mentalblog.com comments:
I have been told on a number occasions, and by a number of shulchim, that shlichus is about outreach only - and specifically NOT about community building - and that in theory the mikurovim should move on to other pre-existing and strong frum communities. And, of course, the part I don't understand is... where are these communities that the mikurovim are supposed to be going?
It's true. I have heard shluchim lament the fact that they are mekarev a family only to have to encourage them to leave and go to live other communities. Things are changing though.
In many cases it is the abscense of these communities, or the outright anti Chabad attitudes of the Rabonim and askonim, principals and teachers in these communities in some states, that force Shluchim to move out of the outreach mode and concentrate on their mikurovim.
The nature of shlichus changes when a shliach must now become an administrator, board chairman etc. Las Vegas, Boca Raton, San Diego, etc. all had schools before Chabad came.
Remember, Chabad Houses started out as campus outreach, which does not require talmud torahs, bar mitzvah lessons and for sure not the burden of schools. A shaliach who has to establish and fund a school spends very little time teaching classes and doing kosher week programs etc..
Rabbi Fradkin of San Diego went from being the shliach on the UCSD campus to the "CEO of the Chabad of San Diego United (so far) Chabad Communities" (title is my invention)is probably the best example of the morph.
The movement would be better served if there was a multi track prep for shluchim.
Outreach: Campus; To serve the campuses
Outreach: Communities; To get people in the door
Teaching-Licensed and certified teachers.
Administraters-Educated and smart manegers.
The focus of the education for each of these catagories would be how to support and nurture the families with their special needs as newly or the almost or minimaly observent.
Sidney, i don't think you understand what I wrote.
You may be right! I was answering CE.
No problem, i hold like Beis Shamay. The end result counts more than the progress.
Aside from the logical point in chabakuk elisha's post, I would like to see a source for this view of these shluchim from the Rebbe's Torah.
Guravitzer, at least one I spoke to claims to have so interpreted a personal hor'o from the Rebbe.
Besides, have any shluchim actually made the transition from the shlichus/chabad house model to a real kehilla? I can't think of any.
Are any of those details available so that we can judge as well? And I assume that means there is no such public statement, which means 99% that it is not a general horo'oh?
Regardless, kehilla does not mean kosher pizza shops, or multiple shuls. It means a cohesive community. That can exist at many levels, and some communities have attained very high levels. Most shluchim do aspire to this (although I have heard the shita brought by CE, but have never heard a mokor), but each individual family always has the option of leaving.
You may say that their leaving in and of itself proves it was not a kehillah, but that may not be so: There are certain institutions that need more, much more, than one family to support them. A family may choose to leave for such a mundane thing as their not being an eiruv, which needs tremendous communal support to create. Let alone creating a day school of higher and higher standards.
A kehilla means a cohesive community that run the kehilla themselves. They may have a Rov whom they respect and follow without question, but they run their own affairs.
This was how kehillos were organized throughout our history.
I’m not aware of too many places outside CH and Kfar Chabad that qualify as kehillos.
It is hard to imagine that CH and Kfar Chabad are the only places that qualify as kehillos.
But is misses my point completely. I was saying that these very places are far from being even half perfect examples or of the ideal, or a pratical application of the preaching.
How people can misread me so severely is amazing. Everyone just hears what they hear.
I am disappointed how even the best of the army out there do not understand what I am talking about.
I don't think that you have an accurate picture of the general chabad community in California, Southern California to be more specific. There is a real commmunity, in the sense that there are schools, shuls, Baale Battim, young people establishing their own families. People who are generally engaged in the community. What does not get across in that propoganda clip is that this community exists largely in parallel to the fantasy world of cunin and his thuggy sons. In fact, it is the institutions that he has little to do with that are the most successful.
I'm not going to quibble over the details boruch. Whatever it may have been in history (not all such communities have been cohesive historically), the name kehilla itself does not imply that. Your point is that historically they have been democratic (or oligarchic) Kehillos.
Tzemach, I apologize for participating in the hijacking of this thread from your intent.
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