Rabbi Mendel
Kaplan addresses
a question from
Asher Deren and
Shaya Susskind.

A spiritual leader's death brings the birth of educational
opportunities for local Lubavitch Jews.

JILL DAVIDSON SKLAR STAFF WRITER

w

w

Cn

w

F-

LU

w

80

very year when their beloved
Rebbe was alive, Lubavitch par-
ents would fork over much of
their life savings to send their
sons to learn the Torah and the
Talmud with him.
"Just to be near him was
amazing, so inspirational," said
Rabbi Mendel Shmotkin, a local
teacher who spent his young
adult life in the Brooklyn neigh-
borhood where the rebbe lived.
But when Rabbi Menachem
Mendel Schneerson died this
spring, Lubavitch Jews lost more
than their spiritual leader and
teacher. They lost a reason to go
to New York.
Rabbi Shmotkin, fund-raiser
for a new but not-yet-named rab-
binical yeshiva in Oak Park, said
Lubavitch parents feel there is
little for their sons in the Crown
Heights neighborhood of New

York City, where racial tensions
have flared occasionally between
blacks and Jews.
"There really is no reason to
send the students to New York
anymore," Rabbi Shmotkin said.
Because of this, Lubavitch
Jews have redirected their efforts
worldwide, sending emissaries to
and opening schools and com-
munity service centers in places
like Wyoming and central Africa
in order to live the Rebbe's mes-
sage.
"The Jewish attitude is not to
sit about feeling sorry for your-
self. It is to act. That is our mes-
sage," said Dr. David Kagan,
president of the Lubavitch Insti-
tute for Advanced Studies in
West Bloomfield. "We have to
make an all-out effort to show
that we are continuing efforts and
expanding."

One of those efforts is a new
rabbinical yeshiva in Oak Park.
Another is a Lubavitch liberal
arts college that is beginning in
West Bloomfield. And a grade
school is hoping to debut a first-
grade class in 1995.
In a way, the Rebbe's death
pushed the Lubavitch communi-
ty into further action than they
had been accustomed to. In the
time since he was buried, the
Lubavitch community has
opened more than 100 institu-
tions around the world, Rabbi
Shmotkin said.
But outreach has been a ma-
jor part of the Lubavitch philos-
ophy since the movement began
in the 1900s in Lubavich, a small
town in Belorussia. Lubavitchers
are a part of the Chasidic move-
ment, a strictly observant way of
Jewish life.

The philosophy of Lubavitch
leaders is to make the teachings
of the Torah and the Talmud
available to all Jews who desire
to learn more. To do so more ef-
fectively, they assign schlichim
to towns where Jews have a pres-
ence.
After spreading through most
of Europe, Lubavitch Jews came
to America, first settling in New
York and then moving to other
large cities. In 1957, Rabbi Ber-
el Shemtov brought the move-
ment to Detroit.
With some support from the lo-
cal Jewish community, Rabbi
Shemtov later opened the first
Lubavitch summer camp to exist
outside of New York. Initially lo-
cated outside of Flint, Camp Can
Israel later moved to its present
location in Kalkaska.