Rabbi, Your Speech Was Wonderful!

In reponse to our post, "The Bar Mitzvah Speech", Rhondda writes:

Hi Dm,

It's been my experience in a lot of different communities that Lubavitch rabbis, on the whole get it "right" more often than not. I asked our local one to do a class for the sunday school (this was back when we had a community sunday school; albeit with mostly reform/ not halachically jewish kids) when I was running it; he was fabulous. He explained chabad hassidut in understandable language in a really down-to-earth way. Most impressive. I think that b'c so many chabad families are sent out as "shlichim", they're trained as "salesmen" - and I mean that in a good way - they present the product well, honestly, and without insulting people. And they can do an enormous amount of good.

Sometimes traditional "yeshivish" rabbis, on the other hand, "preach to the choir", and miss opportunities to "sell" frumkeit. They also often lack people skills that are desperately needed in frum communities. As Deng Xiao-Ping once famously said: It doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice.