Chabad vs. Chabad?

By anonymous

In America there is an annual spectacle called ‘Black Friday’. For all those who have been fortunate enough not to have witnessed this event, I will describe briefly:

On the designated day, the Friday following thanksgiving, people line up by megastores such as Best Buy for their chance to receive one of the 20 coupons distributed of 40-60% off on flat screen TVs, Laptops and random electronics that the consumers covets.

The coupons are distributed at 4:30 AM to the people in line starting from those who have been first in line. At 5:00AM the store opens. Each store has only 20 coupons of each coveted item that they print to distribute. All other people who have waited all night leave disappointed. And that, my friends, is the circus of ‘Black Friday’ in a nutshell.

There are many horror stories of Black Friday. In a Long Island WalMart store, a worker was trampled to death by deal-crazed Black Friday shoppers. In a Palm Desert, California Toys R Us Store, two men were killed in a shooting as a result of an altercation between two teenagers shopping for Black Friday sales. These are the sensational horror stories, but there are myriads of other horror stories that are too many to enumerate. Stories of violence, chaos, accidents and sheer madness.

The Black Friday event is eerily reminiscent of a recent spectacle by Kohl’s contest on Facebook. Kohl’s Cares seeks to allocate funds to the 20 top vote-getting schools of their contest. If the school garners an amount that falls short of being on the top 20, however impressive their final vote amount may be, they walk home with zero, nada.

The difference between Black Friday and Kohl’s Cares is twofold:

A) Black Friday coupon contenders only number several hundred per store whereas the Kohl’s Cares school contenders number in the tens of thousands.

B) If you fail to receive a Black Friday coupon, you leave home down on last night’s sleep, whereas a Kohl’s Cares losing contestant leaves home down thousands of dollars which were invested in the campaign and thousands of collective hours invested by the school’s staff and volunteers.

The situation gets worse when Chabad Moisdos are, as they are currently, the best performers in this contest. This makes the competition become Chabad vs. Chabad. At the moment, the campaigns are in the initial stages, and there isn’t much tension since the campaigns are really just getting started. When the campaign comes down to a wire, however, I fear our mosdos fighting each other and getting personal. A major potential Kiddush Hashem can go wrong and turn into a public spectacle of Chabad fighting over money rewards.

We know that in war we have initial budgets, but Chassidus teaches us that when the war becomes more tense and down to a wire, the king will sacrifice his entire treasury in order to earn victory. What were unforeseen expenditures earlier end up becoming daily reinvestments into the campaign of more and more money. Each time a moisad devises a new strategy, all the other moisdos come swooping in offering the same incentives and plagiarizing their strategies.

A very sad aspect of all of this is that our greatest strength as an extensive collective Chabad becomes our greatest weakness. The strength of Chabad is that when we have unity, we can garner our huge network and numbers to bring a few past the finished line. But that is when we work together. Now we are so tapped out that we can’t offer our dear moisdos votes. We already spent them all on a very fragmented pool of moisdos, many of whom turn out to be non- viable. Anybody who is familiar with the game ‘Risk’ (as is the same in real war) knows that the winner is the one who lets the other contenders devour each other, and then swoops in the last second as the victor. Divide and conquer! We are dividing and conquering ourselves, essentially eating ourselves up alive.

I don’t chas v’shalom allege that the motive of all contenders stems from unholy waters. On the contrary, it is very commendable when people take time out of their busy schedules to mobilize in a grassroots fashion to help their local or favorite moisdos. I only hope Chabad maintains a front seat in the competitive race to procure these funds.

I therefore humbly present to you a twofold proposal:

1. Proposal to the Roshei Moisdos:

As a first step to ending this chaos, get together and communicate. Discuss amongst yourselves what is appropriate to achieving a mutual Kiddush Lubavitch and mutual victory to Lubavitch Moisdos. Perhaps Rabbi Kaplan’s office can moderate the meeting, the moderator not acting as presiding judge to pass regulations, but bringing consensus and communication amongst the Roshei moisdos. Not merely camaraderie amongst them, which is important as well, but cooperation amongst them. Perhaps they can suggest that the non viable moisdos gracefully rechannel their commendable efforts towards the aid of viable contending moisdos. A viable moisad would mean a school with close to 100,000 votes at the end of the campaign. (That is the amount stated to me as the amount needed to be at the top 20 by contest’s end, by an activist with a thorough understanding of this contest.) At the end of the day, we all want to give nachas to the Rebbe. We all want to see several of our moisdos successfully win this contest, with us all ‘fargining’ (loosely translated as tolerating the successes of) those moisdos.

2. Proposal to voters:

To effectively mobilize the Anash towards the aid of Chabad Moisdos, I believe we must utilize our voting abilities more strategically as opposed to knee jerk voting to benefit our favorite moisdos. Some moisdos deliver very modest voting results which may be super impressive for the small town moisad that they are, but their total votes will never carry them to receive the necessary votes required to win the competition. (For this, the Shluchim ought certainly to feel good that their moisad is a wonderful organization in the eyes of their community members. The shluchim need to know that their efforts yield notice.)

Yet, we can’t let good intentions undermine the effectiveness of their assistance to Chabad that they indeed seek to deliver. Many scan the list of schools for locality, schools run by relatives, friends, classmates etc. which they deem close enough to their hearts to merit their votes. I humbly propose that you vote only for schools that you feel are viable to make it to the finish line. Which Moisdos are viable? That evaluation must be done by you, and I’m sure the commentators will have many ideas!

Authors note: I would like to offer my apology in advance to all who may be offended by my writing. I don’t seek to undervalue the mesirus nefeshdike efforts of many Roshei moisdos and activists in this contest. I seek only to defragment the Chabad fronts to ensure some Chabad victories and avoid an escalation of resentment of Lubavitch schools to one another as campaigns intensify. At the end of the day, monies come and go, but unity amongst Chassidim is of everlasting importance.

I also wish to offer disclosure that I have a family member that is the Dean of a school which is a very viable contender (in my humble opinion).