Menachem Mendel Schneerson

For the third Chabad Rebbe of the same name, see Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Tzemach Tzedek). Seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch (1902–1994), who built the movement into a global network and became the focus of a messianic campaign

Menachem Mendel Schneerson
Image	Schneerson at prayer (photographer unknown; public domain) Signature
Born	14 April 1902 (11 Nissan 5662) Nikolaev, Russian Empire
Died	12 June 1994 (3 Tammuz 5754) Beth Israel Medical Center, Manhattan, New York
Nationality	American (formerly Russian)
Residence
Occupation
Known for	Seventh Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch, 1950/51–1994
Parents
Spouse(s)	Chaya Mushka Schneerson (m. 1928; d. 1988)
Children
Sibling(s)
Education	University of Berlin; Sorbonne, Paris
Predecessor	Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
Website

Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994), known to his followers as "the Rebbe", was the seventh and last leader of the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic dynasty. He led it from his father-in-law's death in 1950 until his own in 1994. According to the New York Times, he was a "Russian-born, Sorbonne-educated scholar who took an insular Hasidic group that almost came to an end with the Holocaust and turned it into one of the most influential and controversial forces in world Jewry".

From 770 Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, he built a worldwide network of emissaries (shluchim) and Chabad Houses. He campaigned to promote the Seven Noahide Laws among non-Jews, which earned him repeated tributes from US presidents and a posthumous Congressional Gold Medal. He never visited Israel, but he wielded considerable influence in Israeli politics, opposing territorial withdrawal and backing the "Who is a Jew" amendment.

His final years were dominated by an intense messianic campaign among his followers, many of whom proclaimed him the Messiah. Some still do, three decades after his death. The Orthodox historian David Berger called this "a revolutionary development" that had "thoroughly undermined" a pillar of Judaism.

Early life

Schneerson was born on 11 Nissan 1902 in Nikolaev in southern Russia (now Mykolaiv, Ukraine). His father was the kabbalist Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson and his mother Chana Schneerson. He was named after his ancestor, the third Rebbe, Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch. Chabad's official biography records that his father was later sent into internal exile "by the Soviets to a remote village in Asian Russia". UPI gave his civil date of birth as 14 April 1902.

Berlin and Paris

In 1928, in Warsaw, Schneerson married Chaya Mushka (Moussia), daughter of the sixth Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, who in 1927 had accompanied her father into his "forced exile to Kostroma". Both of the main biographies use archival records to reconstruct his secular studies. They agree on most of the facts and differ over what those facts mean.

Berlin, 1927–1933

Schneerson left Riga for Germany on 26 December 1927. Heilman and Friedman ask: "Why did Mendel choose Berlin, where he would study without getting any degree?" They note that Yosef Yitzchak's "biting opposition" to the Hildesheimer Seminary's combination of Jewish and secular learning "was well known", yet the Rebbe "paid for his tuition costs and living expenses there". In April 1928 he registered "as an auditor (Gasthörer) in courses in philosophy and mathematics at Friedrich Wilhelm University". On the registration form he claimed to be a student at the Hildesheimer Seminary and gave its address as his own, "even though he was not formally enrolled there".

Miller agrees that Schneerson was registered "not as a full, matriculating student but as an 'occasional student' (Gasthörer)". He describes him as taking courses at the University of Berlin "for about fifteen hours per week" and attending the Talmud lectures of Rabbi Yechiel Ya'akov Weinberg at the Seminary, though "not formally enrolled".

Paris, 1933–1940

On 24 April 1933 Schneerson began attending the engineering school ESTP (École Spéciale des Travaux Publics) "as an auditeur libre—once again an auditor", taking courses in mechanical engineering. On 25 March 1938, aged 36, "he received his diploma. He was finally an engineer with a degree." The 1939 Paris directory lists "M. Schneerson… as electrical and mechanical engineer, but not as rabbi". He then registered in the Sorbonne's faculty of sciences on 30 November 1937 and again in 1938. Heilman and Friedman ask, "But did he actually study at the Sorbonne?", and answer that "we find no further record of those studies; no grades, no certificates". They also record that Chabad hagiography had claimed he earned high academic degrees in Berlin and Paris, and even a degree in medicine; they note that "the evidence came out that this was not the case".

