Umeå University, spring semester 2016 Department of historical, philosophical and religious stuied Bachelor thesis in religious studies, 10 ECTS (15 hp) Supervisor: Olle Sundström

The Living Messiah of Brooklyn Dealing with the theological postmortem legacy of the Chabad movement’s last Rebbe and final messianic redeemer

Hannes Sonnenschein

Abstract

The Chassidic Chabad movement is one of Judaism’s most successful and influential groups in

terms of missionary presence around the world and distributed missionary material online.

Chabad’s final Rebbe is still regarded by his followers to be the long-awaited final redeemer

and Messiah, despite his clinical death in 1994. The aim of this study is to describe how the

Chabad-followers, through the movement’s publications, maintain the belief in the Rebbe as

the Jewish Messiah, and the theological interpretive tools utilized in order to ‘survive’ as a

united movement. The study indicates that Chabad is still a united and radical messianic

movement, wherein, internal theological mechanisms interpret the Rebbe as corporally alive

but concealed by illusion, and will soon be revealed or imminently resurrected to complete the

redemption of the world. The study also discusses the movement’s extreme right-winged

political stance in regards to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict, the movement’s Holocaust

theology as means to further understand how the group ‘survived’ the cognitive dissonance the

death of the Rebbe created and the theological similarities between Chabad and early

Christianity.

Keywords: NRM, Judaism, Chassidism, Chabad, Messianism, Redemption, Rebbe, Final redeemer, Failed prophecy, Cognitive dissonance Lurianic Kabbala, Jewish theology, Christian theology, Holocaust theology, Political activism, Israel-Palestine conflict, 770 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn.

Abstract in Swedish

Den Chassidiska Chabadrörelsen är en av judendomens mest framgångsrika och inflytesrika

nya religiösa rörelser när det gäller missionär närvaro runt om i världen och missionärt material

online. Chabads sista Rebbe anses av hans anhängare att vara världens sista försonare och

Messias, trots hans uppenbara kliniska död år 1994. Denna studie beskriver hur

Chabadanhängare, genom rörelsens egna tryckta och online publikationer, upprätthåller tron på

Rebbe som den judiska messias och de teologiska tolkningsverktyg som rörelsen använder för

att ‘överleva’ som en enad grupp. Studien indikerar att Chabadrörelsen, ändå till våra dagar, är

enad och radikal-messianistisk där man genom interna teologiska mekanismer tolkar Rebben

som levande i materiell kropp, gömd genom illusion men snart uppenbarad eller snart

återuppväckt från de fysiskt döda och i båda fallen för att fullgöra världens försoning där Gud

försonar människan i den materiella världen. Studien diskuterar också rörelsens extrema

högerpolitik, i synnerhet när det gäller Israel-Palestina konflikten och förintelseteologi som ett

sätt att vidare förstå hur gruppen ‘överlevde’ den kognitiva dissonansen Rebbens död skapade

i termer av misslyckad profetia och de teologiska likheterna mellan Chabadrörelsen och tidig

kristendom.

Nyckelord: NRR, Judendom, Chassidism, Chabad, Messianism, Försoningslära, Rebbe, Sista frälsaren, Misslyckad profetia, Kognitiv dissonans, Luriansk Kabbala, Judisk teologi, Kristen teologi, Förintelseteologi, politisk aktivism, Israel-Palestina konflikten, 770 Eastern Parkway Brooklyn.

Table of contents

1. Introduction ......................................................................................................................................................... 1

1.1 Aim and purpose ................................................................................................................................................. 2

2. Background, previous research and theory...................................................................................................... 3

2.1 The roots of the Chassidic new religious movement Chabad Lubavicher .......................................................... 3

2.2 The classic Chassidic Chabadic theological-cosmological worldview .............................................................. 5

2.3 The historical road to Chabad’s Dirah Batachtonim doctrine ............................................................................ 8

2.4 Rebbe – biographic notes .................................................................................................................................... 9

2.5 The upside-down Dirah batachtonim doctrine according to the Rebbe ........................................................... 10

2.6 Identifying the Messiah according to Chabad .................................................................................................. 11

2.7 Jewish interpretation of Chabad’s messianic claim .......................................................................................... 13

