San Francisco - Clang, clang, clang went the trolley, ding, ding, ding, went the rabbi….”
Or, maybe, “I left my mitzvah… in San Franciscah….”
Sing it however you’d like, as long as you sing it with good intentions. That, at least, seems to be the philosophy behind the new Chabad Cable Car here. Operated by Rabbi Moshe Langer and Chabad of San Francisco, the trolley loads up with tourists twice a week in the bustling Union Square shopping district and offers a winding, hour-long chauffeured tour of the City by the Bay. The fare? A promise to do one random act of kindness. Or, as the sign on the side explains, “Mitzvos on the spot for people on the go.”
Chabad Lubavitch, among Hasidic Judaism’s largest branches, is built on a cornerstone of aggressive, persistent outreach to secular and less-religious Jews, aimed at getting them to embrace and practice their faith more ardently. In the mid-1970s, the group inaugurated the now iconic “mitzvah tank,” recreational vehicles that roamed New York City in search of unaffiliated Jews. Mitzvah tanks can now be found patrolling cities from coast to coast, and beyond.
But unlike this and other efforts aimed at Jews — including gifts of free iPods for children who sign up for Hebrew classes at a Chabad House in Silver Spring, Md., or a “spa day for the soul” with pedicures, cooking lessons and Torah study at the Chabad Center of Potomac, Md. — the cable car aims for a wider audience. According to Langer, “random acts of goodness and kindness will usher in world peace,” no matter who performs them. So, although Langer encourages male Jewish passengers to lay tefillin, and although he hands out Sabbath candles to female Jewish passengers, this is definitely an equal-opportunity ride.
“I see people turn their heads, and it puts a smile on their face,” Langer, not long out of rabbinical school in Florida, told the Forward. “We’ve had some real Christian believers who said: ‘We love it. This is what it’s all about!’”
The Langers are no strangers to local publicity. For years, Langer’s father, Rabbi Yosef Langer, head of Chabad of San Francisco, has been seen zipping around San Francisco on his motorcycle, and last year he was dubbed the “Rally Rabbi” when shown on the big screen at AT&T Park after blowing the shofar during the San Francisco Giants’ Jewish Heritage Night. He’ll be back in August at the Giants’ annual event, in fact, and in likeness; anyone reserving a special Jewish Heritage Night ticket will get a Rally Rabbi bobblehead.
The trolley, in fact, was an idea hatched by the elder Langer several years ago, but only last spring did it start. On a recent trip, it seemed as though Moshe Langer lacked an encyclopedic grasp of local history, but San Francisco’s vibrant sights and sounds outweighed the minutiae of historical detail. No complaints were heard as the vehicle spun through Chinatown, the Financial District and the Italian enclave of North Beach, and then out past Fisherman’s Wharf, Ghirardelli Square and the Marina district, with its sprawling vistas of Alcatraz Island and the Golden Gate Bridge.
The tourists busily snapped photos as Langer pointed out landmarks. Gazing out over the bay this sunny day, he encouraged the passengers to “take a deep breath and think about how beautiful God’s creation is.” Arriving back at Union Square, passengers are asked to sign their names, hometowns and mitzvahs on a legal pad that Langer keeps by the microphone.
“I loved it,” Katherine Ramos of Vancouver, British Columbia, said upon disembarking. Her planned mitzvah is to “have a more hospitable home.” Her boyfriend, James Moes, said he even would have welcomed a little more Jewish history and theology. Indeed, Langer later said that he intends to incorporate more of San Francisco’s rich Jewish tapestry into the tour as time goes by.
“I thought it was great. I just happened to stumble across it,” Tansey Allen of Los Angeles said. “It hit everything I wanted to see here… and I think it’s a great concept. I feel like the world needs more random acts of kindness.”
If nothing else, participants might feel richer for having spent an hour aboard a vehicle plastered with placards bearing quotations from such legendary great thinkers as King David, Albert Einstein, Maimonides, the late Lubavitcher rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson — and the Grateful Dead’s Jerry Garcia.
Hey, it is San Francisco, after all.
Chabad is a wonderful organization that welcomes all Jews regardless of level of observance and does so much good for the Jewish community. I urge everyone to look up the Chabad in their neighborhood and regularly give them a donation. Each Chabad is self sufficient and can only survive with your direct donation to them.
Very well written . the greatest cable car article since it started. thank you so much. Moshe
Eli, I see you're doing a great job!! Keep it up! And have fun!
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24% of Americans believe that the Internet is able for a time to replace them with a loved one. For obvious reasons, such sentiments particularly prevalent among residents of the United States alone. Both men and women can replace the beloved, beloved trips to the World Network. However, the willingness to such transactions vary among followers of different ideologies: conservatives frowned relate to this idea, and the "progressive-minded" on the contrary, Nerkarat it. Study company Zogby International also showed that every fourth resident of the United States have their own representation in the web-site or internet-stranichka. Creating internet-dvoynikov most passionate about young people (18-24 years of age) - 78% of them have personal Web page. In doing so, 68% of those surveyed said that the World Wide Web, they do not appear in its original capacity, their virtual overnight seriously different from the real. Only 11% of Americans would agree implantable microchip in his brain, which would provide them with direct contact with the Internet. But the situation is changing, in the case of children. Almost every fifth resident of the United States would agree to equip their child safety device which would allow him to track the movement in space on the Internet. 10% of U.S. stated that the Internet brings them to God. " In turn, 6% are convinced that because of the existence of the World Wide Web God away from them. And how you feel? Sorry bad English.
Two new studies show why some people are more attractive for members of the opposite sex than others. The University of Florida, Florida State University found that physically attractive people almost instantly attract the attention of the interlocutor, sobesednitsy with them, literally, it is difficult to make eye. This conclusion was reached by a series of psychological experiments, which were determined by the people who believe in sending the first seconds after the acquaintance. Here, a curious feature: single, unmarried experimental preferred to look at the guys, beauty opposite sex, and family, people most often by representatives of their sex. The authors believe that this feature developed a behavior as a result of the evolution: a man trying to find a decent pair to acquire offspring. If this is resolved, he wondered potential rivals. Detailed information about this magazine will be published Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. In turn, a joint study of the Rockefeller University, Rockefeller University and Duke University, Duke University in North Carolina revealed that women are perceived differently by men smell. During experiments studied the perception of women one of the ingredients of male pheromone-androstenona smell, which is contained in urine or sweat. The results were startling: women are part of this repugnant odor, and the other part is very attractive, resembling the smell of vanilla, and the third group have not felt any smell. The authors argue that the reason is that the differences in the receptor responsible for the olfactory system, from different people are different. It has long been proven that mammals (including human) odor is one way of attracting the attention of representatives of the opposite sex. A detailed article about the journal Nature will publish.
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