To the Editor:
David Berger wildly exaggerates the significance of messianism among Orthodox Jews [“The Rebbe, the Jews, and the Messiah,” September]. He would have us think that Orthodoxy has been “transformed,” that, regarding the question of whether the messiah can come back from the dead, it has “effectively declared that Christians were correct all along and Jews were profoundly mistaken,” and that “the classical messianic faith of Judaism is dying.”
Oh, come on. Granted, some fuzzy thinkers in the Lubavitch movement persist in hoping that Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson will return in messianic triumph. And granted, it is possible that mainstream Orthodoxy has underestimated the number of these enthusiasts.
But to suggest that messianism is a significant factor in Orthodox life or thinking is nonsense. Anyone who has any experience of a typical Orthodox community (excluding certain Lubavitch communities) will see immediately that Mr. Berger is guilty of melodrama. When I lived on New York’s Upper West Side, the capital of modern Orthodoxy, when I spent Sabbaths with the strictly observant communities in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and today in my current synagogue where the rabbi is Lubavitch, the Rebbe-as-messiah hypothesis has been and remains a non-issue. You never hear anything about it—apart from every couple of years when Mr. Berger writes an article and a few excited e-mails are sent back and forth.
I am more worried about those of his readers who have little personal experience of Orthodoxy and so may be prepared to believe the worst. They should know that Mr. Berger is seeking to get us all worked up for nothing.
David Klinghoffer
Toward Tradition
Mercer Island, Washington
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To the Editor:
David Berger suggests that Rabbi Schneerson himself promoted the notion that he was the messiah. Nothing could be farther from the truth. It is a matter of public record that the will he signed and had witnessed on February 14, 1988 dealt only with the same mundane topics that the will of any ordinary person would cover. Given the fact that, as Mr. Berger acknowledges, there is not one unambiguous statement attributed to the Rebbe explicitly connecting himself to messianic aspirations, the will alone stands as a declaration of the Rebbe’s view of his own mortality.
If that is the case, why then (asks Mr. Berger) have the leaders of Lubavitch not repudiated the vocal minority who continue to proclaim the Rebbe as messiah?
The Talmud warns us that just as it is incumbent upon a person to admonish his neighbor when he knows that his words will be listened to, so it is incumbent upon a person not to do so when he suspects his words will not be heeded, for only disharmony and strife can result.
For some Lubavitchers, the grief of losing their Rebbe was so overwhelming that they could not arrive at a rational modus vivendi. For this they should be pitied, not excoriated. What would have been the likelihood of success had Lubavitch leaders taken Mr. Berger’s advice and repudiated the messianic fringe? It might well have jeopardized the mission that the Rebbe had entrusted to them—to perpetuate Lubavitch’s activities and institutions, even in the absence of the Rebbe. In the course of attempting to excise the heresy surgically, they might have done irreparable harm both to the Lubavitch movement and the unity of the Jewish people.
Today, when relative quiet reigns and success in saving Jewish souls multiplies daily, there is even less reason to repudiate the messianic fringe simply to satisfy Mr. Berger’s sense of propriety.
Nahum L. Gordon
New York City
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To the Editor:
It is important to emphasize that in the years immediately prior to the Rebbe’s death in 1994, many of the statements attributed to him were really those of various leaders in the movement known to be close to him. During those years, the Rebbe was impaired by a series of strokes that left him not only physically disabled but aphasic and unable to communicate his thoughts clearly. David Berger admits that the Rebbe never explicitly proclaimed his messianic identity and “in the 80’s he expressed strong criticisms of people who published messianic material.”
Still, Mr. Berger is wrong when he states that a large segment of Lubavitch believes the Rebbe to be the messiah. The messianists are a vocal and well-funded minority; with the passage of time they will fade away.
Far more significant than Mr. Berger’s exaggerations of Chabad (Lubavitch) messianism is the tremendous good done by the movement in preserving Judaism and awakening Jews to their faith. Mr. Berger’s list of all the Chabad institutions (synagogues, kashrut supervisors, etc.) throughout the world reflects the fact that Chabad is keeping Judaism alive in countless far-flung places. The true mission of Chabad is to awaken and educate Jews, not to preach messianism.
