Inspiration from India

If you don't like it when Jews complain about being singled out, the slaughter in Mumbai should give you food for thought. In an attack that was in all other respects indiscriminate, two of the terrorists were specifically sent to the one building in the city where there were sure to be Jews. If terrorists intended to deliver a message that Jews can be attacked with impunity even in places where barely any of them live, it was received loud and clear.

I visited the Chabad House in Dharamsala over the summer and remember thinking how easy it would be for terrorists to wreak havoc there. Chabad-Lubavitch is one of the largest Hasidic Jewish sects. Where Ultra-Orthodox Judaism is known for its rejection of the outside world, Chabad bucks the trend. On the instructions of its late Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Chabad emissaries were dispatched to every corner of the globe, with instructions to provide religious life and emotional support to the local Jewish community. Today, there are Chabad houses all over the world, from New York to Kinshasa, from Mumbai to Bishkek, tending to the needs of tens or hundreds of people.

I have never particularly appreciated the proselytising aspect of the Chabad mission. It still irritates me when I am accosted in a Tel Aviv street by a chabadnik asking me to lay tefillin. But this is outreach exclusively to the secular Jewish world. Unlike evangelical Christians, Chabad are not interesting in converting those around them, and make great efforts to be a quiet, harmless part of their local community. In this sense, the Mumbai attacks mark the end of their innocence.

More at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/dec/04/mumbai-terror-attacks-judaism