Chabad messianism

Belief within Chabad-Lubavitch that Menachem Mendel Schneerson is the Messiah

Chabad messianism is the belief, widespread in the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, that its seventh Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), is or will be revealed as the Messiah (Moshiach). Those who hold it most strongly are known as Meshichists (Hebrew meshichistim). Its best-known expression is the chant Yechi Adoneinu ("Long live our master, our teacher and our rabbi, King Messiah, forever and ever"). Anthropologist Yoram Bilu notes that even Gush Emunim "never publicly and explicitly said that a particular person was the Messiah. Yet that is exactly what Chabad has done." The historian Rachel Elior traces the "acute messianic ideology" of Chabad to the Holocaust years under Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, and Aviezer Ravitzky judged the campaign of the 1980s and 1990s a "messianic agitation utterly unlike anything that preceded it; indeed, it would seem that its like has not been seen in Jewish history since the seventeenth century". After Schneerson's death in 1994 the movement divided between those who expect his return as Messiah, some of whom deny that he died, and those who reject public messianic claims; the movement's central body said in 1996 that such claims "in no way" reflect "the movement's position". The Orthodox historian David Berger called the phenomenon "a revolutionary development" in Judaism, and in 1996 the Rabbinical Council of America resolved that there "has never been a place in Judaism" for a Messiah who dies before completing his mission.

Roots

Lurianic and early Chabad thought

Chabad's teaching on redemption grows out of Lurianic Kabbalah and the Tanya of Shneur Zalman of Liadi. Abraham Socher notes that the Tanya "describes messianic redemption as the final illumination of the revelation begun at Sinai, but it does not sound imminent". Rachel Elior describes the sixteenth-century Safed Kabbalah from which this tradition descends. In it, "The essential unity of the divinity is perceived as having been damaged by a cosmic catastrophe in the heavenly temple that split the ineffable name asunder and caused sparks of the divine to fall and be dispersed through the world", which was "a heavenly calamity paralleled by exile on earth". She explains that Kabbalah "further divides the hidden reality into the 'side of holiness' (sitra dekedusha) and the 'other side' (sitra ahara) of satanic impurity, parallel to the states of redemption and exile". Human action therefore mattered: "The goal was participation in the redemption of the Shekhinah", a commitment "to redeeming the sparks of divinity dispersed in the world… repairing the damage to the heavenly temple; and restoring the divine throne". Elior also notes that early Hasidism has been read as a response to "the failure of Shabateanism and its promise of imminent redemption". In an earlier study Elior reports that Benzion Dinur saw Hasidism's ideology as "messianic in character" and as "a reaction to the spiritual crisis following disappointment with the Sabbatean movement and its promise for forthcoming redemption", but she adds that "these explanations do not withstand the test of criticism". In Chabad doctrine itself, the refining of the soul includes a layer that "is related to the Lurianic concept of raising up the sparks and the historical significance of exile and redemption". Elior also sets Chabad apart from Sabbateanism. "The Sabbateans viewed sin as a way of overcoming the forces of evil so as to rescue sanctity from the shell that surrounds it, achieving divine redemption and introducing reality into the messianic era." Chabad, by contrast, "views the descent to the kelipot and sin as a means of implementing the divine will to be revealed in all the opposites".

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn

The sixth Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, stressed the special status of the seventh generation. According to Socher, he "emphasized the importance of a midrashic statement that 'all sevens are dear to God'" as early as 1926. In the 1940s he "coined the slogan le-alter le-teshuvah, le-alter le-geulah ('repentance now, redemption now')". The historian Ada Rapoport-Albert has argued that his histories of early Hasidism "reveal his anachronistic, typological thinking and are often incompatible with the facts". In the article itself she concludes that "The historiographical enterprise of the Admor Joseph Isaac, typological, anachronistic, uncritical of its sources as it is, was not the naive work of a dilettante historian".