2.8 Theoretical framework – failed prophecies ...................................................................................................... 14

2.9 Chabad publications and online presence ......................................................................................................... 15

3. Method ............................................................................................................................................................... 17

3.1 Document analysis ............................................................................................................................................ 17

3.2 Hermeneutics .................................................................................................................................................... 18

3.3 Material ............................................................................................................................................................. 19

3.3.1 Psakei din .................................................................................................................................................. 19

3.3.2 Chabadic tractates .................................................................................................................................... 20

3.3.3 Sichat Hageula (‘redemption conversations’) .......................................................................................... 20

3.3.4 Beit Mashiach (House of the Messiah) ..................................................................................................... 21

3.4 Procedure .......................................................................................................................................................... 21

3.5 Validity and reliability ...................................................................................................................................... 22

4. Results and discussion ...................................................................................................................................... 23

4.1 Original psak din ............................................................................................................................................... 23

4.2 Newly revised psak din ..................................................................................................................................... 24

4.3 Chabadic tractates ............................................................................................................................................. 25

4.3.1 Yechi Hamelech Hamashiach (‘long live the King Messiah’) .................................................................. 25

4.3.2 Hanekuda Hachabadit (‘the Chabadic point’) ......................................................................................... 28

4.4 Sichat Hageula .................................................................................................................................................. 31

4.5 Beit Mashiach ................................................................................................................................................... 32

4.6 Discussion ......................................................................................................................................................... 34

4.6.1 Chabad as a unified messianic movement ................................................................................................ 34

4.6.2 Chabadic messianic implications in the Israel-Palestine conflict ............................................................ 37

4.6.3 Theological similarities with early Christendom as means to deal with the rapture ............................... 38

4.6.4 Adherence to rabbinical orthodoxy in a united movement ....................................................................... 42

4.6.5 Chabad post-Rebbe theology as a redefinition of Holocaust theology ..................................................... 42

4.7 Postscript ........................................................................................................................................................... 43

Work cited ............................................................................................................................................................. 44

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1. Introduction

The Chabad movement is perhaps one of the most noticeable Jewish religious movements

in the world and certainly in the US and Israel. Indeed, according to a recent study entitled

“Annual Assessment – the situation and dynamics of the Jewish People 2014–2015”1 by The

Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI)2, Chabad, with its 959 centers spread all over the US and

Canada, is one of the most evident and dynamic Jewish movements in the US.3 The Chabad

movement’s missionary outreach and emissaries around the world is impressive. According to

the movement’s own statistic, Chabad employs 4,000 full-time missionary emissaries in more

than 3,300 institutes around the world with a workforce that “numbers in the tens of

thousands”.4 This quantitative accomplishment can be attributed to the apparent messianic

pulse that permeates the movement. In focus for this unprecedented Jewish messianic belief is

no other than the last charismatic leader of the movement – Menachem Mendel Schneerson,

simply known as “the Rebbe”. The movement’s initial belief that missionary work around the

world by appointed emissaries (shluchim, in Hebrew) will hasten the arrival of the Messiah,

gradually gave way for the belief that the Rebbe himself is the prophesized Messiah, the

redeemer of the Jewish nation and the world. The Chabadic identification of the Rebbe as the

Messiah culminated in the early 1990s, during which time the by then aging Rebbe was struck

by severe illness. On Tamuz 3rd, 5754 according to the Hebrew calendar (June 12th, 1994), the

92 year-old Rebbe was declared clinically dead by medical authorities and was buried in

Brooklyn shortly after. The Rebbe left no heirs. The death of the Rebbe should have induced a

rupture in the belief in the Rebbe as the Messiah. Jewish theology generally rejects the notion

of a ‘dead’ or resurrected Messiah and traditionally considers these thoughts to be heretical and

incompatible with the theological notion of a flesh-and-blood Messiah who will usher forth the

eschatological salvation and redemption of the world. Indeed, messianic claims throughout

Jewish history were categorically denounced, most notably the Sabbatean movement of the 17th

century which claimed its leader, Sabbatai Zvi, to be the Messiah. A great messianic hope of

