Chabad And Messianism

"A group enveloped in our tradition is disseminating ideas foreign to our beliefs and representing us unfaithfully."

Chabad: Issues That Have Not Been Discussed On Campus, from the new issue of YU's Kol HaMevaser. 

Download article as a PDF file:

Download Chabad Messianism Issues Goldschmidt 2-2010

Download entire Jewish Denominations and Sects issue as a PDF file:

Download Khm-jewish-denominations-and-sects-iii-4r

[Hat Tip: Michael Kohn, InfoChabad.com.]

Comments

[HaNavon]

the sign for got something....neo-sabateanism,
although that has more in common with chabad than you thought when you laughed at it.

[FormerPostvillian]

I believe this articule and the questioning of Sholom's mental state should go hand in hand. These Meshichists are all unstable and he was their chief ringleader!

[Yisroel Pensack]

"Can you believe that THOUSANDS of people are actually waiting for the Lubavitcher Rebbe to dust himself off and get on a white donkey for his announcement that he's Moshiach? Thousands of faxes to his tomb weekly are believed to be read and answered by him? ARE YOU NUTS?"

http://theunorthodoxjew.blogspot.com/2007/01/uojs-state-of-union-address-gedolim.html

[harold]

Dwek nearly breaks down when asked if he has any friends, outside FBI agents

By Michaelangelo Conte/The Jersey Journal
February 03, 2010, 3:02PM

Government informant Solomon Dwek choked up while testifying in the Leona Beldini corruption trial this afternoon and was asked whether he has any friends outside of FBI agents.

The emotional moments in the Newark courtroom for the man who has admitted swindling his friends, family, Jewish community and banks came after defense attorney Brian Neary played a portion of videotape during a meeting where Beldini, who was Jersey City Mayor Jerramiah Healy's campaign treasurer as well as the deputy mayor, said Healy's word is gold.

“All I can ask for, I have the mayor, I have the deputy mayor, that’s all I can ask for, I’m on top,” Dwek said.

On the witness stand today, Dwek said: "I don’t know if I was schooled to say those exact words but I was schooled to say something to that effect.

Beldini watches Healy's back, Neary says and says she was appointed deputy mayor because she and Healy are friends

"You know what a friend is, Mr. Dwek,'' Neay says, asking if Dwek has any friends. "How many are not FBI agents?"

There is a long pause.

“It is a very difficult question to answer,” Dwek responds.

"You don’t have a father as a friend."

After a pause: "No.''

"Mother as a friend.''

Pause.

"No.''

Now Dwek is clearly choked up.

"Don’t have Uncle Joe as a friend.''

Dwek, emotional, looks down and can't answer for several seconds. He puts his hand to his face and finally answers: “No.”

"Don’t have all the members of the community you stole money from.''

Pause.

“No.”

Each answer is given after a longer and longer pause.

After the line of questioning ends, Dwek takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes. He puts his glasses back on and rubs his nose before grimacing.

Neary quickly returned to the video clip and continued his third day of meticulous cross-examination that has turned into a duel between him and Dwek.

http://www.nj.com/hudson/index.ssf/2010/02/dwek_nearly_breaks_down_when_a.html

[Paul Freedman]

I have been getting PR that while not explicitly Messianic allowed for it and continued the personality cult--I was instructed to celebrate the day that R. Schneerson "ascended to the summit of klal Yisroel" and gave the dates of his "influence" as extending to th present -- that this guy of all guys even after death remains the sole unique leader of the Jewish community.

The doctrinal def of heresy in a pluralistic Jewish world can be debated but the guy just wasn't that important and his failure to encourage a successor doesn't mean his importance grows after his death.

[Yochanan Lavie]

This Hamavasser issue should have been called "The Joy of Sects."

[Paul Freedman]

I wonder what they would think of the Nanachs....going to the Nanach website they all seem to have the last name Nanach--like the Ramones

"20 20 24 hours to go
I wanna be elated
Nothing to do just take it to the road
I wanna be elated
Just put me in a van open up the doors
Na Nach Nachma Nachman I wanna go insane
I can't control my fingers I can't control my brain
Oh-no-oh-oh-ohhhhh!"

[yankele]

Shmarya,
I am not going to argue with a single thing the girl says.
But, please, it must be a slow day when you are posting an article from the undergraduate student magazine of Yeshiva University.
Also, as someone who has argued numerous times that means do not justify the ends, printing an article by Pinchas Goldschmidt’s daughter…. She was probably being raised as a princess until Berel Lazar came in, usurped her old man position and made him insignificant. All the UJA Federation propping could not help poor Pinchas Goldschmidt. Her article is a bit of sour grapes. (May I also add, you did not inform us readers who the girl is, who her father is, or what the battle between her father and Berel Lazar was about.)
As I saw it, the battle between Lazar and Goldschmidt was one for power, not one for the benefit of Judaism in Russia. While I can watch and appreciate the tactics of one crime family in its brutal campaign over another, at the end of the day, I have little sympathy for either.

[brooklyndreaming]

The writer is the daughter of Rabbi Goldshmidt of Moscow renowned for his hostility to Chabad. She is far from an objective observer. He arguments are well known and have been disputed many times.

So real question is how much of it is theology or is the real issue much deeper.

Her father came to Moscow around the same time as Chabad's Rabbi Berel Lazar. Fast forward twenty years. Goldshmidt has day school in Moscow and Lazar a network of over three hundred rabbis in a hundred communities across the country. Jealousy not lofty questions of Moshiach are the real issue.

At the minimum the writer should of identified herself as her fathers daughter. So people could understand what is driving her perspective.

[Shmarya]

She identifies herself in the article. It isn't hidden.