Basi L'Gani (1951)

Schneerson's inaugural discourse, Basi L'Gani, was given on 10 Shvat 5711 (17 January 1951). In it he declared: "everything now depends only on us— the seventh generation. May we be privileged to see and meet with the Rebbe here in this world, in a physical body, in this earthly domain—and he will redeem us." Socher argues that Schneerson was here "clearly describing his father-in-law as the Messiah". He notes that this already "sets the precedent for one of the features of present-day Lubavitcher messianism that many find so objectionable: the promise that a Messiah who has died will return a second time to complete the redemption".

The seventh Rebbe's messianic campaign

Berger writes that Schneerson "unqualifiedly proclaimed the imminence of the redemption" and "encouraged the cry, 'We want moshiah now!'". He "strongly implied that he would be the redeemer", but Berger adds that "the message was not unequivocal". Heilman and Friedman link the campaign to Israel's 1967 victory. In their account, the military victories "appeared to have taken the initiative in Jewish messianic dreams", and "The Rebbe needed to reclaim" that initiative. They read the mitzvah campaigns and the Noahide campaign as preparation for redemption: if "the Gentiles acted in accord with these demands, that too would prepare the way for the Messiah".

The children's organisation Tzivos Hashem ("Army of God") was founded in 1980. Bilu quotes a recent description of its Israeli branch in which the children each morning "recite the twelve verses and 'Yechi Adoneinu' and salute the army commander in chief, the Rebbe King Messiah".

Politics and territory

The messianic vision had a territorial side. According to Heilman and Friedman, Schneerson told visiting Israeli general Shlomo Gazit that the messianic era required that "Jews—true Jews… should be sovereign over the entire Land of Israel". They add that "the question of 'who is a Jew' was central to his messianic plan". Wolfson calls him "a radical messianic visionary, who promoted a conservative political agenda both in the United States and in Israel". For his opposition to territorial concessions, see Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Escalation, 1991–1994

Messianist poster in Crown Heights, Brooklyn (public domain)

Harris Lenowitz dates the movement precisely: "The 'moshiach-now' movement began in April of 1991, when Schneerson transferred the responsibility, as it were, of bringing about the coming of the messiah and the Redemption of the Jews to the hasidim of Lubavitch, declaring that it was 'out of his hands.'" Ehrlich notes that some followers read the 1991 talk "as a directive to openly declare Schneerson the mashiach and crown him". Others saw it as "an empowering statement meaning that they now had explicit personal responsibility to bring the redemption".

Heilman and Friedman describe how expectations "reached manic proportions" before Passover 1991. On 11 April 1991 the Rebbe asked: "What else can I do so that the Children of Israel will cry out and demand the Messiah come…?" He ended: "I have to hand over the task to you: Do all you can to bring the righteous Moshiach, mamesh." On 20 April 1991 David Nachshon toasted "the Rebbe our righteous Messiah". On 19 June 1991 a full-page New York Times advertisement declared "The Time for Your Redemption Has Arrived". On the last day of 1991 leading rabbis and emissaries signed a letter accepting his sovereignty.

Elior charts the escalation decade by decade: "In the sixties, the Lubavitcher Rebbe said: 'The coming of our righteous Messiah is veritably close' ..., in the seventies he declared 'Here, here, the Messiah is coming' ..., in the eighties he announced: Messiah Now!!" She quotes the 1991 talk in an English rendering: "What more can I do to motivate the entire Jewish people to clamor and cry out and thus actually bring about the coming of Mashiach? All that has been done until now has been to no avail. ... I have done whatever I can: From now on, you must do whatever you can." What followed, in her reading, was "the replacement of the general expectation of imminent redemption in the near future—by an expectation of a personal Messiah embodied in the figure of the Rebbe", and "the fact that R. Menachem Mendel Schneerson forcefully proclaimed the imminence of the redemption and encouraged the cry 'We want Moshiach now!' strongly implied that he himself might be the redeemer".

