This year’s Association of Jewish Outreach Professionals (AJOP) convention included a broader-than-usual spectrum of kiruv workers from across Orthodox Jewry. For instance Hart Levine a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania described in one session a project he initiated while an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania in which Orthodox students on the Penn campus invited fellow Jewish students for Shabbos meals Sedarim and Hebrew and text learning. Since graduating Levine has worked to spread this initiative on nine other campuses with a significant cohort of modern Orthodox students with day school backgrounds and often one or two years of post–high school learning in Israel. As campus kiruv becomes an ever larger slice of the overall kiruv budget Levine’s initiative raises the question of whether and how the student efforts could be combined with those of full-time kiruv workers on campus.

One of the featured speakers at the AJOP convention was Rabbi Steven Burg the national director of NCSY. He told a story of tracking down a blogger who was consistently posting highly critical remarks about Orthodox kiruv. The young man was thrilled that anyone had taken note of his complaints and told Rabbi Burg that he had been a student in a baal teshuvah yeshivah. As long as he learned in the yeshivah he related all he heard from his rabbis was how great he was. But when he decided to leave because he was not yet prepared to take on a life of full observance he was dropped like a sack of potatoes (or at least that’s how he perceived it).

When someone in whom one has invested much effort and with whom one has developed a relationship does not become fully observant disappointment is natural. But it is a mistake to make a great show of that disappointment. For one thing it may be premature. One never knows what the impact of one’s efforts will prove to be years later. In addition just because someone does not become fully observant does not mean that one’s efforts had no impact. NCSY for instance works primarily with Jewish public school students from nonobservant homes. Historically no more than 40 percent of those students will become shomrei Torah u’mitzvos. But it is a mistake to feel that nothing was achieved with respect to the other 60 percent. As Rabbi Burg pointed out NCSY graduates will rarely be found among those Jewish students leading campus coalitions against Israel.

Most importantly showing too much disappointment may impair the future religious development of the nonobservant Jew whom one is trying to be mekarev as it places the focus on the one doing the kiruv not the beneficiary of his efforts. As far as the young man in Rabbi Burg’s story was concerned the message was: You are only of interest as long as you seem headed in the desired direction.  The effect of such an attitude is to turn the would-be baal teshuvah into the chafetz shel mitzvah (the object with which the mitzvah is performed) of the one who seeks to draw him close to Torah. No one wants to feel like someone else’s chafetz shel mitzvah.

Even with the best of intentions it is possible for kiruv professionals to slip into such a mindset. Campus kiruv workers for instance who are constantly pushed by funders’ demands to enroll new students in programs may find themselves shortchanging those who have already gone through programs and denying them the ongoing attention they need.

Whenever one hears the ugly phrase “I made so-and-so frum” one should beware of the attitude that those who become frum are notches in the gun of those who helped them along their path. No one can “make” someone else frum just as there are no formulas for mass producing baalei teshuvah.

Of course as in every other field there are those who are more successful in facilitating growth and those who are less. But the key determinant over the long run is likely to be the commitment to sharing Torah with one’s fellow Jews and the ability to establish deep personal attachments.

I once asked a baal teshuvah from Detroit what was the secret of the phenomenal success of Rabbi Avraham Jacobowitz in drawing close so many Jews over the years. He replied “It’s simple. He loves every Jew.” Recently I had the opportunity to spend five days in the home of two others who have that quality of loving every other Jew Rabbi Doniel and Esti Deutsch. Rabbi Deutsch founded Chicago Torah Network (CTN) together with Rabbi Moshe Katz over twenty years ago.

CTN is not so much a kiruv organization as an extended family and like a family those who enter through any of its various portals are members forever. CTN deals in individuals not numbers. Over the years I have spent a number of Shabbos meals at the Deutsch’s overflowing Shabbos table. The recent Shabbos meal included a young widow and her high school age daughter a recently married couple just back from a few years of study in Eretz Yisrael and two university students at different stages of their religious development and in need of a religious family with which to connect. By the time I returned on Motzaei Shabbos the Deutschs were already working on their Shabbos list for the next week just as parents figure out which of their children will be with them the next Shabbos.

It is comforting to know that at least with respect to Chicago there is always an address to which any newcomer to the city can be sent with confidence that they will receive all the love and attention they need.

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Recently my wife and I had the privilege to spend Shabbos in the holy city of Tzfas together with an Ohr Somayach mentors mission. The mentors missions are the brainchild of Reb Daniel Lemberg of Lakewood. The basic idea is to bring groups of balabatim from America to learn with total beginners who are in Israel on one of Ohr Somayach’s short-term programs. Each mentor is paired with one of the students for four or five days plus a Shabbos. During that time they bond over various activities and spend some time each day learning a sugya to which a complete beginner can apply his own svaras (logic).

The fact that a complete stranger would travel from America at his own expense and put his business aside to learn and interact with a total stranger for five days invariably makes a strong impression on the beginners and gives them a tangible indication of how precious the Torah is to these successful businessmen and professionals. In addition the beginners gain a connection with a frum family with whom they will maintain contact on their return to America.  Recently Lemberg has added missions to university campuses and others in which he invites students to Lakewood.

Over Shabbos I focused less on the students and more on the mentors whose enthusiasm for what they were doing was palpable. My observation was borne out by a conversation with Lemberg who told me that many of mentors return for a second mission soon after their first and that at least ten have returned repeatedly over the last five years.

The fulfillment that the mentors experience in helping the beginners strikes me as just another example of the klal (principle) that sustained happiness in life can only come from a feeling of growing oneself or helping others to grow. Indeed the former is usually the precondition for the latter: Only to the extent that we are ourselves growing and alive can we provide sustenance to others. 

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I was fortunate to find myself in Chicago for Parshas Yisro together with Rabbi Reuven Leuchter one of the most prominent mashpiim in Yerushalayim. On Shabbos morning he spoke about the first of the Aseres HaDibros “Anochi Hashem Elochecha ... ” which contains not just recognition of Hashem’s existence but of His Hashgacha pratis (Divine providence) — “asher hotzeitzicha m’eretz Mitzrayim.”

Egypt was the womb of the Jewish People because there we learned in the clearest possible fashion that Hashem always has prepared for us a future filled with purpose. In Egypt we had no present; we were so battered and beaten that we had no ability to even think about anything other than basic survival. And yet Hashem took us out from there and brought us to Sinai to receive the Torah.

“I’m sometimes asked” Rabbi Leuchter said “whether I’m embarrassed that I come from a nonreligious home.” (A fact that he mentions in his mussar vaadim and specifically told me I could write about.) “When I hear that question I’m tempted to reply ‘Are you meshugah?’” As he pointed out who better knows the lesson of “asher hotzeitzicha m’eretz Mizrayim” than the baal teshuvah. For the baal teshuvah has experienced in his own life the fact that even when the present appears empty there is always a future of purpose awaiting us.