1 Dr. Shlomo Fischer (Ed.), ”Annual Assessment – the situation and dynamics of the Jewish People 2014-2015”, http://jppi.org.il/uploads/JPPI_2014-2015_Annual_Assessment-English.pdf (Accessed on March 30th, 2016) 2 The Jewish People Policy Institute or JPPI is by its own definition “an independent professional policy planning think tank incorporated as a private non-profit company in Israel” with a mission “to ensure the thriving of the Jewish People and the Jewish civilization by engaging in professional strategic thinking and planning on issues of primary concern to world Jewry”. - http://jppi.org.il/links_for_header/alias-7/About_JPPI/ (Accessed on March 30th, 2016). 3 Fischer, 2015, p. 153 4 http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/36226/jewish/About-Chabad-Lubavitch.htm (Accessed on March 30th, 2016).

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Jews in Europe and the Near East was laid upon Sabbatai Zvi, but ended in bitter

disappointment and the conversion of Zvi and his followers to Islam.5 Nevertheless, previous

research on the Chabad movement and its messianic pulse shows that Chabad-followers to this

very day perceive the Rebbe as the living Messiah. This Chabadic belief is evident in the

plethora of printed and online Chabadic publications available to presumptive readers.

1.1 Aim and purpose

The aim of this study is to describe how the Chabad-followers, through the movement’s own

publications in print and online, maintain the belief in the Rebbe as the Jewish Messiah.

This study’s research question is as follows:

What kind of theological interpretive tools do Chabad-followers utilize in order to ‘survive’

as a group in light of the cognitive dissonance his death in 1994 caused to the notion that the

Rebbe is the final redeemer and Messiah?

This study will also discuss possible political consequences the maintained belief in the

Rebbe as the Messiah might have in regards to the ongoing Israel-Palestine conflict and possible

theological similarities between Chabad and early Christianity.

5 Galas, Michal. Sabbatianism. The YIVO Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe. 2010. http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Sabbatianism (Accessed on March 31st, 2016).

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2. Background, previous research and theory

In this section I will describe key theoretical, autobiographical and theological concepts in

relation to this study’s aim and purpose. In addition, I will describe previous research which

focused on the Chabad movement and its messianic pulse in theological terms according to

current academic understanding.

2.1 The roots of the Chassidic new religious movement Chabad Lubavicher

The Chabad movement, also known as Chabad-Lubavich6 (in this study I shall henceforward

refer to the movement simply as Chabad), is a part of the Jewish Chassidic movement that first

appeared in the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth during the 18th century; in Podolia (present-

day Ukraine), Volhynia (divided into parts of present-day Ukraine, Poland and Belarus) and

Eastern Galicia (mostly in present-day Ukraine). Rachel Elior, professor of Jewish philosophy

and historical researcher of early Jewish mysticism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem,

writes about the Chassidic movement’s growth from its humble beginnings during the middle

of the 18th century into a true socio-religious force for the Eastern European Jewry in terms of

spirituality, social structures and an innovative religious world-view, all of which had been

influenced by Kabbalistic teachings7. The following centuries were marked by a steady growth

of followers, and the Chassidic movement represented a significant and prominent portion of

Eastern European Jewry. The Chassidic movement brought forth a pietistic spiritual and

religious awakening that initially caught hold in small Kabbalistic circles of ascetic, recluse

individuals and secret societies that combined mystical experience with a new perception of

reality acquired from ecstatic exaltation and spiritual inspiration. Chassidic founders drew their

social strength by offering individuals and communities a simpler understanding of their

mystical and esoteric experiences. These understandings became a theological base within a

Kabbalistic framework, and was communicated in a language understandable not only for a

chosen educated elite, but also the poor and religiously uneducated in the Eastern European

Shtetls.8 The Chassidic founders based their new religious movement on firm leadership

6 The name Lubavich is derived from the name of village in today’s Ukraine where the movement first appeared in. 7 Elior, Rachel. The Paradoxical Ascent to God: The Kabbalistic Theosophy of Habad Hasidism. New York: State University of New York, 1993., Introduction. 8 Shtetls were small rural areas and small cities comprised of a Jewish majority population existing in areas local national authorities allowed Jews to settle. These shtetls, were characterized by low socio-economic conditions and often isolated from their Christian neighbors.