Ravitzky describes the next step: "during the winter of 1991, they began to distribute petitions among Jewish communities, asking the people, in thousands and tens of thousands, to declare in writing that they took upon themselves the kingship of 'his holiness, the Rebbe, long may he live, the King Messiah.'" Lithuanian Mitnaggedim in turn accused Chabad of "false messianism of the Zionist type". He calls this "a great irony" for a movement that had once opposed Zionism for trying to hasten the End. On 31 January 1993, after the Rebbe's stroke, Rabbi Shmuel Butman organised by satellite what he called "the coronation of the rebbe as Melech haMashiach (King Messiah)". The Rebbe's aide Leib Groner estimated that "99.9 percent of all Hasidim, if not 100 percent" agreed that he was the Messiah, while the office of Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky said that "Butman does not speak for the Lubavitch movement".

Telushkin, writing as a sympathetic biographer, stresses the Rebbe's resistance. When Chasidim first sang Yechi to him in 1991, "The next morning, he refused to go down to the synagogue until he was assured by Rabbi Groner that there would be no such songs sung again". He told the editor of Kfar Chabad that rather than publish such claims "it is preferable that you shut down the periodical completely". Berger, by contrast, writes that after his 1992 stroke the Rebbe "tolerated and even appears to have encouraged" the singing of Yechi.

After 1994

Yellow "Yechi" flag with crown and the word Moshiach, used by messianist Chabad followers (CC0)

Denial of death and "Gimel Tammuz"

Schneerson died on 12 June 1994 (3 Tammuz, "Gimel Tammuz"). Bilu describes two broad camps. The mainstream "have accommodated themselves to the fact that the Rebbe died", though "Most of them retain, however, the hope that he will return from the dead to lead his people into redemption". The Meshichists "deny that the Rebbe ever died" and hold that he is "alive and well in body and spirit, in the full sense". Berger reports that "a growing number of messianists began to assert that the Rebbe never died". Writing in 1998, Elior saw a seventh stage "in the wake of the new stage of 'when prophecy fails'", in which the movement "has splintered into many smaller interrelated groups, often at odds one with another". Some circles "deny the fact of his death", claiming that "The Rebbe lives and exists hay ve-kayam among us now exactly as he did before, literally, literally". She argues that before his death the division between the meshichistim and the self-styled shfuim ("the sane ones") "was more tactical in nature, not really substantive since both factions believed in different ways that R. Schneerson definitely was or certainly might be the Messiah".

The movement's official position after 1994

In February 1996, responding to a messianist advertising campaign, Rabbi Yehuda Krinsky of Agudas Chasidei Chabad said in a statement, as reported by the JTA, that the messianists' view "in no way reflects the movement's position": "While we do not intend to preclude expressions of individual opinion, they are, in fact, misleading and a grave offense to the dignity and expressed desires of the Rebbe ... The Rebbe's words are now being distorted and quoted out of context by a numbered few." Butman replied that "there can be no difference of opinion within Lubavitch, because Lubavitch and difference are a contradiction in terms". Both are Chabad-side primary statements.

Who the Meshichists are

Bilu writes that the Meshichists "are prominent in Israel, especially among young new adherents to the movement and ba'alei teshuvah", and that the camp "includes many Mizrachim". He cautions that "the view that there are two distinct and conflicting camps is oversimplified".

Yechi in worship

Bilu quotes a description of practice at 770 Eastern Parkway: "At the end of each of the daily prayers they declare 'Yechi Adoneinu' three times, and the same after each reading from the Torah, and on every Sabbath eve at the end of 'Lechah Dodi'". Berger reports that some messianist texts went further and substituted "Creator" for "Rabbi" in the formula.