Bernard Kabakow
New York City
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To the Editor:
David Berger’s suggestion that the Jewish community boycott Lubavitchers “whose beliefs [about messianism] have not been determined” smacks of bringing out the thought police. Jews had enough of that in Russia.
Rosalie Brosilow
Rehovot, Israel
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To the Editor:
David Berger cites a 1997 ruling obligating Jews to accept the Rebbe as messiah, and lists Rabbi Berel Lazar, the chief rabbi of Russia, as one of its signatories. But it is well known that Rabbi Lazar and many others were the victims of forgery; they never signed this letter. It is unfortunate that Mr. Berger never deemed it important to investigate properly before delivering his rabid indictment.
Levi Mondshine
Secretary
Chief Rabbinate of Russia
Moscow, Russia
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To the Editor:
David Berger’s timely exposition reveals why mainstream Orthodox Judaism has been ineffective in responding to the messianic turn within Chabad Hasidism. The Lubavitch movement is singular in its efforts to proselytize secular Jews, support social programs like prison outreach, and expand the base of Orthodox Judaism. Mainstream Orthodoxy will need to match the zeal of the Lubavitchers before it can persuasively engage in rebuking those who deviate from the traditional view of messianism. Still, careless and imprecise wording by obscure Chabad journals should not be a cause for alarmist claims that Chabad is slipping into “Christology”; the Lubavitch movement may be outside the pale of Orthodox Judaism, but a Christian view is nowhere on the horizon. Not a single person in the Chabad community would say he believes the deceased Rebbe literally to be God.
Richard Nicoletti
Plainsboro, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
David Berger quite rightly alerts us to the strand of messianism that seems to pervade some aspects of Lubavitch thought and life. But for most Jews (including myself), this belief is more of a silly embarrassment than a real challenge to Jewish identity. We can applaud the Lubavitch movement for its impressive organizational reach, its concern for all Jews, and its presence in all corners of the globe, but we need not buy into the misguided attempts by a few to transform a remarkable but dead leader into the messiah. We recognize that even as some of the Rebbe’s supporters chant “Long live king moshiach” he is buried in a New York City cemetery and lives only metaphorically through the deeds and achievements of his followers and through the movement in which he played such a dynamic role. The Lubavitch movement should continue its good works, but it should also let the Rebbe rest in peace.
Harold B. Aspis
Scarsdale, New York
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To the Editor:
The extraordinary accomplishments of Chabad over the last decades, as well as the perspicacity and vision of the Rebbe, force even those outside the Chabad community to look on in awe and appreciation. Yet David Berger breathes new life into the old saying that if something seems too good to be true, it probably is.
Mr. Berger is surprised that the Orthodox community has not rushed fully and publicly to his side. But he has overlooked several factors.
Tension between Chabad and other Orthodox groups did not begin with the recent wave of messianism. Many began to think of Chabad as a movement doing its own thing, ideologically and practically, even during the reign of the Rebbe’s predecessor. Indeed, the marginalizing of Chabad was aided by Chabad itself, which refused to call itself “Orthodox” in community listings, insisting instead on the sui generis designation “hasidic.”
This divergence led to two kinds of response. In some circles, fears abounded that elements of Chabad were so extreme that, if pushed by other Orthodox Jews, they might walk out of the traditional community entirely, taking tens of thousands along with them. Better, it was argued, to allow the pendulum to swing back on its own.
Others argued the opposite: nothing Chabad did would reflect poorly on the rest of Orthodoxy because “everybody” understood that Chabad was not mainstream, and did not speak for the rest of traditional Jewry.
These observations do not detract, of course, from the immense import of Mr. Berger’s essay. His words not only alert the Jewish world to a problem, but—we may hope—will also prod Chabad’s leadership to do what is necessary to restore deserved luster to a tarnished gem.
Rabbi Yitzchok
Adlerstein
Los Angeles, California
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To the Editor:
The outstanding work that the Lubavitch movement does worldwide should not be allowed to obscure the widespread belief among its members that their deceased Rebbe is the messiah. This is a serious and dangerous distortion of Jewish theology, and poses a real threat not only to Lubavitch itself but also to the integrity of Judaism. David Berger is to be commended for his courage in challenging both Lubavitch and the wider Jewish community to confront this threat.
