A peek inside a different subculture

books:

	• The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch Sue Fishkoff Schocken, 2005 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 42 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Not bad !

I was quite impressed with the list of folks that Sue Fishkoff had interviewed for this book. And the chapter subjects are also quite nicely done. The one thing I didn't like, and I admit, I am a traditional guy, was her knocking the ways of Chabad due to her "enlightened" mind and views. 'Twas a pity to read of her secular upbringing, which explains her views, but I was disappointed nonetheless. All in all, though, a thoroughly enjoyable read.

A peek inside a different subculture

I think what makes writing and books so precious is that they allow us entrance into worlds that we otherwise could never know. Most of the people on this planet will never know a Lubavitcher and they will have no idea what sort of world the Chabadniks inhabit. With a book like Rebbe's Army the door is opened a bit for strangers to peek in and take a look around. Lubavitchers spend their lives, hour after hour, performing mitzvot and religious rituals they believe will bring the messiah to earth more quickly. All Jews (according to their theology) have to get more religious and do the mitzvot or messiah will not come. Their enthusiasm reminded me of the Brahman idea that without their fire and ghee rituals the whole world would stop existing. A tiny group of people thinking their deity will save the world if they don't mix linen with wool or eat only kosher food. As an atheist it makes me shake my head and wonder. I had just finished Eric Hoffer's The True Believer before I started Rebbe's Army and the overlay of thoughts mesmerized me. So much energy and time and education and money put into superstition. Who knew? The love/hate relationship other Jews have with Chabad surprised me. I knew Jews were not monolithic in their opinions, but I did not know that there was such animosity among them.
Ms. Fishkoff filled the chapter on the Rebbe with stories of "miracles" and almost superhuman prescience. Well, you're either a believer or you're not on that one.
I felt the book was evenhanded and not too pro-Chabad or too anti. I am no Chabad expert, of course, but the book came across as pretty balanced and factual.

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The Rebbe's Army

Good journalism, easy reading, more detail than "necessary" but an entertaining insight into a world that I've known about only superficially for many years.

Excellent Book

This book was so much better, and more informative, than I imagined it would be. The book takes a look at the Chabad movement globally, and places it in an informative and meaningful context. This is not just about one of many Jewish sects---this is a book about a lifestyle, an approach, and the lengths to which one will go for carrying out their own Jewish obligations, and their efforts to bring other less observant Jews, for the sake of the greater good. The meaning that is attached to so much of what Chabad does is admirable.

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A Superb Introduction

Sue Fishkoff, a journalist, has written a sympathetic but not sycophantic introduction to the Chabad Lubavitch Movement. She does this by describing her visits to and interactions with various Chabad families, reporting their anecdotes, and even providing some hard data. She writes so well that although I was able to put the book down from time to time, I was always eager to pick it up again; and I was disappointed when I reached the end of the book. ...and I understood a lot more, too. I heartily recommend your reading The Rebbe's Army!

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

?Excuse me, are you Jewish?? With these words, the relentlessly cheerful, ideologically driven emissaries of Chabad-Lubavitch approach perfect strangers on street corners throughout the world in their ongoing efforts to persuade their fellow Jews to live religiously observant lives. In The Rebbe?s Army, award-winning journalist Sue Fishkoff gives us the first behind-the-scenes look at this small Brooklyn-based group of Hasidim and the extraordinary lengths to which they take their mission of outreach.

They seem to be everywhere?in big cities, small towns, and suburbs throughout the United States, and in sixty-one countries around the world. They light giant Chanukah menorahs in public squares, run ?Chabad houses? on college campuses from Berkeley to Cambridge, give weekly bible classes in the Capitol basement
in Washington, D.C., run a nonsectarian drug treatment center in Los Angeles, sponsor the world?s biggest Passover Seder in Nepal, establish synagogues, Hebrew schools, and day-care centers in places that are often indifferent and occasionally hostile to their outreach efforts. They have built a billion-dollar international empire, with their own news service, publishing house, and hundreds of Websites.

Who are these people? How successful are they in making Jews more observant? What influence does their late Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (who some thought was the Messiah), continue to have on his followers? Fishkoff spent a year interviewing Lubavitch emissaries from Anchorage to Miami and has written an engaging and fair-minded account of a Hasidic group whose motives and methodology continue to be the subject of speculation and controversy.

From the Hardcover edition.

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