Miller confirms the ESTP admission and the Sorbonne enrolment "for the academic years of 1937-38 and 1938-39". He likewise concedes that "no further academic records have been found", though he suggests that records "may have been destroyed during the student riots of 1968".

Where the biographers disagree

Heilman and Friedman read these years as a period in which Schneerson pursued a secular career away from the Lubavitch court. In their account he "apparently did not now want to move to Otwock and the rebbe's court", and the Sorbonne registration was a way to remain in France. Miller rejects this reading. He names "Detractors of the Seventh Rebbe, most notably his nephew Shalom Ber (Barry) Gourary and the historians whom he influenced (Shimon Deutch, Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman)", and argues that they "have painted the Rebbe's attendance at university as a symptom of a weakening Chasidic attachment. However, as Chaim Rapoport has shown, there is no documentary evidence to support this claim". Rapoport's own critique of the biography argues the case in detail. He rejects the authors' "double life" hypothesis. He also argues that "there is no need to assume that the Rebbe's own preoccupation with the sciences in Berlin and Paris was a symptom of his 'selling out to the forces of modernity'". He also cites a handwritten letter from the sixth Rebbe to his daughter, which says that although other names appear as editors of the journal HaTamim, "the entire work" was that of "my dear and beloved son-in-law, the Rabbi". On the 1937 French naturalisation affidavit, the authors' key new document, Rapoport holds that "it would be highly disingenuous to build a thesis regarding the Rebbe's life-long career aspirations and dream lifestyle based upon an alleged engineering apprenticeship". Abraham Socher's review in the Jewish Review of Books accepted part of the authors' documentary findings but also questioned the evidence for the "double life"; see The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Escape to the United States, 1941

Schneerson and his wife escaped occupied France and arrived in New York on 23 June 1941. The 1994 Act of Congress describes him as "a refugee first from Stalinist Russia and then from Nazi Germany". After his arrival he was put in charge of three central Lubavitch organisations: Merkos L'Inyonei Chinuch (education), the Kehot Publication Society and the social-services agency Machne Israel.

Succession, 1950–51

Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn died in 1950. Chabad says his son-in-law then "reluctantly ascended to the leadership of the Lubavitch movement". UPI dates his leadership from 1950, "nine years after coming to Brooklyn". He formally accepted the role in 1951. His inaugural discourse, Basi L'Gani, was given on the first anniversary of his predecessor's death: "In 1951, Yud (the 10th) Shvat came on January 17, a Wednesday."

Contest with Shmaryahu Gourary

The sixth Rebbe left no named successor. His elder son-in-law, Shmaryahu (Rashag) Gourary, had been "for years his father-in-law's most prominent aide", and Gourary's son Barry was "the only male heir of the dynasty in the twentieth century". Heilman and Friedman write that "it would take some time for Rabbi Menachem Mendel to firmly establish his ascendancy and absolute authority over Shmaryahu Gourary". He did so partly through the help of Chaim Hodakov, who became his chief secretary. "Throughout this first year after the old Rebbe's death, Shmaryahu Gourary and Menachem Mendel were each leading their own competing gatherings, often days apart." Even after the formal acceptance in 1951, "embers of resistance to his leadership lingered within the circle of Shmaryahu Gourary". The authors identify the sixth Rebbe's widow, Nechama Dina, as one of Gourary's most powerful supporters. The haredi journal HaPardes announced "The New ADMOR of Lubavitch" in May 1951, then printed a correction the next month crediting many of the achievements to Gourary and the sixth Rebbe.

Miller describes the same tensions from the side of the victor. When Chasidim announced Schneerson as successor in the press in January 1951, "The Gourary family was incensed and Barry was seen screaming lividly at his uncle in 770". Miller argues that Barry "was probably not seen as a viable candidate for succession due to weakening Chasidic attachments". The two books apply the "weakening attachment" argument to opposite people: Heilman and Friedman use it of Schneerson's years in Berlin and Paris, Miller of Barry Gourary. Miller also rejects the account of Schneerson "re-inventing himself", citing Nehemia Polen's view that "Genuine as opposed to manufactured charisma cannot be conjured by an act of will".

