Haifa Rabbis Answer Missiles With Mitzvot

August 13, 2006
Lison explained that the project’s focus is to uplift the entire Jewish people through the performance of biblically-ordained commandments. With Haifa neighborhoods in shatters, Chabad-Lubavitch outposts in the port city have come up with an answer to the almost daily Hezbollah rocket barrages. Rabbi Shlomo Chaim Lison calls it their “mitzvot against missiles” campaign.

Lison explained that the project’s focus is to uplift the entire Jewish people through the performance of biblically-ordained commandments.

“The more mitzvot, good deeds, the mightier the effect,” he proclaimed.

Lison, along with 10 other Lubavitch lay leaders, began the initiative shortly after the war began almost a month ago. Participants approach people they meet by chance or cold call residents of their neighborhood to encourage them to don tefillin, buy a letter in a Torah scroll for each family member, of even to underwrite the production of a new Torah scroll.

“Mitzvot influence the whole course of events in this war, with the help of the Almighty,” said Lison, pointing to the fact that less than two weeks ago, a missile landed just down the street from his home, miraculously causing no casualties. “Mitzvot can decide the war.”