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patterns that were strongly charismatic and authoritative in their nature, by claiming the right

to interpret a new conception of the transcendent divine and individual/communal service to it.

Glenn Dynner, professor of religion at Sarah Lawrence College in New York and scholar of

the social history of Chassidism9, identifies the Besht as the leader of a small group of Jewish

mystics in Podolia who were the first to practice Kabbalistic customs and traditions outside the

reclusive world of Jewish ascetic mysticism. Besht10, or by his birth name, Yisrael ben Eliezer

(1698/1700–1760), was a Jewish mystical practitioner mediating between this world and its

transcendent equivalent in a way comparable to shamanic practices. The Besht was unique in

assuming a public role previously unheard of in ascetic mysticism, which attracted the

acknowledgment of whole communities and not only individuals. Dynner, professor emeritus

of history of the Jewish people at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, cites Israeli Immanuel

Etkes, arguing that the Besht’s uniqueness in communicating his teachings to a wider social

audience is attributed to

[…]the Besht’s sense of mission, derived from his exposure to the region’s various social, political

and economic ills during his itinerant services, as well as from his perceived powers of a prophetic

nature: remote vision, prognostication, ability to hear decrees from on high, and so forth.11

The establishment of Chassidic communities in Eastern Europe coincided with the collapse

of Jewish autonomous communities. This was the result of the political and geographical

partitioning of the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth leading to the Jewish community’s loss of

trust in the traditional institutions of community leadership, which were identified by the

interests of the Polish nobility.12

The Chabad13 movement was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lidai (1745–1813, hence

after Rashaz). His book, the Tanya, or officially Likkutei Amarim14, was published in 1796. It

became the fundamental theological manifesto of the Chabadic doctrine during the movement’s

three subsequent generations of Chabad leadership, and is regarded as such to this day. It is

important to note that the Chabad leadership is inherited, often from father to son. The Kabbalah

9 Dynner, Glennn. Men of Silk: The Hasidic Conquest of Polish Jewish Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 10 Besht is an abbreviation of the Hebrew Ba’al Shem Tov, translated to Master of the Good Name. 11 Dynner, 2006, p. 6 12 Hundert, Gershom (Ed. in Chief). The YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008. Assaf, David.”Hasidism: Historical Overview”, Department of Jewish History, Tel-Aviv University. p. 659 – 670. The Encyclopedia is also available online - http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/ (Accessed on March 31st, 2016). 13 Chabad is an acronym of the three Hebrew word chochma, bina and da’at, translated to wisdom, insight and knowledge. 14 “Collection of articles” in Hebrew.

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and Chassidic-inspired theological and mystical doctrines developed by the Chabad leadership

were weaved together with traditional Jewish values and traditions, requiring complete

observance and obedience to the Torah and the Halachic legislative significance.

This sense of obligation to a structure of concepts and values that were bequeathed from past tradition

is what gave Habad Hasidism the legitimization for the speculative, mystic daring, both contemplative

and spiritual, that it adopted in forming its religious consciousness and consolidating the elements of

the Hasidic worship of God.15

2.2 The classic Chassidic Chabadic theological-cosmological worldview

Chabad, as mentioned before, is a new Jewish, ultra-orthodox religious movement,

vigorously emphasizing the sanctity of the Torah16 and the importance of observing its

commandments. It also highlights the importance of Halacha and the adherence to Jewish law

with an unconditional commitment to traditional Jewish values. At the same time, Chabad

radically reinterprets the most fundamental Jewish religious concept based on Kabbalistic and

mystical influences within the existing structure of Jewish tradition.

The relation between God and the world, the connection between man and God, between the hidden

and the revealed, the meaning of divine will, the purpose of creation, the relation between being and

nothingness, the meaning of the worship of God, the significance of the mystical tradition, and the

examination of the limitations of human understanding in tract to the divine point of view – all these

are illuminated with a new light, reappraised according to new values, and examined according to

new criteria within the world of the tradition.17

In the center of the Chabad world-view is the perception of a dualistic, existential reality that

is dialectically in tandem with its two components. This mystical dualism is inferred from the

perception of the divine being as a composite of two opposites that are conceived as a dialectical

process comprising an entity and its opposite simultaneously; divine emanation/divine

contraction, unity/plurality, being (in chabadic term Yesh)/nothingness (Ayin). These opposite

aspects of reality are conditionally dialectical while simultaneously constituting the unity of

these opposites. The human sensory corporeal world, the Yesh, is dependent on the divine Ayin

for its vitality and substance. To complete this dualism, the divine Ayin, or the related Chabadic

term Ein-sof (the infinite and ineffable God), is in turn dependent on the existence of the Yesh