Rapoport disputes Heilman and Friedman's account of the interregnum. He calls their suggestion that the sons-in-law were "implicitly in competition" during the shiva "pure speculation", and notes that neither son-in-law in fact sat shiva. Drawing on the letters of Yoel Kahn, he does describe separate gatherings in late 1950. On the eve of 19 Kislev "Rashag held a farbrengen with the chasidim for about two and a half hours". At Schneerson's farbrengen the next night, according to Kahn, "the synagogue was filled from one end to the other". Rapoport's narrative therefore accepts that the two men led separate gatherings, as Heilman and Friedman report. What the two accounts dispute is whether this amounted to a deliberate contest. Rapoport presents Rashag's 19 Kislev 1950 letter, which he issued "on his own stationary", as perhaps "a final attempt to draw chasidim closer to his corner". He describes a 'letter of hitkashrut' (attachment) composed by Shmuel Levitin and handed to Schneerson on 2 January 1951. In his account the senior chasidim's "concern for Rashag was outweighed by the need for a guarantee of continuity". Rapoport also stresses Schneerson's reluctance: "so strong was his resistance that it took the better part of a year to convince him of his duty to give in to the wishes of the chasidim". He writes that Rashag later "continued to enjoy the respect of the vast majority of his brother-in-law's chasidim", and that after a stroke in 1981 he went into yechidut (private audience) with the Rebbe "as a chasid of his brother-in-law". When Rashag died in 1989, the Rebbe "instructed that a special edition of the Tanya be printed in his memory".

The library case, 1985–1987

The sixth Rebbe "had died intestate", leaving no will covering "his beloved and huge library". Heilman and Friedman write that his grandson Barry Gourary "argued that he and his mother, as direct heirs, could claim at least a portion of the library", and that Shmaryahu Gourary "ultimately accepted the authority of his brother-in-law (and testified on his behalf at the library books trial)". Miller says Barry had been "gradually removing books of value, which he sold to private collectors", and that "He did this without prior discussion with the Rebbe or Rebbetzin Moussia". Judge Charles Sifton decided for Agudas Chassidei Chabad. In his judgment he wrote that "it does not make much sense that a man of the character of the Sixth Rebbe would, in the circumstances, mean something different than what he says, that the library was to be delivered to plaintiff for the benefit of the community". The case was Agudas Chasidei Chabad v. Gourary, heard in the federal court in Brooklyn. Telushkin records that "Judge Charles Sifton rules (and his decision is later reaffirmed by the court of appeals) that the books belong to Chabad", and that the date of the ruling, "Hei Tevet (the fifth of the month of Tevet), is still celebrated annually as a holiday within Chabad".

Outreach: shlichus and the mivtzoim

770 Eastern Parkway, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Chabad's world headquarters (public domain)

Under Schneerson, "Lubavitch centers and Chabad Houses were opened in dozens of cities and university campuses around the world". Writing in 2001, Berger cited a journalist "basing himself on official sources" who reported "more than 2,600 institutions throughout the world, with 3,700 married couples serving as emissaries". He added that "Even if the numbers are exaggerated, there is no question that the worldwide Chabad presence continues to grow at a stunning rate". Berger also reported claims that "Chabad rabbis constitute 50 percent of the rabbinate in England" and that 13 of Sydney's 26 synagogues were led by Chabad rabbis. Sue Fishkoff's The Rebbe's Army (2003) gives a journalistic account of the emissary system. One of the most visible campaigns was the drive to print the Tanya in every place where Jews live, discussed on that page.

