vladislava:

maximilianofmexico replied to your photo: A ridic essay I wrote about moshiach at age 11…

whoah were they teaching you that shneerson was moshiach? i was under the impression that that was only some camps of chabad that preached that 4sure

maximilianofmexico reblogged your photo: A ridic essay I wrote about moshiach at age 11…

i didnt know you were a chabadnik! ps this shit is crazy

to clarify: i think the whole ‘rebbe lubavitch is the moshiach’ thing was something i got from my mom… of all people?

and i’m not a chabadnik! and never have been! maybe you meant that as a joke?

chabad-lubavitch shuls are pretty much the only shuls that offer services in russian or do any kind of outreach within the russian-jewish immigrant community. that means

• every yom kippur, my dad takes my grandma to yizkor services at a lubavitch shul ‘cause their services are in russian or at least offer russian translation/transliteration
• orthodox services were the only jewish services accessible to my parents when they first immigrated and didn’t speak english (and for people coming from the ussr without much interest in judaism, orthodoxy was kind of the last thing they’d want to get involved in)
• due to lubavitch’s outreach within russian-jewish communities & the subsidies they offer, my parents were able to send my brother & i to the day camp for one summer

which is one reason why the majority of russian jews are either completely disengaged from jewish religious life or baal teshuva

as a side note: i was crowned Miss LDC (Lubavitch Day Camp) that summer, ‘cause i’m pretty sure i wanted moshiach now more than anyone else tbh (◡‿◡✿)

i was awarded a mini-siddur and was pretty upset about it ‘cause the girls in my bunk told me that the previous summer’s Miss LDC got a goldfish. a year later, i opened the siddur up to a random page and started reading, decided it was really sexist, and never opened it again.

~the end~

this is all really funny and smart and offers insight i didnt really think of—though now that i think of it my baube told me that she went to a lubavitch shul when she was a kid and that her father who was modern orthodox went to a lubavitch shul / followed lubavitch teachings which really confuses me ‘cause i wondered whether he was lubavitch before he immigrated or after, what levels of lubavitch you could be— like how un-orthodox you can be and still be considered a lubavitcher hasid, and if he came from a hasidic community at all back in russsia?