Visiting The Rebbe

JTR: Secular Jew Howard Jacobson wrote in 1993 about his experiences while waiting to see the famous Orthodox Lubavitcher rabbi, Menachem Schneerson, in New York City. For a decade, the rabbi gave out a dollar (symbolic charity) to each of those who came to wait in lines to see him. As Jacobson notes:
I am taken down — and I stress the preposition: down, down, down — and into theshul of the Lubavitcher headquarters, where the dollar-queue will form, and here I behold a sight which beats even Areyonga in the Central Australian Desert for uncouthness, for outlandishness, for other-worldliness beyond any imaginings of other worlds. The shul teems and shudders with men and boys in every attitude of Hebraic, and to my eyes pre-Hebraic, worship. . . . And here’s the most startling thing of all — men and boys begging, begging in the synagogue, banging for your money, pulling at your sleeves for charity — tsodekeh, tsodekeh — offering to pray for you for money, to pray for your parents for money, selling you raffle tickets, shoving them into your pockets, into your breast pockets — a mitzva, a mitzva — except that that’s not the most startling thing of all, because the most startling thing of all is that they’re selling gold watches down here.
I try to hold on to my nerve. Jesus lost his sense of humor and proportion in the temple, and I am determined not to lose mine.
“We [Jews],” Jacobson consoles himself, “believe there’s no distinction between the world’s business and the business of the spirit.” Leaving his momentary personal audience with the rabbi, “no sooner do you beat back the first wave of beggars [in the synagogue],” recounts Jacobson,
. . . than you find yourself waylaid by tradesmen wanting to sell you polythene sleeves to store your dollar in. For two dollars you can protect the one dollar. Or you can have it sealed and plasticated, turned into a place-mat with a date and a picture of the Rebbe [rabbi].