15 Elior, 1993, p. 23 16 The Pentateuch which includes the books of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Number and Deuteronomy. 17 Elior, 1993, p.23

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for his revelation. The infinite God, by means of contraction (in chabadic term tzimtzum), limits

the Yesh as a revealed expression of the divine Ein-sof. This can be described as a theosophical

approach since it relates to the concept of divine absolute unity to disunity and pluralism.18 The

Chabad developed a complete systematic theosophical system based on these notions. God, in

this rendition, longs to simultaneously become nothingness and being, and to have both a

transcendent and immanent essence. These tendencies of the divine will create a perspective

between the revealed physical aspect of this world and the hidden divine life-giving aspect of

the physical world. The divine Torah is then a manifestation or an emanation of the transcendent

in the world of the Yesh. The Chabadic strict adherence to the laws of the Torah and Halacha

can be understood as a means to draw the divine light into the realm of the lower indwelling

(dirah batachtonim, in chabadic terms) and reflects God’s will to reveal himself in our corporal

world. At the same time, the worship of God in prayer and spiritual concentration is related to

the divine will to annihilate itself by elevating the divine to its source and seeking personal

integration in the divine Ayin. The dualistic understanding of the Yesh and the Ayin led to the

Chabadic doctrine that regards the divine essence to be the only true reality in existence and to

the perception of material existence merely as an illusion, to be untrue and unreal in its nature.

Human experienced reality is nothing but an illusion in relation to the only true divine Ayin.

This understanding of the world as an illusion falsifies man’s sensory world and invalidates all

human empirical experiences. Elior writes that this religious outlook is based on an

epistemological paradox that constitutes the core of Chabad panentheistic a-cosmic

understanding of reality:

Man is called on to deny his sensory experience and his empirical knowledge and to embrace a form

of consciousness which maintains that everything is a single divine substance. He is called on to

believe that in truth the divine and the discernable are identical, and that anything which deviates from

that assumption is but a veil of illusion and a misleading result of sensory imagination or an outcome

of intellectual nearsightedness.19

Chabad followers’ study and contemplation on the inconsistency of the divine essence and

the physical reality paralleled with the inconsistency between the spiritual realm and the

material reality in its varied manifestation, is another Chabadic key concept – the communion

with God or dvekut, from the Hebrew word ‘to adhere’. This key concept finds it roots in the

new theological understanding which the Besht introduced in the 18th century. Dynner writes:

18 Elior, 1993, p. 26 19 Elior, 1993, p.51 f

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He [the Besht] formulated radically simplified mystical teachings to facilitate devekut […and]

developed an ecstatic prayer-centered regimen, and repudiated the strenuous asceticism of the old-

style mystics by arguing that one can serve God more effectively with a joyful countenance.20

The concept of dvekut in study, prayer and contemplation is one of the tools the Chabad

utilizes in the spiritual pursuit to reveal the blindness of the human sensory experience and to

achieve consciousness of the dual meaning of reality, which in essence is all but one – united

in its opposites. The Chabadic slogan “Ales is Got”, or everything is God, neatly summarizes

the theological and ideological Chabadic cosmology and world-view. If God is every single

thing, permeates every single place, is present in every single thought and written word, then

every human action or thought, however mundane, could in fact be a departure point for human

beings’ attempts to achieve communion with the omnificent God, regardless of social

boundaries and institutionalized limitations. Of course, some individuals were perceived to

have of a higher status in the pursuit of dvekot. These were the Chabadic authoritative,

charismatic leaders who received the prestigious title of tzaddik, a righteous man who sustains

the world by infusing it with divine vitality until the ushering of the final redemption. The

tzaddik, based on Kabbalistic symbolism, also signifies one of the ten manifestation or attributes

