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When
eating outside his home, David Berger has been known to
pay extra-close attention to food labels. It’s not
that he’s a picky eater, or adheres to an extreme standard
of kashrut. Rather, the Brooklyn College history professor
and author, who has gained notoriety with his fervent critiques
of Lubavitch messianism, won’t eat products supervised
by anyone who believes Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known
to his followers as “the Rebbe,” is the
moshiah.
“I would not treat a messianist as an Orthodox rabbi,”
he says. “I would not do anything to give him symbolic
recognition.” That includes participating in a beit
din, or rabbinic court, in which a Lubavitch messianist
presides.
Since
the 1994 death of Schneerson, who led a worldwide movement
of tens of thousands of Hasidim, a large segment of his
followers believe he was, and continues to be, the legendary
redeemer whose ultimate arrival is a central tenet of Orthodoxy.
This despite the classic Jewish definition of moshiah
as a person who brings about an enlightened, transformed
age in his lifetime.
Some critics charge the Rebbe himself actively fueled
the conviction that he is the messiah. Others may view the
belief that he’ll return as a salve for the pain of
losing a leader who changed the lives of so many by inspiring
close observance of Judaism. But the indisputable practical
effect is that the movement shows no sign of appointing
a successor to the childless Schneerson, who was fifth in
the line of Lubavitch rabbis. This sets Lubavitch apart
from most other Hasidic sects.
For the most part, the various streams of Orthodoxy have
winked at this claim, rarely acknowledging, no less criticizing,
the phenomenon.
Not so in the case of Berger, who warns of an imminent threat
to the very continuity of Judaism in The Rebbe, the Messiah
and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (Littman Library).
Since its publication, Berger has been the subject of two
Lubavitch books written in rebuttal. And an article in the
Yiddish weekly Algemeiner Journal even compared him
to Osama bin Laden. “The article is completely about
me, but the only picture is of bin Laden,” says an
amazed Berger.
But he didn’t write the book to gain popularity. “I
went into [it] with my eyes open,” says Berger, a fellow
at the American Academy for Jewish Research, who was ordained
at Yeshiva University’s rabbinic seminary.
Yet despite his insistence that he is not out to tarnish
the entire Lubavitch movement, known by the acronym Chabad,
that’s the way Rabbi Aaron Raskin sees it. The spiritual
leader of Congregation B’nai Avraham in Brooklyn Heights,
who comes from a prominent Chabad family, considers the
book a smear.
During part two of a four-part lecture series on Berger’s
book, the rabbi, sitting before a copy marked with green
highlight pen, directs some 25 listeners to page 63. There,
a known critic of Lubavitch is quoted speculating that the
Rebbe often visited the grave of his predecessor
so it would become established as a shrine after his own
death.
“The fact that Dr. Berger states this rabbi is hostile
toward Lubavitch, and yet he puts this quote into the book,
is very aggravating and very condescending,” says Raskin,
sitting beneath a large oil painting that depicts all five
deceased Rebbes resurrected and walking down a street.
Although Raskin pleads “the Fifth” when asked
if he believes Schneerson is moshiah, he admits his
lecture series is a good “implement” to spread
the word that the time of redemption has arrived. He insists
there is no division within the Chabad movement between
messianists and nonmessianists.
“The major controversy is not so much about whether
the Rebbe was fit to be moshiah,” says
Raskin. “The controversy is what should be the emphasis
of the moshiah campaign.” In other words, the
division is over whether they should propose the moshiah
message to the rest of the world, or keep it internal while
focusing on outreach.
Rabbi Zalman Posner, a widely respected Lubavitcher from
Nashville, offers a different assessment in the fall issue
of the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Action magazine.
He writes that there are three Lubavitch factions: those
who do not identify moshiah, those who believe Schneerson
will return, and “deifiers” who are, in his view,
“beyond the pale.”
There has been almost no public discourse on the subject.
At Berger’s behest, the Rabbinical Council of America,
affiliated with the OU, issued a carefully formulated statement
in 1996, declaring “There is not and never has been
a place in Judaism for the belief that Moshiah ben David
will begin his messianic mission only to experience death,
burial and resurrection before completing it.” The
resolution does not mention Lubavitch.
Earlier this year, in a rare public manifestation of this
conflict, Rabbi Marc Angel of Congregation Shearith Israel
in New York and a former RCA president, called on his congregants
to avoid a West Side deli—its owner included a rebbe-as-moshiah
message in Yiddish alongside the sandwiches on the menu.
Dennis Prager, a syndicated commentator who grew up Orthodox
but now attends a Reform temple in California, has defended
Lubavitch, saying the messianists have little influence
on the overall good work of Chabad in awakening Jewish identity.
But others see a danger. Rabbi Eric Yoffie, leader of the
Reform movement’s Union of American Hebrew Congregations
of America, the largest synagogue body in the country, officially
said he felt the phenomenon is “not inherently important
enough for us to deal with as a movement.”
But on his own behalf, he said, “The historical experience
of the Jewish people demonstrates that messianism is madness.
Wherever it has surfaced, it has led the Jewish people again
and again to disaster.” Insisting that most Jews attribute
messianism more to folklore than Scripture, Yoffie added
that “Chabad, by bucking these tendencies, is taking
dangers upon itself and creating dangers for the rest of
us that can’t easily be dismissed.”
While
there is enough ex-egesis in Berger’s book and Raskin’s
lectures for a weeklong debate, the crux of the argument
is this: Berger sees the concept of belief in a deceased
messiah who could be resurrected to complete his mission
eerily closer to Christianity than to Judaism. Those who
adhere to that belief, he insists, must be ostracized, stripped
of the ability to certify kashrut or render decisions
in Jewish courts of law.
Defenders insist the practice of cohering to a pious and
prophetic figure is classic Judaism, dating back to the
Patriarchs, whose tomb in Hebron is visited at least as
often as the Rebbe’s grave site in Queens. They
insist the Rebbe is not worshiped as a deity, but
viewed as a heavenly intermediary.
During his lecture, Raskin reveals that the Rebbe’s
office at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn has been maintained
as it was when he presided there, and several times a week
Hasidim enter, sit at his desk and ask for his guidance.
Berger writes that the pious appearance of the Hasidim makes
one hesitate to ostracize them, and quotes a colleague who
says, “If the messianists looked [cleanshaven] like
you, people would react differently.” He also suggests
that the worldwide Lubavitch movement is simply too interwoven
into the fabric of Judaism to be cast aside.
Samuel Heilman, a sociology professor at Queens College,
believes that while Orthodox leaders may be uncomfortable
with Lubavitch’s messianic beliefs, they have remained
silent out of self-interest.
“Anyone who travels has made use of their minyans,
rabbis and shehita [kosher slaughtering],”said
Heilman, author of Defenders of the Faith (Schocken),
a critical study of ultra-Orthodoxy. “There is a reluctance
on the part of many of these people to bite the hands that
feed them. There is also a feeling in many precincts that
Chabad is doing important outreach work that we should
be doing more of.”
But Raskin insists Lubavitch messianism is nothing more
than the time-honored Jewish tradition of seeking a role
model who can lead Torah Jewry to an enlightened age.
“In every generation there is a potential moshiah,”
Raskin says. “Each of us has a spark of moshiah
in us.”
Lubavitch messianists simply argue that if there would
be a moshiah chosen in this generation, then surely
the Rebbe is the one who will redeem us.
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