The Third Place and Chabad Houses

A concept popularised by Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, is 'The Third Place'. (For a general overview check out this wikipedia entry here.) Basically, it is assumed that the first place is a persons home, the second place is where they spend most of their time (i.e. work) and the third place is an informal meeting place that is intended to fostor a sense of community and generate creative interaction. Starbucks likes to model itself as the third place. Pubs seem to serve a similar role.

This theme has been picked up by some Chabad Houses, using it to describe the informal and user generated nature of many Chabad House settings. They attempt to serve as a welcoming and non judgemental social setting for Jews of all backgrounds providing a Jewish third place in addition to the Jewish Home and the Synagogue. See here for an example.

As you may be aware, I am involved in a Levinas reading group that discusses his Nine Talmudic Readings. This week we intend to discuss the fifth reading 'Judasim and Revolution' which has a very direct attack on the concept of the cafe. Please read with an open mind and comment on how this affects your understanding of the third place as well as its implications for the Chabad House comparison.

'The tavern, or the cafe, has become an integral and essential part of modern life, which perhaps is an "open life," especially becasue of this aspect! An unknown city in which we arrive and which has no cafes seems closed to us. The cafe holds open hours, at street level. It is a place of casual social intercourse, without mutual responsibility. One goes in without needing to. One sits down without being tired. One drinks without being thirsty. All because one does not want to stay in one's room. You know that all evil occurs as a result of our incapacity to stay alone in our room. The cafe is not a place. It is a non-place for a non-society, for a society without solidarity, without tomorrow, without commitment, without common interests, a game society. The cafe, house of games, is the point through which game penetrates life and dissolves it. Society without yesterday or tomorrow, without responsibility, without seriousness-distraction, dissolution.

At the movies, a common theme is presented on the screen, in the theatre, a common theme is presented on stage. In the cafe, there are no themes. Here you are, each at your own little table with your cup or glass. You relax completely to the point of not being obligated to anyone or anything; and it is because it is possible to go and relax in a cafe that one tolerates the horrors and injustices of a world without a soul.The world as a game from which everyone can pull out and exist only for himself, a place of forgetfulness-of the forgetfulness of the other-that is the cafe."