Lubavitch Youth Organization
Chabad-Lubavitch outreach organisation in New York (Tze'irei Agudas Chabad, "Tzach"), founded in 1955; organiser of the mitzvah tanks, campus programmes and the Fifth Avenue menorah
| Lubavitch Youth Organization
| |
|---|---|
| Type | Religious non-profit; recognised by the US Internal Revenue Service as a church (not required to file Form 990) |
| Founded | 1955 |
| Founder(s) | Menachem Mendel Schneerson |
| Registration ID | EIN 13-4101112 (IRS ruling June 2000) |
| Headquarters | 1408 President Street, Brooklyn, New York 11213 |
| Location | Crown Heights, Brooklyn |
| Services | Outreach campaigns; mitzvah tanks; campus weekends; public menorahs and sukkahs; L'Chaim weekly |
| Key people | Dovid Raskin (chairman; died 2011); Shmuel Butman (director; died 2024); Yossi Butman (director from 2024) |
The Lubavitch Youth Organization (LYO), in Hebrew Tze'irei Agudas Chabad and known by its initials as Tzach, is the Chabad-Lubavitch body that runs the movement's street and public outreach in the New York area. Menachem Mendel Schneerson set it up in 1955, on the model of a youth body he had founded earlier in Israel.[1] It organised the first mitzvah tanks in 1974 and the giant menorah on Fifth Avenue from 1977.[2][3] For most of its history its public face was its director, Shmuel Butman, who also led the International Campaign to Bring Moshiach. In 1996 he described the LYO as "the outreach arm of the Lubavitch movement, which means that everything that has to do with outreach goes through the Lubavitch Youth Organization".[4]
Founding
Chaim Miller, a Chabad biographer of the Rebbe, writes that one of Schneerson's "first priorities" as Rebbe was "to galvanize the Chabad youth". He did this through Tze'irei Agudat Chabad, "first in Israel in 1952, and in America, in 1955". Joseph Telushkin's chronology dates the Israeli body to 1951 and the American one to 1955.[1][5] Miller says the organisation was aimed at young Hasidim who had left yeshiva and were working, and that the Rebbe "perceived young Chasidim as a potential army that could be galvanized in the service of Judaism". When he proposed the American branch on a Sabbath in spring 1955, he said: "My intention is not merely to add another organization with its own stationery and honorary officers ... but that there should be activities."[1]
According to A Chassidisher Derher, a Chabad magazine, a meeting that night chose a temporary committee of Dovid Raskin, Avrohom Zvi Landa, Berel Baumgarten and Moshe Pesach Goldman. The first activity, on Lag BaOmer a few days later, sent members to local synagogues to urge study of Hasidic texts. The magazine quotes the Rebbe as telling a follower: "My zahir tefei is Tzeirei Agudas Chabad", using a phrase for the observance a person is most careful about.[6] Raskin, a Soviet-born teacher at the Lubavitch yeshiva, died in 2011. Derher calls him chairman "from the day it was founded"; Chabad.org says he was a founding board member and "later was appointed as its chairman". It adds that most of his posts were unpaid, and that he later sat on the boards of Agudas Chasidei Chabad, Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch and Machne Israel.[7] Shmuel Butman joined the staff in 1966 and recalled being its second employee.[3]
Campaigns
Campuses and synagogues
Board member Pesach Goldman told Chabad.org: "We decided that our first activity would be to go to college campuses and bolster Jewish life there." The organisation also distributed hand-made matzah before Passover, ran Sukkot campaigns and visited patients in hospital on festivals.[7] From the 1960s it held Shabbat weekends on campuses, "usually at the invitation of the local Hillel", and then brought students to Crown Heights for weekends called the Pegisha ("encounter") with the Rebbe.[6] The LYO also published Wellsprings, a magazine aimed at college youth, and The Tzach Directory (1987).[8]
Menorahs and tanks
When Schneerson launched the Hanukkah campaign in 1973, Raskin organised cheap tin menorahs. Chabad.org says 60,000 were made in the first year.[7] Derher gives a figure of ten thousand made "within a few days".[6]
Chabad.org says that after the Ma'alot attack in May 1974 yeshiva students went to the LYO, "the organization responsible for the tefillin mobiles", for money to rent trucks. "Up to seven Hertz trucks at a time were rented by Lubavitch Youth Organization." The Rebbe named them "our tanks against assimilation" when a New York Times reporter was due at 770.[2] Derher writes that as the campaigns grew they "morphed into individual institutions—such as Tzivos Hashem, Mivtza Neshek, the Mitzvah Tank office", all resting on Tzach.[6]
Public Judaism in New York
In 1977 Butman put up a giant menorah at Fifth Avenue and 59th Street, lit by Mayor Abe Beame. Chabad.org says every New York mayor has attended since. The present 32-foot menorah was designed by Yaacov Agam.[3] In December 2025 Yossi Butman and Velvel Butman, the LYO's development director, officiated at its 48th season.[9] The LYO also organises a communal sukkah outside New York City Hall.[10]
