c. 2004 Religion News Service
QUEENS, N.Y. _ They came with babies in tow and prayers in hand, eyes red with the exhaustion of overnight flights from Russia, Uruguay, Israel and other far-off places. Weariness quickly gave way to elation, though, even as a steady rain fell through the morning, as Jews gathered at the final resting place of their hero, mentor and leader.
On any given day, the “ohel,” or grave site, of the Lubavitcher rebbe hosts a steady stream of bearded men in black hats and women in long skirts. About 700 faxes arrive each day, each containing prayers that are shredded for privacy and placed on the grave.
On Tuesday (June 22), however, the ohel welcomed a throng of about 30,000 Hasidic Jews from around the world who gathered to mark the 10th anniversary of the death of this revered leader. By midday, 9,000 faxes had arrived in the small office that oversees the operation of the site.
Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who was born in 1902 and given the honored title “rebbe” in 1951 by his followers, led a movement reeling from post-Holocaust devastation into a flourishing global community. During his long tenure, he created a veritable army of Jews who go into every corner of the world to bring the unobservant and disconnected back into the fold.
A controversy over whether Schneerson was the Messiah has not irrevocably divided the movement, as some predicted. Instead of shrinking and losing momentum, as many predicted when Schneerson died in 1994 without naming a successor, Lubavitch has grown and expanded both geographically and technologically, sending out 200,000 e-mails containing a “daily dose” of the rebbe’s teaching.
The program of sending emissaries _ called “shlichim” in Hebrew _ to far-flung areas to set up Jewish communal resources like schools, kosher markets and synagogues attracts particular attention and praise.
Though the movement has been controversial at times, Jewish leaders from across the religious spectrum recognize its influence and admire its success a decade after losing its leader.
“They serve Jews in many locations,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, which has its own extensive outreach efforts, though mostly to interfaith families. “Often they are the only people to serve those Jewish constituencies.”
Orthodox leaders also admire the extent of the outreach program, which enrolls 11,000 children in Jewish summer camps in the former Soviet Union alone.
“He (Schneerson) was really in the field of Jewish outreach before anyone else,” said Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, who is the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union.
Leaders in Lubavitch, which is also referred to as Chabad, are proud of the program for shlichim, which trains young married couples to go to a new city and use their own budgets to launch educational and religious initiatives.
“Ten years is a significant period of time for testing the system,” said Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky, who is another top Lubavitch administrative leader and worked closely with Schneerson. “It’s working magnificently,” he said.
The outreach sets Lubavitch apart from other Hasidic sects, which tend to be more insular. And other than the Bratslav sect, whose only rebbe died in 1810, Lubavitch is unusual in having survived and thrived without a living leader.
Hasidic Judaism, which developed as a modern movement in the 18th century, is predicated on mystical theology and a personal, experiential way of praying and living. Hasidic sects developed along geographic lines throughout Eastern Europe, with the Lubavitch sect connected to the Russian town of the same name. Each was comprised of a revered spiritual leader, or rebbe, who was the ultimate religious authority to his followers.
Schneerson, who was the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe, assumed leadership after the previous rebbe, Schneerson’s father-in-law, died in 1950. During the next half-century, the Russian-born Schneerson left Brooklyn only to go to the grave of the sixth rebbe in Queens, even as the movement was growing and becoming more global. Today, the organization has a worldwide operating budget of close to $1 billion, and it has placed 4,000 emissary families around the world.
For young people who will come of age without having been directly taught by Schneerson, Rabbi Abraham Shemtov, one of the movement’s top leaders, said the rebbe’s teachings and spiritual presence “permeate and inspire the individual to the core.”
“He is very much their spiritual center,” said Sue Fishkoff, author of last year’s “The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch.”
But even as the movement has grown and flourished since the rebbe’s death, Fishkoff has noticed a concurrent trend of regionalization, which removes the leadership focus from the rebbe’s headquarters in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, and directs it to regional centers like Los Angeles or Moscow.
“As time goes by,” Fishkoff said, “this regionalism is going to increase, much as in every other Jewish denomination.”
But on the day of the anniversary, amid the celebratory tone and the high energy at the ohel, the grief over the loss of the rebbe was palpable and fresh, even after a decade.
Part of the reason for this, says Queens College professor Samuel Heilman, is that the grieving process was truncated when the rebbe died at age 92.
“The relationship between Hasidim and their rebbe is very much like children and a parent,” said Heilman, who has written a book about the Jewish mourning process. The rebbe’s death with no named successor, he said, followed by a funeral in which the body was quickly moved from Brooklyn to the grave site in Queens, interrupted the process by which Jews traditionally come to terms with a death.
“By the time most of the people got there, it (the coffin) was covered. Most of the people didn’t see him buried. The question is whether they have mourned the loss of their leader,” he said.
For some adherents, this issue goes far deeper. Lubavitch Hasidism has long had a messianic thrust, in which Jews are urged to work fervently to bring about the imminent arrival of the Messiah. In the most controversial facet of the Lubavitch movement, some believed _ even before his death _ that the rebbe himself was the Messiah, and that he will soon be resurrected to redeem the world.
At the ohel on the anniversary of the rebbe’s death, suggestions that the rebbe was the Messiah were few and far between, but present nonetheless.
“The rebbe should come back, please God,” said Rochel Goldman, who serves as an emissary in Johannesburg, South Africa. “When he does come back, everybody will recognize true leadership and true humility.”
(STORY MAY END HERE. OPTIONAL TRIM FOLLOWS)
At 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, where the rebbe worshipped and led the movement, the “messianist” beliefs are more concentrated, notable on cars bearing yellow flags that depict a crown and the word “Moshiach,” which is Hebrew for “Messiah.”
Some Lubavitch leaders say that the controversy over whether the rebbe was the Messiah is “divisive” and distracting from the main mission of the movement.
“It’s part of the disturbance, part of the earthquake that has taken place with the physical departure of the rebbe,” said Shemtov.
“It’s not there to ignore,” he added. “A challenge is not to avoid, a challenge is to utilize and turn it into an opportunity.”
Still, some scholars feel strongly that the belief that the rebbe was the Messiah is more widespread than the organization will admit, and that it is fundamentally an un-Jewish belief.
“God will not send the true Messiah to announce imminent redemption and then die in an unredeemed world,” said David Berger, an Orthodox rabbi who wrote “The Rebbe, the Messiah and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference” in 2001, and says Orthodox Jews should not recognize Lubavitch rabbis as legitimate. “That is an un-Jewish scenario.”
The controversy, however, was not at the forefront of the scene at the ohel. Instead, followers reunited with old friends and family, and paid homage to a man who continues to lead thousands, even after his death.
“There is no space for anybody else. We have a rebbe,” said Fradel Sudak, a Lubavitcher who lives as an emissary in London.
KRE/PH END ROSSI
