Mitzvah Tank Parade

My office is on the 12th floor, and so generally it is pretty quiet up here. We don't get too much street noise, though it is possible to hear car horns and sirens sometimes. Still, I was surprised today to hear music blaring as loudly as if Susan was playing it in her office next door to mine. I peeked out the window and saw a long line of musical RVs bedecked with banners rolling down 7th Avenue far below. Jeremy, our office manager, explained that this strange phenomenon was a Mitzvah Tank Parade.

New York City has the second-highest Jewish population in the world; only Tel Aviv is ahead of us. So it shouldn't really come as a surprise that the Mitzvah tanks roll through our streets now and then. Apparently a  particular branch of the Orthodox sector uses them as portable synagogues with which to spread the message that Jews everywhere should be engaging in mitzvot (plural of mitzvah). Technically, a mitzvah is something one is obligated to do because it says somewhere in one of the Jewish holy texts that one should. But there's a connotation that a mitzvah is a joyous duty. Giving money to the poor, for example, is a mitzvah. It's something that, although one is supposed to do it, one is glad to do it also. The branch of Judaism behind the wheels of the Mitzvah Tanks believes that the more mitzvot people perform, the faster they can persuade the Messiah to hurry up and return to earth.


This particular parade rolled through in anticipation of Passover, which is right around the corner. It's an interesting tradition, to be sure, particularly since, unlike Christians, Jews don't often broadcast their beliefs to those outside the fold. As a Jewish friend once explained to me, "We're not really recruiting." Interesting as this is, in my opinion the Mitzvah Tanks pale in comparison to the contribution made to New York City by the Jews who settled here generations ago and introduced the city to bagels. Mmmm...