Igrot Kodesh

After 1994, petitioning the Rebbe by placing a letter at random in a volume of his published letters (Igrot Kodesh) became widespread. Bilu traces the practice to older precedents: "Chabad Hasidim have long used their canonical text, Tanya, for this purpose", and "The Rebbe himself instructed that the collected letters of his predecessor… should be used in this way". Mainstream rabbis resisted the practice. The chief rabbi of Kfar Chabad, Mordechai Ashkenazi, warned that "People should not blindly trust the oracle".

Safed (Tzfat) and the 770 disputes

The two camps "vilified and stridently condemned their opponents, and at times even attacked each other physically or sued each other in secular courts". Bilu records that when the Australian Chabad millionaire Joseph Gutnick "accused the Meshichists in Safed of being insane", they consulted the Igrot Kodesh and were told "to continue the systematic labor of publishing the tidings of Redemption and the Redeemer". Young men from Safed's Lubavitch yeshiva, known as the "Tzfatim", were later blamed for violence at 770. The journalist Matthew Shaer writes that "Technically, all Lubavitchers are messianists, in that they believe that a messianic age is imminent", but that "After Schneerson's death, though, the Lubavitch community quickly broke open along messianist lines". The schism even reached the criminal trial of members of the Crown Heights Shomrim patrol, after a brawl at a messianist yeshiva dormitory.

The legal dispute over 770 began in November 2004, when "several young men wrenched off from the synagogue's exterior wall a plaque" that referred to the Rebbe "with a Hebrew honorific used after the name of someone deceased". In Agudas Chasidei Chabad of the United States v. Congregation Lubavitch, Inc. the New York courts noted that "To messianists, who insist that the Grand Rebbe never really died or would soon return and be revealed as the Messiah, the 'of blessed memory' reference and its implication that the Grand Rebbe is deceased is tantamount to blasphemy". The courts found that the central organisations, Agudas Chasidei Chabad and Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch, owned the buildings. On appeal in 2024 the Appellate Term overturned the eviction of the congregation and its gabbaim; both sides claimed victory.

Critique and Orthodox responses

Berger argued that by accepting messianists as Orthodox Jews in good standing, "We award victory to Christianity in a crucial aspect of its millennial debate with Judaism". At his urging, the Rabbinical Council of America (RCA) adopted a one-sentence resolution by consensus at its 1996 convention: "In light of disturbing developments which have recently arisen in the Jewish community, the Rabbinical Council of America in convention assembled declares that there is not and has never been a place in Judaism for the belief that Mashiach ben David will begin his Messianic Mission only to experience death, burial and resurrection before completing it." An earlier draft had named Lubavitch. The RCA president, Rabbi Rafael Grossman, said the reference was removed because "there is a substantial part of Lubavitch leaders who do not hold this view". Butman replied that the belief "is an integral part of Judaism" and that "Because someone else misuses it does not take away anything from Jewish belief." Back in 1993, a past RCA president, Rabbi Marc Angel, had called the messianic claims "horrifying and dangerous". In the introduction to the paperback edition, Berger wrote: "It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that a large majority of Lubavitch hasidim believe with perfect faith in the return of the Rebbe as Messiah son of David". He also argued that those who believe in the Rebbe's divinity, including those who reject the extremist "elokists", are "worshippers of avodah zarah" (idolatry). He names two Lubavitch book-length replies: Chaim Dalfin's Attack on Lubavitch: A Response, which he called "unworthy of attention", and Chaim Rapoport's The Messiah Problem: Berger, the Angel, and the Scandal of Reckless Indiscrimination (Ilford, 2002). Berger calls Rapoport "an extremely learned and talented individual" who nonetheless rejected "the belief that the Rebbe is the Messiah". He also recorded that a 1997 ruling obliging Jews to accept Schneerson's messiahship had been signed by 17 of the leading Chabad emissaries in the former Soviet Union, among them Berel Lazar.