Rabbi Emanuel
Feldman
Editor
Tradition
Jerusalem, Israel
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To the Editor:
David Berger has exposed to the light of day a messianic ideology that threatens the very core of traditional Judaism. Indeed, Jews have been beset with similar threats a number of times in the last 2,000 years. In each case, Jews were lost or killed.
Mr. Berger demonstrates that among the Lubavitch there is widespread acceptance of a messiah who will be resurrected or who is the deity himself, whose death was an illusion, and who will return and lead the world to redemption. This has happened before—heaven forbid that it happen again.
Matthew M.
Zuckerman
Miami Beach, Florida
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To the Editor:
David Berger’s argument is cogent and convincing. It is unfortunate that his is a lone voice; the threat to Judaism from Lubavitch messianists should call forth a concerted response from all committed Jews.
One reason more Orthodox Jews have not followed Mr. Berger’s lead, I would suggest, is that they consider their communities autonomous. When it comes to Jewish values and beliefs, they simply follow their own rabbi’s rulings. There are obvious benefits to this decentralization, but it leads to serious problems in the face of truly dangerous deviations. When a sizable part of an international movement like Lubavitch takes a stand, there is no straightforward mechanism to guide the larger community’s response.
We can only hope that Orthodox rabbis will speak out as Mr. Berger has done and that slowly a consensus will build that Orthodoxy—along with Judaism as a whole—rejects the belief in a messiah who dies before fulfilling his task and who will finish his work only after his resurrection.
Martin Lockshin
Center for Jewish Studies
York University
Toronto, Canada
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To the Editor:
I read with great interest David Berger’s account of Lubavitch messianism in the U.S., Israel, England, and Russia, and I can report that the same thing is happening in France. A few years ago, I published an article on this subject in one of the main French-Jewish newspapers, imploring the official rabbinate here to react. I received congratulations from friends and family but not a single reaction from any rabbi. Indeed, last June a ceremony under the patronage of the chief rabbi of France and the chief rabbi of Paris took place in the presence of Rabbi Gronner, secretary to “the Rebbe of Lubavitch M.H.M [an acronym for king messiah].” No one found it strange that eminent Orthodox rabbis were sitting at the same table as a representative of the living messiah. I hope Mr. Berger’s message will help others address this problem.
Jean-Jacques Wahl
Director
L’Alliance Israélite Universelle
Paris, France
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To the Editor:
I concur completely with what David Berger has had the courage to state openly; his article is long overdue. Having been educated in Australian Lubavitch day schools, I vividly recall being made to sing “we want moshiach now” for hours, thus indoctrinated by Lubavitchers with the notion that the Rebbe would imminently reveal himself to be the messiah. As far as we knew, these were just traditional Jewish songs. Living in a Lubavitch-dominated community, as I do, one realizes that Mr. Berger’s worries are not exaggerated. Last year, after sitting for hours with a Lubavitch family and listening to their messianist message, I was asked for some words of Torah. I said, “Why did God hide Moses’ grave? Our sages answered that God feared the Jews might turn the grave of Moses into an object of worship. Looking at Lubavitch today, I can understand what our sages meant.”
Alex Kaufman
Caulfield, Australia
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To the Editor:
The problem addressed in “The Rebbe, the Jews, and the Messiah” needs a wider context than David Berger provides.
Jewish messianism per se—and not only the particular brand of obviously false messianism Mr. Berger describes—is a mistake. As long as the basic idea is accepted, distortions like the belief that Rabbi Schneerson is the messiah and the dissolution of the boundary between Judaism and Christianity are bound to arise.
Jews should drop messianic belief for two reasons. First, the messiah has not come despite many centuries of waiting and many claims that one or another person is the messiah. If he has not appeared during all the momentous events of Jewish history, we may reasonably suppose that he will not come at all. Worse, proclamations of messiahs have not only been false but they have occasioned suffering for Jews.
