Mitzvah Tanks–those “synagogues on wheels” that have been a fixture on the streets of major cities around the world for decades–have embarked on a three-week journey on three routes that are travelling through 50 cities from Russia to Siberia.
The tanks are travelling along three different routes—southern Russia, central Russia and the Urals, and Siberia, and the tour is getting a lot of publicity in local and social media, say organizers, and the turnout has been both excellent and meaningful.
In Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia, where Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Zalman Zaklas will be opening a new synagogue and Jewish community center in a month, one woman who stopped by the tank decided to buy 10 costly mezuzahs, scrolls that are affixed to the doorways of buildings and residences, as a present to the shliach for the opening.
In the southern city of Kislovodsk, visitors said they didn’t want to let the mitzvah tank go, and offered to “put down some cement, and leave the synagogue on wheels as their local synagogue.”
In Yekatirinburg, located in the Urals, an elderly woman told those on the tank that when the year before a rabbinical student named Yisrael who was manning the tank started his speech to the community, “the room filed up with light!”
The goal of the tour is “to reach out to those Jews who have no opportunity to go to a synagogue and particularly to those who do not have a synagogue” said Chabad-Lubavitch Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief Rabbi of Russia.
The rabbinical students were charged with helping those they meet to “learn more about our tradition, our culture, our history and, most of all, about the Torah and the commandments.”
The expedition was organized by the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, and follows a storied history.
Inspired and encouraged by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem M. Schneerson, of righteous memory, the first tanks appeared on the streets of New York in the 1970s, and have since proliferated in cities around the world as a means of bringing Jewish education and practice to Jewish people wherever they may be found.
For those they meet along the way, men have the opportunity to don the Jewish prayer boxes known as tefillin and pray, women will receive Sabbath candles, and inspirational literature will be provided for all.
The first route that passes through cities in the south of Russia, will visit Stavropol, Kislovodsk, Armavir, Sochi, Novorossiysk, Krasnodar, Taganrog, Rostov, Novocherkassk, Volgograd, Volga, Saratov, Penza and Ryazan.
The second mitzvah mobile will go to Siberia–from Omsk via Novosibirsk and Barnaul to Bijsk, Novokuznetsk, Prokopyevsk, Kemerovo, Ugra, Tomsk, Mariinsky, Achinsk, Krasnoyarsk and Abakan.
The third synagogue on wheels will pass through Vladimir, Nizhny Novgorod, Yoshkar-Ola, Kazan, Naberezhnye Chelny, Izhevsk, Yekaterinburg, Tyumen, Kurgan, Chelyabinsk, Miass, Ufa, Samara and Togliatti, and then stop in Ulyanovs, while making other stops in towns and villages along the way.
This is so nice to see, I with a good friend started Chabad in Chelyabinsk 18 years ago under the leadership of Rabbi Berel Lazar. May you all be well and successful.