I hope every Mishpacha reader read and absorbed last week’s cover story about the public relations efforts of Chassidic residents ofMontreal’sOutremont district which had implications for Torah Jews far fromMontreal.

Outremont’s Chassidic residents — a full quarter of the neighborhood — discovered that their neighbors particularly a local city councilor were not all enthusiastic about their presence. The traditional response would have been to do nothing other than mutter about the anti-Semites and pray that matters did not degenerate further.

Nor would such a response have been entirely unjustified. Xenophobia has long been a prominent characteristic ofQuebec’s francophone population and it would be hard to think of a group more likely to arouse suspicions of outsiders faster than strangely garbed generally non-French-speaking chassidim.

Blaming the anti-Semites also benefits one’s psychic health. For one thing it means that one never has to examine one’s own actions to determine whether they could have in anyway contributed to the animosity displayed. And second it means that one need not worry about doing anything to change the situation which is just part of the natural order of things.

Outremont’s chassidim however rejected the quietist approach. Aided by an unlikely ally — Leila Marshy a local resident of Palestinian and Egyptian descent — they created a meeting ground where local residents could discuss contentious issues. In addition they created an online presence to introduce themselves to their neighbors.

Most important they asked themselves what they could do at the person-to-person level. Cheskie Weiss a Belz askan tried to view matters from the perspective of the neighbors: “The more space we take up the more visible we become and the more we must interact with our neighbors. It’s hard for those living around us within such close quarters when they aren’t greeted or acknowledged.”

Community leaders worked on creating a new communal ethos and getting out the message that anyone who does not say hello or thank you to neighbors is harming the entire chassidic community.

Have all communal tensions melted away in a sea of good feelings? No. Are there gentile neighbors whose distaste for Jews is not ameliorated by a show of good manners and a pleasant smile? You bet.

Yet everyone acknowledges that there has been a real change in communal perceptions over a short period of time. Says Leila Marshy the Arab woman who helped get the ball rolling “[P]eople have stopped seeing chassidim as a monolith but rather view them as a group of individuals.”

THE ISSUES DIVIDING JEW FROM JEW inIsraelare far more complex than the local turf battles inOutremont. But if the Torah community could even achieve what the chassidim of Outremont did and get outsiders to see the community as comprised of a diverse group of individuals holding many different views headlines beginning “Chareidim threw rocks ... would have far less impact.

“All politics is local” former Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill used to say. And the same might be said about public relations. But there are common elements as well. Trying to view matters from the point of view of those whom one wishes to influence is an essential element of any effort to change perceptions. And I would guess that smiles and pleasantness go a long way in most cultures includingIsrael. Finally the greater the interaction at the individual level the easier it is to break down the myth of the chareidi monolith of automatons marching lockstep to the orders of their leaders.

The lesson ofOutremontis that attitudes are not immutable — at least not everyone’s attitudes all the time. It turns out to be a lot easier than we think. But it doesn’t happen without a conscious effort on our part as well.

We are too easy on ourselves when we keep repeating mantras like “Eisav hates Yaakov” or “an am ha’aretz hates a talmid chacham” as an excuse to do nothing. Those mantras serve to absolve us of all responsibility for the manner in which we are viewed. It would make no difference we tell ourselves if we forcibly condemned those who act contrary to the Torah in the name of Torah; it would make no difference if we refrained from name-calling — e.g. Amalek or Nazi. They would still hate us.

In the United States every major piece of legislation must include an environmental impact statement. As individuals and as a community we need to include a Torah impact statement in everything we do: Will this course of action increase the kavod Shamayim in the world or decrease it?

TORAH JEWRY IN ERETZ YISRAEL is entering a new period in which the old ways of doing things will no longer suffice. With chareidi political power at a nadir at least for the present we can no longer depend on United Torah Judaism MKs to protect us. A new more entrepreneurial more decentralized model of community leadership will have to develop quickly as different approaches for addressing communal problems are tested.

Efforts to change public perceptions of chareidim will be part of the mix but only part. Think tanks serving the Torah community are another idea whose time may well have arrived. Not only do we need to know much more about attitudes toward us — for instance how deeply entrenched they are upon what they are based what kind of information would have a positive impact on popular perceptions — we have to know much more about our own community.

At present we don’t even have a very good idea of the size of the chareidi community much less the size of its various component parts. How do families make ends meet? How many families are unable to provide the basics of food and shelter? What are the aspirations of young chareidi men and women?

This week I received an email from Leah Aharoni one of the co-founders of Women for the Wall (W4W) the “start-up” operation of three friends in Kochav Yaakov that has shown how a few determined skilled and energetic women can change the tenor of public debate on an important issue in the space of a few months. So when she talks I listen.

Mrs. Aharoni’s suggestion was that the chareidi community create its own “incubator” to support grassroots efforts on social issues. Since 1981 the New Israel Fund (NIF) has been funding precisely such an incubator for more than a 1000 different left-wing groups pushing an agenda of social justice Palestinians rights and religious pluralism. Shatil provides new organizations with lots of training technical and computer support grant-writing assistance and legal advice — in short it is a one-stop shop for all the logistical support and training a start-up organization needs.

Opponents of the NIF decided to lift a page from their playbook. In the wake of theGazaexpulsion of 2005 the national religious world was left in a state of hopelessness shock and anger just as the chareidi world is today. The founder of one of the groups at the forefront of the battle against expulsion came up with the idea of creating an incubator like Shatil for the national religious world. As a result there are today different organizations dealing with issues such as immigration the environment land usage and media coverage from a nationalist perspective.

Aharoni suggests that the chareidi world tap its own considerable human resources to do the same. Precisely what form those efforts would take no one can say. Such is the nature of decentralized entrepreneurial models. But it is clear that we cannot afford to remain mired in despair. And taking action is the best antidote.

Time to get off the conveyor

A friend of mine who grew up without any formal Torah education shared some of his formative experiences with me. During college he ran for student body president of a large state university inFlorida. In such elections a lot depends on last minute campaigning. But the election fell on Erev Pesach and he decided that it would be inappropriate to campaign. He lost by 16 votes out of thousands.

He worked his way through law school in theMiamipost office. To avoid working on Shabbos he took the Sunday and holiday shifts of other employees. Yet despite being consistently the top-ranked employee an anti-Semitic boss fired him for his refusal to work on Shabbos.

His insistence on doing what a “good Jew” should paid back huge dividends. He is today a leading member of the North Miami Beach Orthodox community. All of his daughters attended Bais Yaakov and one of the heads of the seminary where they all learned in Israeltold me that their goodness and chesed is “off the charts.”

The moral compass formed in his younger years did not desert him either. He was the whistleblower on a major Ponzi scheme which forced his family to leave the state while the FBI investigation was in progress.

In the course of a recent conversation my friend expressed his shock since becoming fully observant to meet Orthodox Jews for whom Shabbos was never a test but whose ethical standards in business could use some work. (My friend is not of a critical bent. He wrote a whole book contrasting the chesed of his community with the high-flying lifestyle of the Jewish Ponzi-scheme operator he helped bring to justice and lectures widely on the subject.)

The contrast between punctilious observance of Shabbos and shady business practices is unfortunately not an unknown phenomenon. In such cases Shabbos observance is largely a matter of mitzvos anashim m’limudo — rote observance as if on a conveyor belt. Business however presents a constant set of tests.

Only when we are tested and have to give up something we really want do we discover what we really believe. Elul is the time of the year for getting off the conveyor belt and figuring out what is really important to us.