Truth in a World of Imagined Orders

11/14/2025

Dear Friends,

I am in NY this weekend for the annual Chabad conference, together with some 5,500 Chabad rabbis from across the globe, who serve thousands of communities in over one hundred countries.

We are here to learn from one another, gain inspiration, and recommit ourselves to strengthening Jewish life in our respective communities.

In the two years since Oct 7, and amid the continuous rise of antisemitism, many Jewish organizations and synagogues have seen increased engagement and attendance.

But according to a recent study by JFNA, the greatest surge of all has been at Chabad, which saw the largest increase in engagement in the study.

In this pivotal time in Jewish history, Chabad has emerged as an ever-growing home for millions of Jews who want to connect with Jewish life, community, learning, and tradition.

But how is it that Chabad, an Orthodox movement led by Chassidic rabbis and committed to Halachah, has become a spiritual address for millions of Jews, most of whom are secular, unaffiliated, or proudly Reform and Conservative Jews? Only a small minority of those who walk into a Chabad house would describe themselves as Orthodox.

What is the appeal? Why do people continue to engage with a movement that one could argue does not always reflect their values or lifestyles?

I was recently reading Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari, and I began to appreciate a lot more why Chabad continues to attract Jews of all stripes beyond the denominational divide.

The central thesis of Sapiens is that nothing in this world is real or inherently true. Nothing is intrinsically right or wrong. Everything is an "imagined order," a social construct, and a set of "collective myths" that people have created so that society can function.

Reading Sapiens reminded me of the opening words of Kohelet (Ecclesiastes), from the wisest of men, King Solomon:

הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים אָמַר קֹהֶלֶת הֲבֵל הֲבָלִים הַכֹּל הָבֶלVanity of vanities, says Kohelet. Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

So Harari is right. Everything in our world today is built on social constructs. What we consider to be moral and ethical today may not have been seen that way a hundred years ago and may not be regarded as such a hundred years from now.

It is all imagined. It is all fake. We live with a set of collective myths.

But it's bitter to live in a world in which nothing is real. It's empty, and it's shallow.

And if you believe, as Harari does, that we are all just an accident living accidental lives in an accidental world, that worldview will ultimately leave us with a profound void.

But King Solomon was different than Harari.

Because after twelve chapters of describing the falsehood and futility of life, he concludes that while all is futile, there is one truth he found:

סוֹף דָּבָר, הַכֹּל נִשְׁמָע. אֶת הָאֱלֹהִים יְרָא, וְאֶת מִצְוֹתָיו שְׁמוֹר, כִּי זֶה כָּל הָאָדָםThe end of the matter, when all has been heard. Fear G-d and keep His commandments, for this is the whole purpose of man.

Religion, if you believe in G-d and if you believe religion to be divine, has the power to infuse life with true meaning and purpose. Without that, we are left living in a world of illusion, in a fallacy of imagined orders.

But in an effort to be more appealing in the modern world, many Jewish leaders in the 18th and 19th centuries ceded to Harari-like thinking, claiming that it was not only corporations, legal systems, and moral values that were "imagined orders," but that so was religion itself.

Judaism, they argued, was just a collective myth that Jews came up with to maintain themselves as a people and society. And the Torah was no longer the word of G-d to Moses, but a cherished work of literature compiled by a diverse group of authors.

Their desire to serve the Jewish people was sincere, but one of the unintended consequences was that many Jews were now left without a sense of something unshakably true, something that could stand above the shifting tides of society.

Orthodox Judaism, on the other hand, never gave up its central faith in the divinity of the Torah. Its leaders chose to weather the storms of modernity and remain committed to Halachic principles and ways of life, regardless of how archaic or absurd they may have seemed.

But this approach also came with a cost.

Orthodox Judaism became locked down behind a gated fence. It was difficult to access for the modern Jew. One would not feel welcome or invited in Orthodox circles unless they were ready to commit to living a fully Halachic life. Many Jews were not, and are not, ready for that.

And that is where, in my opinion, Chabad filled the void, and why Chabad continues to surge as the fastest-growing and largest Jewish movement in the world.

On one hand, Chabad is an Orthodox movement that believes every word of the Torah is from G-d, that the Torah is everlasting, non-amendable, and that G-d put each of us in this world to live according to its guidance.

But on the other hand, Chabad is open-armed, nonjudgmental, all-embracing, and tirelessly welcoming to all Jews, no matter their background or level of observance.

It gives millions of Jews, regardless of their personal belief or practice, an opportunity to connect to something that has not changed and never will change.

And yes, Chabad, like all Orthodox groups, holds principles that may seem outdated. But Chabad also recognizes, like Harari does, that society’s values are invented orders anyway, always shifting and always rewritten.

The only difference is that, unlike Harari, Chabad believes, like King Solomon did, that the one exception to the world’s futility is G-d, His Torah, and his purpose for humanity.

In a world of imagined orders, it offers something it claims is the absolute truth.

And if you believe what you have is the absolute truth, and you make that unapologetic truth available to all, with open arms and without any judgment whatsoever, people will run toward it. They will chase it like a thirsty soul yearns for water.

And they will forgive the occasional disagreements or what they consider regressive halachic rules, for a taste of something that, unlike all other imagined orders, is claimed to be absolutely and unequivocally true.

And that is why Chabad continues to surge.

Hadassah joins me in wishing you a Shabbat Shalom!

Rabbi Tzvi Alperowitz