Armed with a map, a phone book and a gift for fast talking, Chezky Wolff and Menachem Feldman of Brooklyn, N.Y., have been roaming Mississippi in a rental car hoping to ignite Jewish souls.
Last week, the pair of Orthodox student rabbis stopped by the Ridgeland home of David Kweller, who invited the men in for a chat.
"They try to come and bring a little Jewishness to small communities," said Kweller, a member of Jackson's Beth Israel Congregation who works for the state Department of Health. "I think of them as similar to Christian missionaries."
But Wolff and Feldman aren't interested in winning converts.
As members of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement of Hasidic Judaism, their mission is to persuade fellow Jews to live more religiously observant lives. Though this worldwide movement has had some success engaging Jews who have strayed from their faith, its tactics and motives spark controversy.
"They try to make Jews more Jewish," said Rabbi Valerie Cohen of Beth Israel, a Reform congregation. "But my understanding of what they think is more Jewish is their lifestyle and that's frustrating."
As Orthodox Jews, Chabad-Lubavitchers exclude women from key aspects of worship such as access to the Torah in synagogue and they don't ordain women as rabbis.
But unlike other Hasidic Jews who separate themselves from secular society, Chabad-Lubavitch "emissaries" live among non-observant Jews throughout the world.
The movement sends young married couples to far-flung locales stretching from Alaska to Zaire to set up Orthodox centers of Jewish education and worship called Chabad Houses.
And 10 years after the death of Chabad leader Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson — who's enjoyed the praises of politicians ranging from Newt Gingrich to Bill Clinton to Ariel Sharon — the number of emissaries has continued to grow.
Close to 5,000 emissary couples — up from 3,800 in 2001 — are stationed in 45 U.S. states and 70 foreign countries.
During the summer, rabbinic students like Wolff and Feldman, both 22, travel the country promoting Judaism while ferreting out where there might be enough support to plant a Chabad House.
The closest Chabad houses to Mississippi are in New Orleans, Memphis and Little Rock, Ark.
Like telemarketers, the rabbinic students contact Jews from lists provided by previous Chabad visitors and mine local phone books for Jewish-sounding last names.
"Every Jew has a Jewish soul," Wolff said. "It doesn't matter how active they are in synagogue."
While visiting Kweller's home, Wolff and Feldman talked about the "spark of God" that's inside all Jews and offered to sell books about the Torah, Jewish mysticism and Jewish cooking.
"We're not telling people to be Orthodox," Feldman said. "We're telling people to get more involved in Judaism."
Through their travels, the pair hopes to persuade fellow Jews to adopt such practices as keeping a kosher home, lighting Shabbat (Sabbath) candles and tacking a mezuzah — a small case that holds a scroll with Hebrew verses — in the doorway to their homes.
But for Jonathan Cohen, who directs the Henry S. Jacobs Camp in Utica, Chabad visitors can create a "complicated teaching opportunity" for children.
"Jews who do not have great confidence in their Jewish identity sometimes have the perspective that Lubavitch are more Jewish," Cohen said. "As a Reform Jewish professional, that's not something I want (campers) to accept."
And when Wolff and Feldman showed up unexpectedly at the camp last week asking to meet with all of the boys over age 13, Cohen balked.
"No Reform camp is going to segregate the boys from the girls for a teaching moment," he said.
California-based author Sue Fishkoff spent a year visiting with Chabad emissaries throughout the country while researching her book, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch (Schocken Books, 2003).
She said most young Chabad-Lubavitchers aspire to live as emissaries, even though it requires they leave their Lubavitch communities — where men in long beards and black hats and women wearing wigs and long skirts draw far fewer stares.
The largest Lubavitch enclave is in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, which also houses the movement's world headquarters.
There is no official census of Lubavitch Jews, but Fishkoff said most reporters cite the "guesstimate" figure of 200,000 worldwide.
Though Chabad-Lubavitchers represent a small portion of the 13 million Jews worldwide, their effect is wide reaching.
"I believe they have raised the bar for observance across the Jewish spectrum," Fishkoff said. "Many congregations that didn't used to celebrate certain Jewish holidays now do because Chabad has come to their town."
Though a Chabad House may pose competition for established synagogues, Fishkoff said the movement primarily targets unaffiliated Jews.
Emissaries have to raise money locally to support their work, which can include teaching Hebrew classes, running Jewish day schools and offering free holiday parties.
And Fishkoff said Conservative, Reform and non-affiliated Jews are Chabad's biggest donors — which often confounds local Jewish leaders.
"There are some liberal modern Jews who financially support organizations like Chabad to preserve what they call the 'real' Judaism," Rabbi Valerie Cohen said. "But they would never choose to live as they live."
Kweller, who attended a Conservative synagogue and an Orthodox yeshiva as a boy in New York City, said he invited the rabbinic students to his home out of sense of hospitality.
After listening to the student rabbis' pitch about delving deeper into Jewish life, Kweller urged the men to attend a service at Beth Israel Congregation to witness local Judaism in action.
"To understand people and what they do you have to see them in their milieu," he said while sitting on his brick fireplace hearth. "To feel what it's like is not by sitting in someone's living room — Jewish life is in the synagogue."
The rabbinic students demurred.
As Orthodox Jews, they don't pray in synagogues with mixed seating and don't recognize the authority of Reform rabbis.
Though the pair left Kweller's home with their Jewish books in tow, they didn't leave disappointed.
After shaking hands with Kweller, Wolff paused in his doorway and smiled.
"Ah, a mezuzah," he said approvingly, tapping the small rectangular case attached to the doorway.
