In a semi-serious article the times suggests that you spend your Sundays doing more rewarding things than watching the Jets and Giants football teams lose their games.And one of those bright ideas is:
Visit a grave-turned-shrine of a dead rabbi in Queens. The Ohel is the final resting place of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was the leader of the Lubavitch sect of ultra-Orthodox Judaism. Schneerson, known as the Rebbe, died in 1994, and in the past two decades his burial site has turned into a place of pilgrimage for Jews, who trek here from around the world to write prayers on scraps of paper and toss them on the Rebbe’s grave — 24 hours a day. The site, little known outside the Jewish community, is in fact a nondenominational place of prayer, where any visitor is allowed to walk right in and toss a paper prayer into the mix. Perhaps there you can pray for our two lousy teams.
I have recently been reading Rabbi Joseph Telushkins recent book on the life of the Rebbe and have been fascinated to realize how the Rebbe still has such a strong impact on so many people. I found it amazing, to say the least, that a paper as important as the NYT would suggest a visit to the grave of the Rebbe. I also remember reading a Yediot Aharonot article last year, in which the journalist, after having spent a full day near the grave, to witness the sorts of people who come, described the Rebbe's grave as "the American Kotel." Apparently it draws Jews of all types and many non-Jews as well. The Rebbe seems to have been a unique figure in Jewish life in the post holocaust era. A Jewish leader that served all the Jewish people.
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