Rabbi Elazar Shach condemned the claim. Telushkin writes that it "seemed particularly to fuel his ire" and that Shach once called the Rebbe "the madman who sits in New York and drives the whole world crazy". From another angle, David Singer wrote in First Things (2003) that Berger had "emerged as a would-be Torquemada on the Orthodox scene". Singer argued that "the Lubavitcher messianists have had zero impact on the religious outlook of Orthodox society" and concluded: "Call them crazy, call them heretics, the Lubavitcher messianists bear powerful, if strange, witness to the continued vitality of Judaism's belief in the messiah." Telushkin himself rejects Berger's call to shun Chabad and concludes that "the Messiah issue is, in the final analysis, a nonissue".

Chabad's official position

Lenowitz writes that "Chabad had exposed its official position on messianic matters through various channels, prior to the Rebbe's death", notably the English adaptation of the Rebbe's talks, Sound the Great Shofar (1992). In those talks "the Rebbe's contention was that the messiah is human and is present in every generation, but that his generation was the one most ready to be redeemed". He also observes that Chabad emissaries "only wish to refrain from public discussion of it since they view it as counterproductive", and that "non-Lubavitch orthodoxy, as represented by the Rabbinic Council of America, condemns Lubavitchers and their belief". Ehrlich credits the leadership faction around Yehuda Krinsky with "The attempt to moderate Schneerson's more extreme statements in his later years, in order to ensure that the movement continued to be acceptable to the non-Hasidic public".

Academic interpretations

• Wolfson: "postmessianic messianism". Elliot R. Wolfson argues: "In my judgment, Schneerson was intentionally ambiguous about his own identity as Messiah, since the key aspect of his teaching involves cultivating a modification in consciousness with respect to this very issue. Simply put, the image of the personal Messiah may have been utilized rhetorically to liberate one from the belief in the personal Messiah." Socher replies: "I can see how to read this like Wolfson, but I can't buy it. The Rebbe, I believe, meant the Messiah mamash."
• Bilu: making the absent present. Bilu studies how Meshichists use images, Igrot Kodesh, dollars and replicas of 770 to keep the Rebbe present. He also notes that Chabad's appeal to gentiles is "secondary and restricted, aimed at convincing them to observe the seven Noachide laws".
• Heilman and Friedman trace the messianism from the sixth Rebbe through the 1991 crisis and the post-1994 emissary system.
• Inbari: failed prophecy. Motti Inbari treats Chabad as a case of failed prophecy: after 1994 "a split occurred within the movement between those who recognized his demise and concluded that he was not the messiah, and those who refused to accept this". Elsewhere he writes that "The Chabad movement has become a key advocate of the Greater Land of Israel".
• Lenowitz places Schneerson in a long line of Jewish messiahs, noting that the name Menachem, "the comforter", is "the name of the messiah in the Book of Zerubbabel".
• Elior: crisis and failed prophecy. Rachel Elior argues that "The acute messianic ideology of Habad-Lubavitch was formulated during the Holocaust in reaction to the unbearable harsh realities of the death camps". She calls the messianists' reading of the Rebbe's 1992 stroke through Isaiah 53 "an astonishing exegetical tactic, in view of Christianity's usage of this text". She reads the period after 1994 through Festinger's When Prophecy Fails: "this striking disconfirmation did not halt the movement, but rather gave it new life".
• Ravitzky: from anti-Zionism to activism. Aviezer Ravitzky notes that the fifth Rebbe had written in 1899 against the Zionists' "call to achieve redemption through our own powers". He ties the Rebbe's hawkish stance on Israel's territory to "its acute messianic consciousness, which is, by its very nature, one of constant advance and conquest, not of retreat and withdrawal". He applies the same principle "in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn (where the Rebbe forbade his followers to move out of their neighborhood ...) as it is in Gaza and Jericho" (see Crown Heights riot).

See also

• Menachem Mendel Schneerson
• Tanya
• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

External links

• Abraham Socher, "The Chabad Paradox", Jewish Review of Books, 2010.