As for "two crime families" and the like, Berel Lazar is a thug. He's dangerous and detrimental to Jews and Judaism.

Goldschmidt was there first, was chief rabbi of Moscow, and did good work – until Lazar used his connections with Putin to squash Goldschmidt.

As for the article, point out anything factually incorrect. yankele already says he can't. I'm sure the other Chabd apologist, brooklyndreaming, won't be able to, either.

[brooklyndreaming]

Get real Goldshmidt success is marginal. Lazare revolutionized Jewish life in the whole country. People are responsible for their own success. Maybe if Goldshmidt would not have been so confrontational with Chabad the community would be better served.

Lazar philosophy of openness that indicative of Chabad, his ability to raise money and find the needed human resources are the key to his success. Goldshmidt influence is very marginal. Blaming his lack of achievement on Lazar is a cheap shot.

[Shmarya]

Get real. You can't challenge on thing she wrote.

Stop attacking the messenger and deal with the message.

If you can't deal with the message, be quiet.

[yankele]

Shmarya,

Don't put words into my mouth. I said I wasn't going to argue the point of her articles, because that wasn't the gist of my comment.

At the time of the power struggle between Lazar and Goldschmidt, I was working for a Jewish newspaper and my views of both Lazar and Goldschmidt were informed by my interactions with both of them. Hitler, Stalin, even the Lubavitcher rebbe, did "good work" So I don't buy that argument.

[Shmarya]

I am not going to argue with a single thing the girl says.

Those are your words, yankele.

[yankele]

yankele already says he can't.

Those are yours, Shmarya

[Shmarya]

If you find mistakes in her work, challenge them. Otherwise, the shoe fits and Chabad is wearing it.

[brooklyndreaming]

The Moshiach issue has be rehashed a millions times. Berger thinks, and she is clearly just his mouthpiece that secret Moshichist lingers under very stone. So we can debate this for the thousandth time, do they believe do they not.

The real question is what is driving this girl. Sadly she is a reflection of her fathers hatred to Chassidim, and jealousy of his own marginal success. AT the minimum she should have stated who she really is. Then we could discuss his running out of the Central Shul one Shabbos morning so the thugs could attack a Chabad rabbi leaving him to do the "dead mans float" in the Mikvah. The question did he know of didn't he know is a lot more important than do they believe or don't they.

[Shmarya]

The real question is what is driving this girl.

No. The real issue are the facts that you cannot refute. Stop attacking the messenger and deal with the message.

[yitz gerber]

she must have a different version of the Rambam, no where in her cited halacha (hilchos melachim 11-4) does the rambam say moshiach cant arise from the dead. I didnt check the rest of her citations but if they are as sloppy as this one this whole article is bunk

[Paul Freedman]

the state of play between "messhicistiim" and "antis" is not as black and white as stated in the article--or the breakdown between elohistiim and tzafatiim and just plain messianic lovers of the Rebbe in the first group and he-wasn't-Messiah to let's-not-talk-about-it in the second.

conflicts have broken out in dorms, with the shomriim, with the vaad, in the courts, and in blog flame wars between the two camps.

[Paul Freedman]

the rambam also didn't specifically say that moshiach couldn't be the Easter Bunny or a giant strawberry lolipop--its kind of presumed he's talking about a live messiah who is identified by his successful acts while alive not from some prior identity as a dead man much beloved by disciples.

?

[Shmarya]

she must have a different version of the Rambam, no where in her cited halacha (hilchos melachim 11-4) does the rambam say moshiach cant arise from the dead. I didnt check the rest of her citations but if they are as sloppy as this one this whole article is bunk

You have the defective Rambam, I'm afraid. You're using the censored version. See Rambam "a'am for the uncensored version.

[al Farabi]

Shmarya, I'll remind you that the Rambam also said that you should not try and argue with mad people. It saddens me that you have to answer these lubos. Theirs is very clearly a pathological state of mind. No person in their right mind could possibly believe shneerson is/was/could be moshiach - end of story.

[george]

And why is the belief that the deceased Rebbe is the current mesiah any different than the Xtian belief that JC died and returned (all as the Messiah)? And what does it mean to say the Rebbe is the Messiah - we clearly haven't entered the Messianic Era - so the deceased Rebbe is lurking away somewhere, doing his Messianic work - this is a really dangerous belief.

[May G-d help us]

Yeyasher kochach to the author.

Tchabad Lubovitch is a like a fast growing weed that threatens to overtake, shade out, and outmuscle, a vital crop. Hopefully, the tender of the crop will take action to prevent such an undesirable result, G-d forbid.

The Lubavitcher Rabbi Berel (little bear in Yiddish) plays with and is favored by the big Russian bear, but Rabbi Pinhas is favored by the Almighty, tachat asher kinei LElokav vayichapeir al bnei Yisrael. Lev Leviev, who helped Lazar and the messianic Lubovicher sect gain the upper hand, with help of outsiders, has fallen greatly. Perhaps soon his Rabbi little bear will decline similarly and be replaced by a mainstream Jewish Rabbi instead of one representing the fringe messianic Lubovitcher sect.

[A E ANDERSON]

I am a bit puzzled by this new Yeshiva University stand against Habad.

Wasn't it Yeshiva University that was recently outed in this blog as being anti-kashrut, and as having committed horrific acts of discrimination against its Albert Einstein School of Medicine mashgiach?

Swordfish aside, Schechter's Seminary (JTS) seems a helluva lot more kosher, kashrut-wise, than this so-called treife YU Albert Einstein School of Medicine that, despite its Hippocratic Oath, does much harm to Judaism and kashrut.

[Office of the Chief Rabbi]

"KOL HAMEVASER." The voice of the herald, bringing the Good News. Love the irony.

[Paul Freedman]

JC did it firster