The Noahide campaign and American politics

Schneerson urged non-Jews to observe the Seven Noahide Laws, and US presidents took up the theme. In Proclamation 4921 (3 April 1982), Ronald Reagan declared a "National Day of Reflection" for the Rebbe's 80th birthday. The proclamation praised the Lubavitch movement as "one shining example for people of all faiths of what education should be" and said the Rebbe "has provided a vivid example of the eternal validity of the Seven Noahide Laws". In 1985 Congress (H.J.Res. 186) designated his birthday "Education Day, U.S.A.". Reagan's proclamation stated that "Very few Americans have done more to promote these ethical values" and tied them to "their roots in the Seven Noahide Laws". By 1994 the Act of Congress noted that his birthday had been marked "in each of the last 16 years as 'Education and Sharing Day, U.S.A.'". Heilman and Friedman place the campaign within the messianic programme: if "the Gentiles acted in accord with these demands, that too would prepare the way for the Messiah". They also note the movement's priorities in outreach: "Even Gentiles, for whom the Noahide laws could be invoked, were an easier population than the children of mixed marriages." Miller writes that "there had never been a notable effort to disseminate" the Noahide code before the Rebbe. He adds that the message "was not only lost on the broader Jewish world, but also on many of his own followers", and that proposals from Chasidim were "either rejected by the Rebbe, ignored, or elicited a warning that 'this bears a tremendous responsibility'". Telushkin writes that the 1980 campaign surprised and upset "many Jews, particularly in the Orthodox world". In his account, Rabbi Elazar Shach "had long condemned Chabad in public talks (focusing on, among other things, the campaign to teach the 'Seven Noahide Laws' to non-Jews…)". Wolfson argues that the campaign "should not be construed as missionary activity, since there is no interest in conversion". Even so, he writes, it "comes closest to something akin to a proselytizing program on the part of Lubavitchers insofar as it reflects an aspect of their religious vision that entails shaping the beliefs and practices of non-Jews for the sake of redeeming the world". Wolfson also notes that the proclamation's language "we can plausibly assume was crafted with the help of Lubavitchers". Bilu calls Chabad's appeal to gentiles "secondary and restricted, aimed at convincing them to observe the seven Noachide laws".

Telushkin records that President Jimmy Carter designated "Education Day, U.S.A." in honour of the Rebbe's 76th birthday in April 1978, and that "Every year for the more than thirty years since, every American president has designated the anniversary of the Rebbe's birth as a day dedicated by the United States to educational awareness". He adds that the 1986 congressional resolution "formally recognizes the Seven Laws of Noah".

Israel

Territorial maximalism

Although he never visited Israel, Schneerson insisted that no territory captured in 1967 be given up. In correspondence with the British Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, he wrote:

"I am completely and unequivocally opposed to the surrender of any of the liberated areas currently under negotiation, such as Yehudah and Shomron, the Golan, etc., for the simple reason, and only reason, that surrendering any part of them would contravene a clear ruling found in Shulchan Aruch…"

He presented the position as a matter of pikuach nefesh (saving life), "not" of "the sanctity of Eretz Yisrael, or with days of Moshiach". A Chabad publication records that during the Camp David negotiations he "expressed the strongest protest". It calls the return of Sinai to Egypt "a grave and tragic mistake" and attacks the "land for peace" concept as applied to "Yehudah and Shomron" (the West Bank). JTA reported that his "decades-long position has been that Israel should not surrender 'one inch' of territory".

Elections, coalitions and "Who is a Jew"

• 1988. The Christian Science Monitor reported that in the last two weeks of the September 1988 campaign "a weakened Agudat Israel party turned to the rebbe for support. With his endorsement they won an unexpected five seats". JTA wrote that "The Chabad movement, headed by Lubavitcher Rebbe Menachem Schneerson… has effectively taken control of Agudat Yisrael in Israel". Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir had promised the ultra-Orthodox parties "swift passage" of the "Who is a Jew" amendment to the Law of Return, which would have refused recognition to non-Orthodox conversions. The proposal provoked a mass lobbying effort by American Jewish leaders.
• 1990. Two Agudat Yisrael Knesset members withdrew from Shimon Peres's planned Labor coalition "after learning he opposed Labor's stance favoring talks with the Palestinians to swap land for peace". Reform leader Rabbi Alexander Schindler said: "Rabbi Schneerson, sitting in his study on (Brooklyn's) Eastern Parkway, decided that Agudat Yisrael would not participate in the proposed government."

Israeli politicians

The Jewish News Syndicate notes that "Israeli leaders of all stripes continually sought out his advice and blessing". These included Benjamin Netanyahu, filmed receiving a blessing and political advice in 1988, and Ariel Sharon, whom the Rebbe "convinced… to remain" in the army.

