Moscow Gets its Very Own Mitzvah Mobile

A new Mitzvah Mobile will soon become a fixture in the bustling city of Moscow, making good on a pre-Passover resolution made by the community to purchase a mobile Jewish outreach center.

A fixture of the world's major metropolitan centers from Milan to Melbourne, the concept of the Mitzvah Mobile is simple: Take a recreational vehicle and outfit it to be sort of a mobile synagogue to reach out to neighborhoods not served by Lubavitch programs.

At a Chasidic gathering at the Beis Menachem synagogue in Moscow earlier this year, community leaders decided that although more than a dozen Chabad Houses serve the capital, the city's business districts were in need of an expanded Lubavitch presence.

Current plans call for the Mitzvah Mobile, from which operators will distribute Shabbat candles, teach a few words of Torah, and help Jewish men don tefillin, to be up and running in time for the High Holidays.