of divine emanations also known by the Kabbalistic term Sefirot21. These emanations were

brought about in the process of the tzimtzum, where the infinite God, the Ein-sof, withdraws in

order to simultaneously create the world and express himself within it. The divine infinite light

of the Ein-sof is channeled down to the created world through finite vessels or Sefirot, which

contain the infinite divine light and reduce it in order to allow the influx of the divine bounty

to flow from the higher Ein-sof to the lower materially created world. However, in the process

of creation, these vessels were unable to contain the divine light and broke – Shevirat Hakelim,

in Chabadic terms. This event created the need for a process of the restoration of the divine

infinite light, Tikkun in Chabadic terms. Nonetheless, the breakage of these vessels also gave

way to the Sitra Ahra, the forces of evil that tend to separate themselves from the divine and

undermine all aspects of the restorative tikkun. Furthermore, the divine infinite light was

shattered into divine sparks which are held captive by the klipot, the defiled shells that hold and

obscure these divine sparks. The infinite divinity of good is henceforward in a state of constant

battle with the forces of evil. Man is now obligated to assist the divine in this restoration of the

divine sparks from the defiled Klipot and to achieve victory for good over evil in order to

20 Dynner, 2006, p. 6 21 Dynner, 2006, p. 7

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complete the process of tikkun. The restoration of these divine sparks is conducted by a

mechanism that redeems them to their higher divine source – observance of legislative Torah

and the mitzvoth, and the acknowledgement of the divine in everyday human actions, i.e.

blessing of food, kosher meat slaughter and so on. In a way, man is a part of the restorative

creation process and his actions receive a cosmic meaning. This process of separation between

the evil and the good will ultimately lead to the inevitable victory of good over evil, simply in

that through every passing day, the divine sparks are released to their source by the believers.

Redemption, thus is dependent solely on the progressive removal of the powers of evil from the

infinite, berurim in Chabadic terms, and will culminate in the ushering of the messianic era. At

that time, after the victory of good over evil, the divine sparks and the divine manifestations in

the lower world will return to and unite with their divine infinite source. The material world

will come to an end and the divine immanence will unite with the infinite Ein-sof, which will

once again fill the created space with the infinite light.22

2.3 The historical road to Chabad’s Dirah Batachtonim doctrine

The Holocaust left the Chassidic movement of Eastern Europe shattered and all but

completely wiped out by Nazi-Germany. This disaster triggered a substantial crisis of faith. At

the time of the Second World War, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (henceforth the Rayatz)

was the master of the Chabad movement, because of the persecutions of the Russian communist

regime, had relocated its headquarters to Warsaw, Poland. Alon Dahan, lecturer of Jewish

thought at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, has done award-winning23 research on Chabad

and the Rebbe, which asserts that the new messianic impulse and the radical messianic

reinterpretation of its doctrine must be understood as a reaction to the destruction of the

European Jewry and the apparent absence of God in light of the Nazi atrocities across the

continent. The Rayatz and, later on, the Rebbe were able to escape Nazi controlled Europe to

the safety of the US. Both Rayatz and the Rebbe saw, experienced and conceived the Jewish

history as a lineal sequential chain of tragic events with short intermissions of respite that finally

culminated with the Holocaust.24 The Rayatz established the roots of 20th century Chabadic

messianic interpretation as a means of restoring faith to the Jewish people. The Rayatz

22 This overview of chabadic theology and cosmology is both simplified and by no means complete, nor does it encompass all element of the Chassidic/chabadic world-view, but is sufficient for the aim and purpose of this study. 23 Dahan was awarded 2007 the Hebrew University’s Max Schlomiuk prize for excellence in PhD research. 24 Dahan, Alon. The Final Redeemer: The Messianic Doctrine of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavicher Rebbe. Tel Aviv: Contento de Semrik, 2014, p. 35