The biographers on land and settlement

Miller counts "over one hundred and twenty five sermons" between 1967 and 1991 devoted to sheleimut ha-Aretz ("the integrity of the Land"), which he calls "a sustained polemic against any territorial concessions". He also records a meeting at which Ariel Sharon asked the Rebbe "to encourage his followers to settle in the newly acquired Hebron". The Rebbe, while "adamant that the territories not be returned", was "reluctant to direct settlers there in the absence of full support from the Israeli government".

According to Heilman and Friedman, when Menachem Begin visited 770 in 1977 the Rebbe urged him "not to bend under the growing American and world pressure to withdraw from the land taken in 1967". He later asserted that one could "settle all the territories in Judea and Samaria… swiftly and in one day" as long as "institutions of Torah" were established. On Sinai, however, they write that "the Rebbe readily gave his blessing to Israeli leaders to broker a deal, as he considered it devoid of religious and redemptive meaning", leaving it to military "experts". This conflicts with the later Chabad account that he "expressed the strongest protest" during the Camp David talks. They report that he defined the messianic era as requiring that "true Jews… should be sovereign over the entire Land of Israel". On "Who is a Jew" in 1988 they argue that "the question of 'who is a Jew' was central to his messianic plan". Sara Yael Hirschhorn's history of American settlers records that in 1980 Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the founder of the West Bank settlement of Efrat, turned for help to "his powerful colleague Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitch Rebbe who had recently given his blessing to the new settlement of Efrat". The Defence Ministry had frozen new settlements after a killing in Hebron. Riskin was then sent to Chaim Druckman, who persuaded Menachem Begin to allow the ceremony to go ahead. Hirschhorn adds that "news broke to the New York Times a month later that the Israeli government had formally seized a parcel near Bethlehem to build Efrat", and that Palestinians claimed "the land belonged to the Arab village of al-Khader". Bilu sets Chabad apart from the settler movement. Religious Zionist messianism, "even as embodied in the most potent language used by the Gush Emunim settler movement at its height, never publicly and explicitly said that a particular person was the Messiah. Yet that is exactly what Chabad has done." On Kfar Chabad, Telushkin's timeline says the village was "established in 1949", that Zalman Shazar helped found it, and that it was attacked in 1956, when "Arab terrorists attack Kfar Chabad and murder five students and a teacher". Motti Inbari places Chabad alongside Gush Emunim as an example of religious radicalisation: "The Chabad movement has become a key advocate of the Greater Land of Israel, and has also been swept into a radical messianic approach".

Russia and the Soviet Union

Schneerson's family background, his father's Soviet exile and his father-in-law's 1927 exile all tied him to the Soviet experience. Berger describes the Chabad underground's "heroic stand, fought for decades in lonely isolation… against a totalitarian Soviet regime".

The library case

After his death, Chabad's legal arm, Agudas Chasidei Chabad, sued Russia in the United States for the return of the "Schneerson Collection". The collection consists of a library of "12,000 books and manuscripts the Soviets seized between 1917 and 1925" and an archive of "25,000 pages" seized by the Nazis and later by Soviet forces. On 16 January 2013 Chief Judge Royce Lamberth held Russia in civil contempt and imposed sanctions of "$50,000 per day". See Agudas Chasidei Chabad v. Russian Federation.

Post-Soviet legacy

Berger records that 17 of the most important Chabad emissaries in the former Soviet Union, among them the new chief rabbi Berel Lazar, had signed a 1997 ruling that Jews must accept Schneerson's messiahship. On the Kremlin alliance of Lazar's Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, see Galina Zelenina.