In Albany it runs the annual state version of Education and Sharing Day. The Jewish Press reported in 2018 that the LYO had obtained a proclamation every year since 1995 of "the equivalent days of learning for every year the Rebbe would have been old". Butman opened legislative sessions with a prayer "for which he is offered a stipend from each house".[11] In 2022 Assemblyman David Weprin sponsored the resolution for the 120th anniversary of Schneerson's birth after Butman gave the daily invocation.[12]
Status and money
The Internal Revenue Service lists Lubavitch Youth Organization (EIN 13-4101112) at 1408 President Street, Brooklyn, "% Shmuel Butman", with a ruling date of June 2000. Its foundation code is 10 ("Church 170(b)(1)(A)(i)") and its filing code is 06 ("990 - Not required to file (church)").[13] It therefore publishes no Form 990, and its income, assets and salaries are not public. The only figures found are gifts recorded in donors' returns. JTA reported in 2017 that the Donald J. Trump Foundation gave $6,750 "to the Lubavitch Youth Organization in Brooklyn" in 2008.[14]
Derher says the LYO bought a house at President and Kingston for student activities. The owner, a doctor, asked $10,000, far below its market value of $120,000, and the money came as a cash loan from Rabbi Hodakov, given after he had consulted the Rebbe.[6]
JTA reported in 1996 that the LYO "falls under the purview of" one of the two Chabad umbrella bodies. Yehuda Krinsky, as a director of Machne Israel, was "technically Butman's boss".[4]
Messianism and the 1996 dismissal letter
Under Butman the LYO was closely tied to the campaign to proclaim Schneerson the Messiah. Rachel Elior describes Butman as "the director of the Lubavitch youth organization and chairman of the international Moshiach campaign".[15] In February 1996 the LYO board sent him a letter of dismissal. JTA reported the reasons given: despite repeated warnings he had not submitted "reports of income and expenses for the last two years", and he had used the LYO's fax and phone lines for messianic campaigning. One board member said he had been fired and another said he had not. Butman said the dispute was settled on 12 February and that he would keep the LYO's work "completely separate" from the campaign.[4] Sue Fishkoff writes that he "refused to step down" because he "had developed his own private funding sources and his own board of directors".[16] The dispute was internal; no court case or regulatory action has been found.
After Butman
Butman died in July 2024.[3] In 2025 his son Yossi Butman was described as "Director of Chabad Lubavitch Youth Organization".[10]
See also
- Shmuel Butman
- Mitzvah campaigns
- Machne Israel
- Chabad messianism
- Education and Sharing Day
- Tzivos Hashem
Notes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Chaim Miller, Turning Judaism Outward: A Biography of the Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, Brooklyn: Kol Menachem, 2014, ch. 11.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Mordechai Lightstone, Mobilizing the Mitzvah Tanks: The Untold Story of the 'Are You Jewish?' Guys Chabad.org, 7 June 2017, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 Menachem Posner, Rabbi Shmuel Butman, 81, Raised the Jewish Profile in New York and Beyond Chabad.org, 25 July 2024, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Was 'moshiach' Promoter Fired? Debate Rages over Lubavitch Post Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 14 February 1996, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Joseph Telushkin, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, New York: HarperWave, 2014, chronology, entries for 1951 and 1955.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 A Chassidisher Derher, The Story of Tzach in the USA A Chassidisher Derher, no. 84, Av 5779 (August 2019), pp. 30–41, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Dovid Zaklikowski, Longtime Lubavitch Youth Leader Passes Away Chabad.org, 17 May 2011, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Bonnie J. Morris, Lubavitcher Women in America: Identity and Activism in the Postwar Era, Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998, notes and bibliography.
- ↑ Anash.org, World's Largest Menorah Shined Brighter Than Ever Anash.org, 24 December 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 Shabsie Saphirstein, Faith And Unity Under The Sukkah At City Hall Queens Jewish Link, 22 October 2025, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Marc Gronich, Albany Beat – March 30, 2018 The Jewish Press, 28 March 2018, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ David I. Weprin, Newsletter, April 2022 New York State Assembly, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Internal Revenue Service, Exempt Organizations Business Master File Extract, New York (downloaded 20 October 2026), with codes from the data dictionary, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Marcy Oster, Report: Trump, Kushner foundations have donated thousands to Chabad Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 10 January 2017, accessed 10 November 2026.
- ↑ Rachel Elior, "The Lubavitch Messianic Resurgence: The Historical and Mystical Background 1939–1996", in Peter Schäfer and Mark Cohen (eds), Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations from the Bible to Waco, Leiden: Brill, 1998.
- ↑ Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch, New York: Schocken, 2003, p. 267.