9

perceived his tenure and mission as Chabad master to be for the restoration of the entire Jewish

people, regardless of geographical affiliation and restoration of the belief in Israel, the people

of the covenant, and their transcendent infinite God. The Rayatz, in word and action, meant to

prepare the material world for the imminent and complete redemption of the post-Holocaust

world.25 To his understanding, the unfathomable disaster of the holocaust could only be

followed by an equally miraculous and inexplicable divine redemption. By way of

parallelization, the Biblical Israelites’ diasporic existence as slaves in Egypt was necessary for

the redemptive actions of Moses.26

2.4 Rebbe – biographic notes

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (henceforward the Rebbe) was born on April 5th, 1902

in Nikolaev (present-day Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine) to the well renowned Chabadic

leadership family. He was the great-grandchild of his namesake, the third Chabad master also

known as Tzemach Tzedek27 (1831–1866), who was the grandchild of Chabad’s founder, the

Rashaz. Very little is known about the Rebbe’s childhood and adolescence, however it is clear

he did not traverse the traditional educational route a Chabadic youngster was expected to take

as a Yeshiva student. This fact was explained as the result of the Rebbe’s superior mind and his

exceptional autodidactic ability that allowed him to rapidly supersede his teachers in

knowledge. The Rebbe met the Rayatz in 1923 and became his disciple and confidant. Five

years later the Rebbe married the Rayatz’ daughter, Chaya Mushka Schneerson, in Warsaw,

Poland. After their marriage, the couple moved to Berlin, where the Rebbe attended secular

electrical engineering studies at the University of Berlin. In light of the Nazi rise to power, the

couple moved once again to Paris in 1933. After the Nazi invasion of France, the couple escaped

Europe and found refuge in the US in the summer of 1941, joining the Rayatz who had already

established Chabad in New York. After a prolonged illness, the Rayatz died in Brooklyn on

January 28th, 1950, with no sons. The Rebbe is described as the natural successor of the Rayatz

in the Chabadic literature, however, in reality, a successoral dispute arose between the Rebbe

and the oldest son-in-law of the Rayatz, Rabbi Shemaryahu Gurary. A year after the death of

the Rayatz28, the Rebbe accepted the presidency and leadership of Chabad by publishing his

theological article “Bati legani”, translated to ‘I came to my garden’, thus becoming the seventh

25 Dahan, 2014, p. 27 f 26 Dahan, 2014, p. 53 27 Shut Tzemach Tzedek was the name of the 3rd Chabad master’s main publication. 28 This period of time – one year or Yahrzeit, is the Jewish traditional mourning time for the deceased.

10

master of the Chabad movement. This was the starting point for the vast Chabadic missionary

expansion around the world. In 1992, the Rebbe suffered from a stroke that severely impaired

his ability to speak. Two years later, in 1994, the Rebbe died childless as a result of his illness

and old age, he was 92 years old. Since then, the death of the Rebbe has been called the Tamuz

3rd event by Chabad, in reference to the Jewish date of the Rebbe’s passing.29

From the time the Rebbe assumed the leadership of the Chabad movement until his death,

he, in word and action, developed a radical messianic systematic theology which asserted that

his generation was the transitional generation that would witness the complete redemption of

the world according to Lurianic Kabbala and Chassidic thought. Those beliefs also supported

the notion that the seventh master of Chabad as the leader and president of the generation (Nasi

Hador, in Chabadic terms) would be revealed as the long-awaited Messiah that will usher in

the messianic era, the transition from the world of Jewish diaspora to the redeemed world. This

messianic belief found a strong hold in the Chabadic movement, which began to see itself as

representing the entire world’s Jewry. The Rebbe himself, in his sermons and writings hinted

at his personal conviction, as will be shown below, that he indeed was the Messiah. The

contradiction between the reality of the death of the Rebbe on one hand and the messianic

expectations on the other created a cognitive dissonance and a rupture for the Chabad

movement.30

2.5 The upside-down Dirah batachtonim doctrine according to the Rebbe

It is important to recognize that the Rebbe’s messianic theology was distinctly unique and

constituted a radical new interpretation of the messianic redemption in the form of the mystic

dirah batachtonim doctrine. According to the Rebbe’s interpretation, the infinite God desires

an abode in the lower material realm. In this interpretation, God seeks to unite and reveal

himself in this material world without apocalyptically ending it. No longer does God seek the

unification and ionization of the created world in its higher divine realms of the infinite God,

but instead the infinite God and all his aspects becomes a tenant of sorts in this material world.31