Messianism

Berger gives a detailed account of how Schneerson presented the coming of the Messiah. According to Berger, he "unqualifiedly proclaimed the imminence of the redemption" and "encouraged the cry, 'We want moshiah now!'". He "strongly implied that he would be the redeemer", for example by teaching that "the messiah's name was Menachem" and that the Third Temple would first appear next to 770 Eastern Parkway. Berger adds that "the message was not unequivocal". In his last years Schneerson "tolerated and even appears to have encouraged" the singing of Yechi Adoneinu ("May our Master, Teacher, and Rabbi the King Messiah live forever"), while at other times he criticised messianist publications. Heilman and Friedman title a chapter "From Resurrection to Death: We Want Moshiach Now". They describe how expectations "reached manic proportions" before Passover 1991. On 20 April 1991 a Chasid from Upper Nazareth, David Nachshon, toasted "the Rebbe our righteous Messiah" in his presence. On 19 June 1991 a full-page New York Times advertisement by the "Friends of Chabad-Lubavitch" proclaimed "The Time for Your Redemption Has Arrived". On the final day of 1991 a letter from leading Lubavitch rabbis and shluchim pledged to accept his sovereignty as Messiah. After returning from his father-in-law's grave on 11 April 1991, the Rebbe "unexpectedly called his Hasidim together for an urgent talk". He asked: "What else can I do so that the Children of Israel will cry out and demand the Messiah come, after all else that was done until now has not helped since we are obviously still in exile, and even more so in an internal exile from truly serving God?" He ended: "I have to hand over the task to you: Do all you can to bring the righteous Moshiach, mamesh." The book's epigraph quotes the Lubavitch song "Long Live Our Master, Our Teacher, and Our Rebbe, the King Messiah, forever and ever". Telushkin, writing from within the movement, describes an occasion in 1991 when Chasidim set the words of Yechi ("Long live our master, our teacher, our Rebbe, King Moshiach") to a melody. The Rebbe at first "signaled his encouragement of the singing", but "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". Telushkin also reports that when the editor of Kfar Chabad planned an article on the Rebbe as presumed Messiah, the Rebbe replied: "If you, God forbid, [plan to write] anything even remotely similar, it is preferable that you shut down the periodical completely". Telushkin rejects Berger's call to shun Chabad and concludes that "the Messiah issue is, in the final analysis, a nonissue".

After 1994 the anthropologist Yoram Bilu found that among the Meshichists (messianists), "At the end of each of the daily prayers they declare 'Yechi Adoneinu' three times, and the same after each reading from the Torah". This is quoted from a description of worship at 770. The Meshichists "deny that the Rebbe ever died" and believe he lives on at 770. Bilu writes that the two camps "vilified and stridently condemned their opponents, and at times even attacked each other physically or sued each other in secular courts". The dispute reached the courts 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. a New York court noted that to messianists the "of blessed memory" wording "is tantamount to blasphemy". For the full history, see Chabad messianism. Elliot R. Wolfson calls him "a radical messianic visionary who promoted a conservative political agenda".

Rapoport disputes Heilman and Friedman's picture of the Rebbe's messianism. He argues that "The Rebbe, like his predecessors, expressed these ideas in terms of certainty, arguably in order to increase anticipation and, more importantly, vigorous preparation". He also points out that the Rebbe "continued to lay the groundwork for the building of institutions in the Diaspora that would be useless in the event of the Messiah's imminent arrival". He also says the authors misquoted the Rebbetzin in order to suggest that the Rebbe denied his own mortality.

Crown Heights, 1991

In August 1991 a car in the Rebbe's motorcade struck and killed seven-year-old Gavin Cato. Days of violence between Black and Jewish residents followed, during which the Australian Jewish student Yankel Rosenbaum was fatally stabbed. A state inquiry led by Richard Girgenti, commissioned by Governor Mario Cuomo, found Mayor David Dinkins and the police "at fault in letting unrest escalate". See Crown Heights riot. Miller gives the details. On 19 August 1991 "a car in the motorcade following the Rebbe (from a trip to Rayatz's grave)", a station wagon driven by Yosef Lifsh, veered onto the sidewalk at Utica Avenue and President Street. It killed "Gavin Cato, a seven-year old son of Guyanese immigrants" and injured his cousin Angela. "Around three hours" later Yankel Rosenbaum was stabbed to death. Miller reports that in three days of rioting "152 police officers and 38 civilians were injured". When Mayor Dinkins visited on 25 August and spoke of bringing "both sides" together, the Rebbe replied: "We need to forget the 'both sides.' There is one side, one people." Heilman and Friedman do not discuss the riot in any detail. Telushkin gives the reply as "We are not two sides. We are one side." He calls the riots "anti-Jewish rioting in Crown Heights in which a Jewish man, Yankel Rosenbaum, had been murdered in the aftermath of a car accident in which a black child, Gavin Cato, had been killed". The historian Edward Shapiro calls the riot "one of the most serious incidents of antisemitism in American history". He writes that the accident "killed a young boy named Gavin Cato and injured his cousin Angelina", and that "152 police officers and 38 civilians claimed to have been injured; 27 police vehicles were damaged or destroyed; and 129 persons were arrested". Avrum Ehrlich also says the cousin "was critically injured". Goldschmidt describes the two children as "seven-year-old first cousins whose families had come to the United States from Guyana not long before". Miller's wording, which implies that both children were killed, is therefore not followed here.

