The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch by Sue Fishkoff

Author:Sue Fishkoff [Fishkoff, Sue]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Religion, Judaism, Orthodox, history, Jewish, Social Science, Jewish Studies
ISBN: 9780307566140
Google: 4R7zbndjTRgC
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2009-04-22T00:23:49.868522+00:00

On August 26, 2001, Weintraub is standing on a sound stage off Sunset Boulevard, trying to whip up enthusiasm from a studio audience filled with two hundred Lubavitchers. “OK, people, we need you to clap,” he admonishes. The stage lights dim to blue, Camera One wheels in, and a spotlight is trained on a young boy wearing sidecurls and knee pants— Anatevka, circa 1905. The boy raises a fiddle to his chin and begins playing a klezmer tune. A second young man, also in stylized Hasidic garb, emerges from the wings and begins a slow-motion Eastern European dance. The music gets louder, the pace quickens, the dancer's pirouettes follow closer upon each other, and then the stage explodes in a shower of lights and electric guitars as a dozen Lubavitch yeshiva students leap forward, twisting, turning, doing handstands and cartwheels in a frenzied circle. Cymbals clash and a booming voice rings out: “To Life! L'chaim!”

This is the twenty-first annual Chabad telethon, Cunin's fundraising masterpiece, a bizarre cultural phenomenon that could only happen in America—a televised fundraiser for a Hasidic group, a group whose members don't even watch TV, that has Hollywood celebrities of all faiths and none publicly extolling the virtues of “doing mitzvahs” and “bringing Moshiach.” Chabad's first telethon in 1980 was born of tragedy: a fire, still unsolved, that destroyed the organization's West Coast headquarters and killed three young people asleep inside the building. Carroll O'Connor and Jan Murray cohosted that first event, which raised $ 1 million toward rebuilding. O'Connor pledged $5,000 on his own. Twenty years later Cunin's annual telethon was raising close to $6 million a year, half his operating budget, and had become the single most graphic demonstration of this Hasidic group's ability to rope in big-name celebrities. Elliot Gould and James Caan have been fixtures from the beginning, joined over the years by a long list of glitterati who show up each year to sing, dance, and appeal for funds to help Chabad's drug rehab clinic and other social service programs. Sid Caesar, Bob Hope, Michael Douglas, Whoopi Goldberg, Shelley Winters, Tony Danza, Regis Philbin, Steve Allen, Edward James Olmos, Shirley Jones, Anthony Hopkins, and Michael York are part of the odd collection of stars who have lent their efforts to the cause.

The show has become so hip that it has engendered a rash of telethon-watching parties in certain L.A. circles, where folks gather in living rooms to see which stars will show up next to kick up their heels with Cunin. One year the cast of Friends filmed a special segment for the telethon, lauding Chabad's work and asking viewers to send money. It was a return favor for Cunin's permission to rebroadcast an earlier Friends episode that showed several Friends regulars watching actual telethon footage. Rabbi Cunin's sons wrote the script for the special segment, which was rewritten by the show's creative team. “We're funny, but they're funnier,” admits twenty-seven-year-old Chaim Cunin.

The Chabad telethon lasts for seven hours and features a montage of celebrity tributes interspersed with musical entertainment.

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