Second, except for one or two credulity-straining interpretations, no mention is made in the Torah of a messiah. In substituting a human being for the true object of longing and worship, messianism approaches idolatry, as Mr. Berger illustrates in the case of the Rebbe. Rather than yielding to the passivity and postponement messianism encourages, religious Jews should try to find holiness in the here and now.
Eric Wolf Fried
Albany, New York
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David Berger writes:
All the criticisms leveled in these letters are addressed in my book, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference, which is now available. I hope that my critics will read the fuller treatment there with a willingness, at least in principle, to reconsider. Here I have grouped their arguments under summary headings, and will deal with them as succinctly as I can.
1. Lubavitch messianism does not transform Judaism or undermine its classical messianic faith, because non-Lubavitch Jews neither believe in the Rebbe’s messiahship nor talk about it. It is a non-issue.
This argument misses the point. What has transformed Judaism is not the affirmation of belief in the Rebbe’s messiahship by large numbers of non-Lubavitch Jews—which has certainly not occurred—but the legitimation of that belief by mainstream Orthodoxy. This legitimation takes the form of appointing messianists to religious posts that by custom and communal consensus are clearly reserved for people who are firmly within the Orthodox camp.
We would do well to remind ourselves of the full dimensions of messianist faith and practice. Here is a passage from a recent article in the journal Beis Moshiach (#338); the author, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Ginsberg, is a religious mentor at a yeshiva in Kfar Chabad, the largest Lubavitch population center in Israel:
The common theme in all our [High Holy Day] prayers is the Creation’s acceptance of [God’s kingship], which according to the Divine plan is accomplished by acceptance of Melech Ha Moshiach’s [the King Messiah’s] sovereignty. . . . This is why it is so important to declare “Yechi Adoneinu Moreinu V’Rabbeinu Melech HaMoshiach L’olam Va’ed” [“May our Master, Teacher, and Rabbi the King Messiah live forever”] before the shofar is sounded and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur after [the phrase, “the Lord is God”]. This custom was instituted in the Rebbe’s presence [after his stroke] in Beis Chayenu [the House of Our Life, a term used in the liturgy for Zion or the Temple and by Lubavitch Hasidim for their headquarters in Brooklyn] in 5754 [late 1993].
God’s kingship, then, is to be accepted on the High Holy Days by proclaiming the messiahship of a rabbi buried in Queens. In the religion in which I and every other Jewish adult were raised, the suggestion that people doing such a thing could be recognized as Orthodox Jews would have been greeted with incredulity and ridicule. But over the remarkably brief period of seven years, the millennial religion in which this would have been beyond fantasy has largely ceased to exist as a communal phenomenon.
Jews through the ages have declared to Christian polemicists and missionaries that Judaism rejects on principle the position that the messiah will die in the midst of his uncompleted redemptive mission. Rather, they have argued, Judaism has a set of clear criteria that a claimant must meet in order to be identified confidently as the messiah. Anyone who denies these propositions, they have insisted, has rejected Judaism.
Now, however, a Christian can approach David Klinghoffer, for example, and ask how it is that people who openly proclaim their denial of these same propositions are accepted as synagogue rabbis, members and even heads of rabbinic courts, supervisors of kashrut, and principals of yeshivas both inside and outside Lubavitch. After rereading his letter to COMMENTARY and realizing that not a single word of it is relevant to this question, Mr. Klinghoffer would have to reply either that such acceptance is a terrible mistake and needs to be reversed (thereby endorsing my core argument) or that belief in the messiahship of the deceased Rebbe does not in fact contradict a fundamental Jewish tenet (thereby contributing further to the deformation of his religion).
The defining parameters of the messianic faith of Judaism have been utterly shattered. That this matter is hardly discussed is precisely the scandal of Orthodox indifference.
2. It is not true that a large segment of Lubavitch believes the Rebbe to be the messiah. The messianists are a fringe group.
Those of my correspondents who make this point do not even attempt to address the data, adduced in my article, indicating that the messianist position represents a majority of Lubavitch. The assertion that believers are not even a large segment of the movement illustrates the triumph of deep sympathy and wishful thinking over massive evidence to the contrary.