Illness and death

On 2 March 1992, while praying at his father-in-law's grave, Schneerson suffered a stroke that "paralyzed his right side" and left him unable to speak. He had another stroke on 10 March 1994. He died at 1:50 a.m. on 12 June 1994 at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, aged 92. He left no children and named no successor. The Washington Post reported that "Even as his pine coffin was placed in the hearse, a panicked crowd of Lubavitch faithful chanted prayers for Schneerson to rise and reveal himself to be the Messiah".

Posthumous cult and honours

• Congressional Gold Medal. Public Law 103‑457 (2 November 1994) authorised a gold medal "in recognition of his outstanding and enduring contributions toward world education, morality, and acts of charity". It credited him with making Chabad's New York headquarters "a center of over 2,000 educational, social, and rehabilitative institutions".
• The Ohel. His grave in Queens, next to that of his father-in-law, has become a place of pilgrimage. The New York Times reported that tens of thousands came for the 20th anniversary of his death in 2014. Chabad reported more than 50,000 visitors in the week of the 32nd anniversary in 2026.
• Continuing messianism. Berger reports that "a growing number of messianists began to assert that the Rebbe never died". A 1997 ruling obliging Jews to accept his messiahship had 150 signatories by January 2000. Some messianist publications went further and spoke of him as divine, for example by substituting "Creator" for "Rabbi" in Yechi.

Controversies and critics

• Messianism. 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". He won a 1996 Rabbinical Council of America resolution that "there is not and never has been a place in Judaism" for a messiah who dies before completing his mission.
• Haredi opposition. Rabbi Elazar Shach of Bnei Brak, the leading Lithuanian (Litvish) authority, had long-standing theological and political conflicts with Schneerson. According to the 1988 Israeli election study, Shach's circle characterised the messianist position as "blasphemy". Berger also notes the "delegitimation of messianists" in Shach's community.
• Interference in Israeli politics. Reform and secular Israeli critics accused him of "meddling". Schindler asked: "How can a religious leader in good conscience reject the idea of moving toward peace when the young men in his own movement are exempted from military service…?"
• Jews and non-Jews.' On his letters and remarks about the Tanyas doctrine of non-Jewish souls, including his refusal to soften it in English translation, see Tanya#Teachings on non-Jews. Israel Shahak and Norton Mezvinsky discuss Chabad within Haredi fundamentalism.
• Crown Heights. See above.

Scholarship and biographies

• Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Princeton, 2010). The first academic biography, and controversial within Chabad.
• Joseph Telushkin, Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History (Harper, 2014). A popular biography sympathetic to the movement.
• Chaim Miller, Turning Judaism Outward: A Biography of the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson (Kol Menachem, 2014). Draws on internal archives.
• David Berger, The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (Littman, 2001).
• Elliot R. Wolfson, Open Secret (Columbia, 2009).
• Avrum M. Ehrlich, The Messiah of Brooklyn (Ktav, 2004).
• Sue Fishkoff, The Rebbe's Army (Schocken, 2003).

See also

• Chabad-Lubavitch movement
• Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn
• Menachem Mendel Schneersohn (Tzemach Tzedek)
• 770 Eastern Parkway
• Agudas Chasidei Chabad
• Tanya
• Chabad in occupied Palestine
• Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia
• Failed Messiah
• The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

External links

• The Rebbe – Chabad.org
• Public Law 103‑457 – Congress.gov