Urban Origins of American Judaism

CHAPTER 2. STREETS

71 On June 12, 1994, thousands of Jews gathered on the streets of Crown Heights to mourn the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson . They came to Brooklyn from across the United States, from Israel , and from all over the world for his funeral. A huge crowd of men, women, and children followed the plain pine coffin, many of them walking the ten miles to the cemetery in Queens. Gary Rosenblatt, editor of the New York Jewish Week, recalled sixteen years later how he could still hear the “sudden gasp, followed by a loud, spontaneous and mournful wail that erupted from the thousands gathered outside 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn when the simple wooden casket carrying the remains of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, emerged from the movement’s headquarters.”1 For four decades, the Rebbe led his pious followers, his Hasidim, building a worldwide movement to reach Jews wherever they might be. Beginning in the 1960s and accelerating in subsequent decades, “this campaign sought to insert traditional Jewish religious behavior and more specifically concrete mitzvahs into the public square and onto the Jewish agenda. The importance of transforming the individual was at the core of every campaign.”2 Emissaries of Chabad Lubavitch fanned out around the world to ignite the holy spark of Jewishness in every Jew, inspiring thousands to perform a single commandment, a mitzvah, to hasten the messianic redemption. These commandments could be as simple as saying a prayer or putting on tefillin or, for women, lighting Sabbath candles and blessing them. Since they sought not to convert Jews but c h a p t e r 2 STREETS chapter two 72 rather to use an inherent religious power that Jews possessed if they followed the commandments, the Lubavitch Hasidim urged action rather than faith. First the streets of New York and then those of many other cities staged encounters between Hasidim and other Jews. While the funeral marked the Rebbe’s passing, his spirit has endured in compelling ways. His Chabad movement has grown into the largest, most successful , and well-funded international Jewish movement. By 2003 Chabad had mobilized four thousand representatives in seventy-six countries.3 Going public on the streets invited all urban residents to observe and consider Jews. Jewish behavior on city streets fell into two broad categories: moments of mobilization as with the funeral of the Rebbe and everyday engagements that extended ordinary Jewish ways of living and made them part of the American urban milieu. Chabad’s mitzvah mobiles stood somewhere between these two modes of public Judaism since they did not draw huge crowds or disrupt regular patterns of urban life, nor did they become completely integrated into prosaic dimensions of the city. Chabad’s innovations remind us of the manifold possibilities offered by city streets for religious experimentation. They suggest, too, a continuum of Jewish practices rather than a sharp divide. Thus Jewish public religious activity ranged from the mundane, which often appeared in commerce and daily and weekly rhythms of the streets, to the extraordinary, which happened at most once a year. This chapter ponders examples of these practices mostly drawn from New York City in order to understand the particular power of urban streets to reinforce and modify American Judaism. It recognizes, as historian Richard Cohen argues, “public space was a venue in which Jews could give free rein” to their aspirations to create a public Judaism that would reflect their economic, cultural, and political strength.4 This chapter traces a historical arc over the course of several centuries of patterns of Jewish behavior in the streets as well as moments of mobilization that demonstrated Jews’ city presence. American Judaism emerged from Jews’ engagement with city streets and reflected their social, political, economic, and religious dimensions . Unlike the Italian street festa that temporarily established sacred parameters of a saint’s domain, Jewish claims to city streets rested on more material grounds.5 Streets were neither sacred nor secular. As per- streets 73 manent public spaces they appealed to Jews who claimed them for their politics. Streets amplified Jews’ political opinions, whether expressed at corner rallies or through protest marches or boycotts. Streets also facilitated both ethnic cooperation and conflict. Battles over neighborhood turf, economic competition, and political control occurred on the city’s streets. These contests possessed religious dimensions. Anti-Semitic incidents scarred the streets of large...