Chabad mitzvah campaigns


Mitzvah Campaigns, or Mivtzo'im refer to the various mitzvah campaigns launched by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, for observance by all Jews. During the years 1967 to 1976, Rabbi Schneerson called all Jews to observe ten basic "beginner's mitzvot"— which, because of their centrality to the Torah's guide to life, are ideally suited for a first experience of the mitzvah connection. In the years that followed there were campaigns for additional mitzvot as well.
Rabbi Schneerson urged all Jews to reach out to those less affiliated than themselves and encourage them to undertake specific practices of Judaism.

The ten campaigns

Additionally, Rabbi Schneerson called for numerous other campaigns. Some were related to the holidays in that time of year:
Others campaigns applied all year round:
Rabbi Schneerson encapsulated his outreach activity in the slogan of "Uforatzto" "you shall spread out." The origin of this phrase is in God's words to Ya'akov, "You shall spread out to the west, to the east, to the north, and to the south." Rabbi Schneerson would use it in a borrowed sense to refer to the global scale of the outreach activities that he was calling for.
Rabbi Schneerson's general outreach activity began already in the early years of leadership, but was accelerated with the call for encouraging these specific practices.

Tefillin campaign

The first Mitzvah Campaign was the Tefillin campaign, an international campaign by Chabad Hasidim to influence all male Jews, regardless of their level of religious observance, to fulfill the mitzvah of Tefillin daily. Rabbi Schneerson announced this campaign two days before the outbreak of the Six-Day War, on June 3, 1967. After the victory of the Six Day War and the liberation of the Western Wall, Rabbi Schneerson intensified this call, and his Hasidim gave hundreds of thousands of Jews the opportunity to don tefillin, many for the first time.
The campaign received some opposition at first. Over the course of that summer, some torah observant Jews raised halakhic questions about the propriety of the campaign. In the fall, Rabbi Schneerson publicly addressed these issues at the farbrengen of parashat bereshit that year, later published in the rabbi's books of Likkutei Sichos. Shortly afterward, the yearly conference of the heads of the World Agudath Israel took place, at which one of the speakers publicly criticized Rabbi Schneerson and the tefillin campaign. Rabbi Schneerson responded to this criticism at the farbrengen of parashat toledot that year.
On one occasion Rabbi Schneerson gave two reasons for his particular choice of campaign, saying, "The first reason is that there is a passage in the Talmudic tractate of Rosh Hashanah which says that once a Jew wears Tefillin on his head—even one time in his life—he falls into a different category as a Jew." Secondly, "When a Jew in Miami sees pictures of Jews at the Western Wall wearing Tefillin, he gets an urge to put on Tefillin himself."

Letter in the Sefer Torah campaign

Schneerson called for Jewish unity by encouraging each Jew to buy a letter in specific Torah scrolls and encouraging his followers through the Tzivos Hashem youth group to carry out this campaign. He instructed that all the letters should be purchased prior to the beginning of writing the scroll since he claimed that purchasing a letter in a Torah scroll unites that person with all the other Jews who had purchased letters in the same scroll.
Former Chief Rabbi of Israel Mordechai Eliyahu declared of this campaign, "Only a brilliant mind like our master and teacher, genius and splendor of the generation, the holy Rebbe of Lubavitch, may he live long, can come up with such a grand idea of uniting Jewish children through the writing of letters in a Torah scroll. Indeed, only within Torah, and through Torah, is the true unity of close friendship, love, brotherliness, peace, and companionship possible. We must learn from the Rebbe, and we must do everything in our power to ensure that not a single Jewish child remains without Torah, God forbid."

Torah Study campaign

Rabbi Schneerson would refer to these outreach activities as "the ten Mitzvah Campaigns." He emphasised their importance, saying:
Furthermore, he stressed a joyful approach to outreach:
He also stressed warmth and friendliness:
He taught that the Jewish education and love your fellow Jew campaigns are all-encompassing campaigns, of which all the other campaigns are a subset.