Will Chabad lead American Jewry? - opinion

ByLEV STESINJULY 23, 2026 20:00The crisis engulfing American Jews is all-encompassing. It is a crisis of antisemitism, identity, tradition, and belonging. It is also a crisis of communal structures. Is there an organization that represents American Jews? Is there an “address” to which one can write to reach the community? There are no definite answers. But there was a time, not long ago, when the answers would be clear, readily available, and well known.For many decades, American Jewry was represented by Jewish Federations of North America (JFNA), the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations (the Conference), and the American Jewish Committee (AJC). Additionally, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) functioned as the legal arm of the other three organizations. The delineations of duties within the organizations were clearly marked. JFNA represents the largest communal network, including over 140 individual Jewish Federations, and around 300 independent communities. Its main responsibility is to raise and distribute funds for social services, education, and other communal needs.American Jews [Illustrative] (credit: REUTERS)The Conference is the point of contact when the US government wants to engage with the Jewish community, whether on foreign policy or Israel. It is an umbrella group comprising roughly 50 national secular and religious Jewish organizations. It’s also responsible for building and presenting a consensus on key issues of concern to the broad community.AJC’s purview is global advocacy, diplomacy, and relations with other religious denominations.JFNA, the Conference, AJC, and ADL are still around. Yet they ceased to represent anything or anyone. The communal structure of synagogues and local Jewish organizations has collapsed. The political power, the main force behind the former strength of those organizations, has imploded.Zohran Mamdani’s election as the mayor of New York City is the final nail in the coffin containing the deceased body of Jewish power in American politics. For some time, the JFNA and the Conference pretended that nothing changed, but the election of an open antisemite in the most Jewish city in America projected an undisputed picture of “the emperor having no clothes.”Politics does not tolerate a vacuum. Who will replace JFNA, the Conference, and AJC as the world they have represented for a century fades into the horizon?Will Chabad step up?When surveying the sad state of organized Jewish communities across America, only one organization has the infrastructure and ability capable of leading. That organization is Chabad. However, it is not clear if Chabad, a hassidic court without a rebbe, headquartered in Brooklyn, can meet the task.Chabad, despite its public image of a clubhouse that welcomes everyone, is a strict religious order. Its main overriding goal is to bring secular Jews back into the fold of Orthodox Judaism. It has achieved spectacular results over many decades. Its “proselyting” is conducted in a smart, very inoffensive, and unassuming way. What Chabad does is difficult: if one can sell Orthodox Judaism to a secular American Jew, one can sell anything to anyone. The last Lubavicher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, was a genius behind the engagement with the wider Jewish community. His idea of the “reverse” Enlightenment was revolutionary. Like the maskilim – educated, 19th-century secular Jews who traveled to the Pale of Settlement to bring the Enlightenment to the masses of “backward” Jews – the rebbe’s shlihim (messengers) travel and settle in the distant corners of America to bring Judaism back to “lost” Jews. The rebbe’s passing in 1994 coincided with the decline of organized Jewish life in America. Yet the past three decades have witnessed Chabad emissaries in all 50 states. As old Jewish institutions stopped functioning and started falling apart, the rebbe’s “soldiers” have been assuming many more communal responsibilities, including actions in support of Israel.Ironically, Chabad’s initial success has become an impediment to its further growth. The proliferation of shlihim and Chabad Houses across the country has become a major issue both for Chabad’s sustainability and organizational prowess. What used to be a calling by a few dedicated Chabadniks who had the rebbe’s personal blessing has become a way for Chabad, as a movement, to sustain itself. It has turned into a business, a way to make a living. Where there used to be one Chabad House in a region or area, there are now multiple Chabad Houses in a small town.Their numbers are growing. Given the financial structure of the endeavor, in which each emissary is responsible for raising funds locally, the proliferation of Chabad outposts creates unnecessary internal competition in attracting already limited donations from local communities. This chaotic proliferation of Chabad outposts also hinders the organized top-down structure required by any organization interested in representing a wider community.The issues precluding Chabad from becoming a representative body of the American Jews are not insurmountable. The solution requires Chabad to become less of a hassidic court and more like a secular organization – an umbrella for Jews of many kinds. Its spread across the US needs to be more organized. It will have to tone down its religious fervor and messianic zeal, and clarify its stance on Zionism. Chabad has a precedent for doing similar feats in history. After World War II, Schneerson did the impossible. He resurrected his hassidic court from the ashes of the Nazi and Bolshevik devastations, and transformed it into a religious movement par excellence for the 20th century.Can Chabad’s current leadership find the energy and vision to transform itself to lead American Jewry? Would that be a positive development? If the rebbe was around, he would likely reply in the affirmative.The author lives and works in Silicon Valley, California. He is a founding member of San Francisco Voice for Israel.Follow us on Google