Tales from the Mitzvah Tank

Inside Chabad's synagogue on wheels, where a five-minute blessing on a Midtown corner has a way of becoming a lasting connection.

Journalist Allan Ripp recounts his repeated visits to a Mitzvah Tank parked near Tiffany and Bergdorf Goodman, where he laid tefillin in memory of his late father and struck up an unlikely friendship with the Chabad rabbis inside. What starts as old-school Judaism dispensed in five minutes or less slowly draws him back toward his own roots.

The persistence pays off in the gentlest way. By summer's end, a rabbi has made a house call to Ripp's daughter's apartment to hang a mezuzah on her door, and Ripp finds himself a little closer to the tradition he thought he'd left behind.