Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch branch of Hasidic Judaism, encouraged his followers to reach out to other Jews.
[2] He sent out rabbinic emissaries, known as "Shluchim", and their wives to settle in places across the world solely for the purpose of teaching those who did not receive a Jewish education or to inspire those who did.
[3] Chabad led the first Jewish outreach organization in the United States following the Holocaust, to date it remains the most successful with a world wide presence.
The world's first baal teshuva yeshiva for men was Chabad's Hadar Hatorah which opened in New York in 1962 under Rabbi Yisroel Jacobson, and continues to operate today.
[5] Because of its outreach to all Jews, including those quite alienated from religious Jewish tradition, Chabad has been described as the one Orthodox group which evokes great affection from large segments of American Jewry.
[citation needed] Ohr Somayach has also played a major role in the baal teshuva movement through its education of generations of students.
[12] Concurrent with the opening of baal teshuva learning programs in Israel in the 1970s, a small number of Orthodox outreach workers began approaching English-speaking, college-age students visiting the Western Wall and inviting them to experience a Shabbat meal with a host family or to check out one of the baal teshuva yeshivas.