessperson backing an enterprise and are looking for people to be partners with, there are things you look for," said Rohr, a normally low-profile donor in his 5th Avenue office overlooking Central Park.
First, he says, "is the product any good?" When the product is Jewish heritage, he says, there is no question -- "For Jews, there can be none better." Second, "You need a partner with a proven track record, someone who is both passionate about and good at his business."
In the case of Lubavitch, Rohr was impressed that the "best and the brightest" of the Lubavitch movement's young people go into shlichut. "The best and the brightest don't go into medicine, law, business or journalism. They go into shlichut," he said, which shows a deep level of commitment.
Third, he said, the personal stake of individual shlichim, their lifelong personal investment, bodes well for their success. "They're going to put down roots in the communities to which they're sent and remain there permanently," said Rohr, who supports shlichim in more than 100 places in the former Soviet Union and in nearly 50 other cities worldwide through what he calls a "maddeningly haphazard fund-raising process that works incredibly well."
Rohr declined to disclose how much he has invested in the shlichut program, but private estimates put his donations in the tens of millions of dollars.
Rohr says that Lubavitchers have an astounding ability to inspire unobservant or alienated Jews to learn more about their own traditions. "I don't know that Lubavitch has a monopoly on this, but they certainly have a very large market share," he said.
Rohr recently established a new fund to expand Lubavitch presence on American college campuses. "The vast majority of Jewish students are not Jewishly involved," Rohr said. "Through their signature loving attitude, coupled with their selflessness and the breathtaking beauty of their philosophy, Lubavitch emissaries empower these young adults, whom no one else was able to reach, to become proud, informed Jews and often even Jewish leaders."
A major reason for the group's success, even almost a decade after the death of their Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is that Lubavitchers are truly devoted to educating Jews, not patronizing them, Rohr said. "You see as an outsider, or a semi-outsider, looking in, that unlike so many 'professional Jews' across denominations, they don't condescend. They don't talk down to people who are less observant," he said.
And Rohr believes they constitute a sorely needed presence in the American Jewish scene. "The biggest problem in trying to counter assimilation is not Jews for Buddhism or Jews for Jesus, but Jews for nothing," he said.
A snapshot of shlichut
This summer will be a dramatic one for newlyweds Rabbi Moshe Leib and Chani Gray. First, they are expecting their first child to be born. Then they will leave home forever.
The couple, married 10 months, has decided to become "shlichim," or emissaries as part of the Lubavitch Hasidic movement. Young Lubavitch couples voluntarily move to areas where the Jewish community needs some help and do their part to bring observance and tradition into the lives of Jews in their new homes.
Shlichim stand on street corners, asking people if they are Jewish and offering to help them do a mitzvah right on the spot. They invite Jews to their homes for Shabbat and holiday meals. They open nursery schools and teach Torah classes to adults.
And, like the Grays, they go to college campuses -- Dartmouth in their case -- to reach out to young people who are often struggling with big questions of meaning and morality as they live on their own for the first time.
This is not a temporary position, but an investment in a lifetime in the new community. The Grays are unconflicted about their decision to leave the tight-knit Lubavitch community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for the decidedly un-Jewish town of Hanover, N.H. Unlike many Hasidic sects, Lubavitchers take it as one of their religious mandates to reach out to unobservant Jews and introduce them to their own traditions.
The "shlichut" program is the brainchild of the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the ninth anniversary of whose death was observed July 3rd according to the Hebrew calendar. Beginning in the 1950s, the Rebbe motivated thousands of followers, including the Grays, to help bring Jews back into the fold.
"His love for every Jew is so great, through his talks and actions, it inspired the younger generation to realize that this is something worth giving up their lives for," said Moshe Leib, 23, who is seated on a sofa in the sparkling, newly renovated shlichim offices on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights.
Chani, 22, who was raised in a thriving Lubavitch community in Pittsburgh, agrees, adding, "You're always given. You feel at a certain point that you want to give back to the Rebbe everything you grew up with."
Shlichim are the subject of a new book, "The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch" (Schocken Books) by Sue Fishkoff, who is associate editor at Coast Weekly, an alternative weekly in Monterey, Calif., as well as a regular contributor to The Jerusalem Post and Moment magazine. The book details the lives of shlichim in the United States, from Washington, D.C., to Portland, Ore., Boston to Boca Raton, Fla., Salt Lake City to Alaska.
Fishkoff says that Lubavitchers fascinate Americans because at the same time that Lubavitchers are devoted to their traditional lifestyle, they are comfortable living among those who aren't.
"They have all the exotic appeal of the Amish, yet they have a tremendous impact on contemporary American Jewry in a way that other Hasidic sects don't have," she said.
In the shlichim office in Crown Heights, Rabbi Gedalya Shemtov, who is one of a dozen full-time staff members, walks through room after room, each one buzzing with activity.
Here, Shemtov points out, shlichim preparing to leave for Tucson, Ariz., Philadelphia and Austin, Texas, are researching their new homes on state-of-the-art computers. There, a man is scanning in photographs for the shlichim office's Web site. Over there is a file cabinet that contains folders on everything from kosher laws to charity to certificates to remind Jews of their Hebrew birthdays.
The operation is staggeringly large -- the organization reports that more than 4,000 emissary couples work in 45 states and 61 countries, with 80 to 100 new families beginning new work each year. But while the home office provides support and resources for shlichim, it does not provide the financial base for each couple's work.
Each individual couple is responsible for raising funds to support not only their living expenses, but also the services they provide, like rent for school or synagogue space, or meals that can sometimes be served to dozens of guests.
New shlichim are usually given a grant with some start-up money -- the Grays will have $40,000 to use for their first year's work -- and then they are largely on their own. The Grays received their stipend from Rohr.
At the heart of the work of all shlichim is a devotion to the ideas of the Rebbe, chiefly that every Jew is entitled -- and obligated -- to follow God's commandments and be a positive force in the world, says Rabbi Zalman Shmotkin, who is the director of Chabad.org and a spokesman for Lubavitch.
"The Rebbe shared his vision with a generation of Jews, giving them the tools to make his dream their dream," said Shmotkin, who was raised in Milwaukee as the son of shlichim. Growing up in an emissary family meant that Shmotkin, who was from one of the few Shabbat-observant families in town, was scrutinized in his Jewish school.
"I remember as a kid that what I did or didn't do often had larger bearing," said Shmotkin, adding that he sometimes felt that his classmates expected him to be "a barometer of right and wrong."
Shmotkin, who works closely with shlichim on a daily basis, says that their role is to help Jews find their connection to God. "How can we connect to God? Through observing his commandments," Shmotkin said, "When we perform even one mitzvah, what we're doing is drawing God's presence downward and inward."
לכתבה זו התפרסמו 2 תגובות - לקריאת כל התגובות
הוסף תגובה
2 תגובות
1.
למה להסתיר את האמת?
י"ז תמוז ה׳תשס״ג
הרי בכתבה כתוב שרוהר הוא התומך הכי גדול של ליובאוויטש, אז למה שינו בכתבה כאן שהוא אחד התומכים? אתם מפחדים מאנשי לבייב???
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2.
תגובה ל-1
י"ז תמוז ה׳תשס״ג
מה אכפת לך אם רוהר התומך הכי גדול של ליובאוויטש או לבייב העיקר שהם תומכים בחב"ד
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