In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, the rabbinic court, the largest school, the women’s organization, the central synagogue, and more are indisputably controlled by messianists. In Kfar Chabad, which, to repeat, is the largest Lubavitch population center in Israel, the chief rabbi is a messianist; this summer, an Israeli university student originally hailing from that community reported after an extended visit home that it would be a grievous mistake to think anti-messianists enjoy any standing there. The large Chabad school system in the northern Israeli city of Safed is messianist. In 1999, the mainstream Lubavitch organization in Israel known as Agudat Hasidei Chabad published a messianist book with an introduction by the organization’s chairman and a messianist approbation signed by twenty important Chabad rabbis from, among other locations, Montreal, Melbourne, Milan, London, New York, Casablanca, Paris, Kfar Chabad, Safed, and Jerusalem. In June 2001, the vice-president of a Chabad community center in London wrote to the weekly Jewish Chronicle, the establishment newspaper of Anglo-Jewry, that every true Lubavitch Hasid is a messianist. The ruling that Jewish law requires a belief in the Rebbe’s messiahship has been signed by nearly 150 rabbis, many of whom hold important posts throughout the world.
Levi Mondshine asserts that Rabbi Berel Lazar and many others were victims of a forgery and never signed this ruling. I cannot, of course, know for certain whether that is so. What I do know is that over a period of years, and in at least six different venues, Rabbi Lazar’s name has appeared on the ruling in English, Hebrew, and Russian. As I write, in late October, it appears as the first name under a posting of the ruling at www.moshiachinrussian.com/vrl.htm, where it has been for at least a year.
Before publishing my article and my book I made efforts to determine whether any of the signatories has ever gone on record to indicate that he has been misrepresented. The ruling in question received its most elaborate publication in Hatzofeh, the daily newspaper of the National Religious party in Israel, in early 2000. For a full month thereafter I checked the paper’s issues; unless I missed something, only one rabbi (from a yeshiva in Israel) wrote to protest the use of his name. I also learned from Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, the chief rabbi of Moscow, that the ruling later appeared in a Russian newspaper, the Jewish Gazette, complete with all eighteen original signatories from the former Soviet Union; only one subsequently disavowed his involvement.
After reading Mr. Mondshine’s letter, I contacted Rabbi Goldschmidt once more to confirm my understanding. In reply, I received a letter from Nikolay Propirny, chief editor of the Jewish Gazette. “No protests or denials,” he wrote me, “were received from Rabbi Lazar” after the ruling, with his signature, appeared in the paper on March 10, 2000. Finally, an Orthodox official of the World Jewish Congress, a man by no means hostile to Chabad, has told me that he heard Rabbi Lazar recite the messianist formula at the beginning of a major Jewish event in Moscow in 1998.
If Rabbi Lazar has previously gone on record to repudiate his endorsement of a ruling requiring belief in false messianism—or if he has made any serious effort to have it removed from a web site where it has been displayed for at least a year—Mr. Mondshine’s failure to provide this information now is more than strange.
The public effect of Rabbi Lazar’s silence in the months and years that the ruling has been disseminated worldwide over his signature is the equivalent of signing it in the first place. After allowing his name to be attached to it without a word of public protest, it is now his obligation to do much more than have a representative say that it is in-authentic. If he did not sign this ruling, and disagrees with its theology, he must make a clear public statement that he unequivocally rejects the belief in the Rebbe’s messiahship. To do anything less is to play games on a matter of the most profound seriousness.
Finally, I am bound to note that even if the messianists were a fringe group, the essential point of my article—which concerns not Chabad but the Orthodox mainstream—would be unaffected. Overt messianists are being treated as Orthodox rabbis by non-Lubavitch Orthodoxy, and this recognition betrays Judaism. To invoke all the valuable activities undertaken by Chabad reflects an admirable instinct, as does concern about communal disunity. These considerations, however, cannot justify the undermining of a core belief of the Jewish religion.
3. “Not a single person in the Chabad community would say he believes the deceased Rebbe literally to be God.”
