Some New York subway platforms have electronic signs advising you how many minutes it will be until the next train. Sometimes I would notice x minutes to the next train, and then a few minutes later, it would still be x minutes. Gives new and opposite meaning to the term New York minute.
While wandering around Lower Manhattan during my recent visit, I had a New York experience — or at least one associated with the city. One of a small group of young Hasidim, who must have been no older than his late teens, approached me and asked if I were Jewish. I said I wasn’t, and on the group went.
They weren’t far from this RV.
It’s a Chabad Lubavitch “mitzvah tank.” Further investigation — the tank has its own web site — tells me that they first appeared in 1974.
“The Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, of righteous memory, had sent his tanks into the battle for the soul of the American Jew,” explains the web site.
“If a large part of American Jewry had ceased to come to shul each morning to don tefilIin and pray, the Rebbe was going to bring the tefillin to them. He was going to send one of his students to stop the American Jew on a city sidewalk. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ the lad would say. ‘Are you Jewish?’
“If the answer is affirmative, the young man would continue: ‘Would you like to put on tefillin today? It’s a mitzvah.’ The American Jew will be invited to step up onto the truck, roll up his left sleeve, bind the tefillin to his arm and head and recite a short prayer.
“If the American Jew is a she, she would be offered a free kit containing a small tin candlestick, a candle, and a brochure with all the information necessary to light Shabbat Candles that Friday evening — the proper time (18 minutes before sunset), the blessings in Hebrew and English, and a short message on the importance of ushering Shabbat into her home. He or she would also be offered literature on the Rebbe’s other ‘mitzvah campaigns’ or assistance in anything from having a mezuzah checked to finding Jewish school for their child.”
Apparently mitzvah tanks are on the move the eve of major Jewish holidays and Fridays before Shabbat. Passover was coming up when I saw the tank, actually a rental truck, so that fit. Also, though the trucks first rolled out in New York, they can be found anywhere Chabad is active.
I was asked the same question while wandering around Lower Manhattan during our short visit in 1995, though I didn’t see a truck at that time. Which reminds me of something else. Lower Manhattan seems to be a lot more busy these days on the weekend, especially with pedestrians. It has, in the 20-odd years since I spent much time there, become more of a residential neighborhood.