Strictly speaking, this is untrue; what is true is that few Lubavitch Hasidim would pronounce the sentence, “the Rebbe is God.” But this does not end the discussion, for a large majority of knowledgeable Lubavitch Hasidim will pronounce the formula, “the Rebbe is the Essence and Being of God placed in a body.” This, after all, was the formula pronounced by the Rebbe himself in characterizing a genuine rebbe. At issue is its interpretation.
Many Hasidim do not understand the sentence literally. However, religious mentors in the major yeshivas of Chabad in both Israel and the United States, publications issued by mainstream Chabad, and influential, highly educated Lubavitch laymen do take literally the following assertions: the supremely righteous, a category of which the Rebbe and the biblical Moses are the chief exemplars, annul their own essence to the point where their entire Essence is that of God. It is permissible to bow to them with this understanding. For this reason, the Rebbe is omniscient, omnipotent, and entirely without limits. He is “indistinguishable” from God. Because he is a transparent window for pure divinity, a “man-God,” “when you speak to him you speak to God.” All this, which in my view constitutes avodah zarah, or “foreign worship,” is documented in my book with specific references.
4. To ask Lubavitch Hasidim about their beliefs before appointing them to positions of religious authority, consuming meat from animals slaughtered by them, or utilizing their ritual objects is to bring out the thought police. “Jews had enough of that in Russia.”
I have agonized over this point, though as a medievalist I thought more of the Inquisition than of the Lubyanka. At the end of the day, however, I believe that mine is the more liberal of the viable alternatives. The other is to appoint no Lubavitch Hasidim to such positions, and to reject all Lubavitch ritual slaughterers, scribes, and witnesses.
Without entering into a discussion of Jewish ritual law, let me illustrate the point with a true story. A candidate for the principal-ship of the only yeshiva in a city with a fairly small Jewish community was asked about his position on this issue. He acknowledged that he was a messianist, but was nevertheless offered the job on condition that he keep his views to himself. A few years later, having achieved popularity with key members of the board, he began to send his son to school wearing a skullcap emblazoned with the messianist slogan. The upshot: students at his school have a rabbinic role model who is an open believer in a deceased messiah.
In this instance, it is at least possible to confront someone over a broken promise. Had he never been asked, the situation would have been still worse. A policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” breaks down when an entrenched appointee decides to tell.
5. The Rebbe bears absolutely no responsibility for the beliefs of the messianists.
I tried to present this very sensitive subject with the utmost care. In a review of my book in the Forward, Allan Nadler has taken me to task for showing excessive respect for the Rebbe and understating the degree of his responsibility for what has developed after his death. Since my primary concern was to delegitimate the posthumous belief in the Rebbe’s messiahship, I felt justified in dealing with the complex question of his own position briefly and lightly. Still, anyone who wants to understand the difficulties that non-messianists face within the movement should become familiar with the Rebbe’s statements, which in my COMMENTARY article were outlined in a single paragraph.
A Lubavitch college student in the United States informed his professor this summer that many Hasidim feel they confront a stark choice: either the Rebbe is the messiah or he was delusional. I do not regard this as a fair statement of the choice before them, but it is not difficult to understand why some Hasidim should feel this way.
6. Jews should eliminate the problem of false messianism once and for all by entirely abandoning the messianic faith, which is in any event not mentioned in the Torah.
Whatever one’s view concerning the presence or absence of the messianic faith in the Pentateuch, the inspiring vision embodied in that faith is decidedly present in the Prophets and in key passages of rabbinic literature. For Orthodox Jews, the authority of those texts is at the core of their religion.
A powerful case can be made, moreover, that even the pragmatic considerations advanced by Eric Wolf Fried are misguided. Without the vision of a perfected world and a redeemed Israel, the Jewish people may not have survived to experience the periodic tribulations of false messianism. The existence of a pre-messianic age is axiomatic; the extent of its duration has no logical relationship to the truth or falsehood of the belief that it will one day come to an end. When, in the early 20th century, Theodor Herzl dreamed of a Jewish state, he was derided for reasons no less persuasive than those that drive Mr. Fried’s skepticism. But for people of faith, “the salvation of the Lord is as swift as the twinkling of an eye.”
I am deeply grateful for the supportive remarks of many of my correspondents.
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