The Torah, as the formative text written in Hebrew, is the solid foundation for which the

dirah batachtonim doctrine is based upon. Reality itself, with its empirical, ethical and

29 Dahan, 2014, p. 24–30 30 Dahan, Alon. The second coming of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson: the second coming of the Messiah in the Chabadic doctrine in the post-Rebbe era. Zehuyot, the interdisciplinary academic journal of Jewish Culture and Identity vol. 4 (2013): 73–90. p. 73–75 31 Dahan, 2014, p. 44 ff

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historical aspects is derived from the Hebrew letters that constitute the Torah. Those letters, in

turn, hold a tremendous divine power, well concealed within the Torah and which constitute

the Yesh in its entirety.32 The Torah does not describe historical events, but creates reality and

historical events. The 22 letters of the Hebrew language that comprise the Torah are by

themselves revelations and manifestations of the divine power that creates ‘somethingness’

(Yesh) out of nothingness (Ayin) in every given moment. The godhead and its infinite power is

revealed by the Hebrew letters and their combination. The student of the Torah thus becomes a

partner for the divine creator. He can, and indeed must, influence and draw the divine bounty

from the higher divine world to this lower dwelling of the material world. This influx of divine

bounty had been accumulated throughout the years and but was concealed during the time when

the Jews lived in the diaspora. Even the Chabadic contemplative ritualistic and mystical

negation of the self in order to ‘see’ the divine truth, bittul ha-Yesh in Chabadic terms, receives

a comprehensive reinterpretation which entails the mystical purification of this physical reality

in preparation for the union of the infinite God in this lower dwellings.33 No longer is the Yesh

nullified in order to perceive the only true Ayin, but is materialized of the spiritual Ayin in the

physical world of Yesh by drawing the divine to a unity that conserves the spiritual and material

dimensions without nullifying either dimension.34

It is important to notice that the dirah batachtonim doctrine already was described in the

Tanya. However, while the Rashaz ascribed only minor importance to this doctrine and its

eschatological consequence in an indefinite future, the Rebbe situated this doctrine at the heart

of his messianic interpretation of the doctrine.35

2.6 Identifying the Messiah according to Chabad

Dahan argues that the Chabadic notion that identifies the Rebbe as the final redeemer and

Messiah is correlated to the Malkhut (literally the ‘kingship’) Sefira36 which in classic Lurianic

Kabbala is identified with the Shechina, the indwelling of God on earth and the source of life

in the material world.37

32 Both Dahan and Scholem agrees that this perception of the creative power of the Torah is an expansion of the magical principle where knowledge of God’s names gives power and control to the mystic that then can be used for his purposes. See Scholem, Gershom. Elements of the Kabbalah and its symbolism. New York: Schocken Books 1965. p. 40–41. 33 Dahan, 2014, p. 51 34 Dahan, 2014, p. 95 35 Dahan, 2104 ,p. 51 36 Sefira is the Hebrew singular form of the plural Sefirot. 37 See Dahan, 2014, p. 315 and Elior, 1993, p. 226

12

It is important for this discussion to explain the significance of numbers and numerology,

especially the numbers 7 and 10. Chabad also interprets the Hebrew alphabet with a

numerological methodology called Gematria as mystical means to encode the secrets of the

Torah and for clarifying the identity of the Messiah.

The significance of the number 7 for identifying the Messiah is first introduced by the Rebbe

himself in his leadership acceptance article “Bati legani” a year after the death of the Rayatz.

In the article, the Rebbe argues that the material world, prior to original sin (Adam and Eve

eating the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge – Gen 3:1-21), was united with God. Due to

this original sin and mankind’s subsequent sins, a separation occurred between the divine and

the material reality. Seven tzaddiks, starting from the patriarch Abraham and finishing with

Biblical Moses, were needed to once again rectify the separation between the world and God.

Moses is perceived by Chabad as the first redeemer by accepting the divine Torah at Mt. Sinai.

These seven tzaddiks have been correlated with the Chabad masters through history, where the

Rebbe is the chronological seventh master of Chabad since its establishment. The Rebbe has

also, simply by being the seventh Chabad master Messiah and the final redeemer, concluded

Moses’ redemption by receiving the Torah. It is a deterministic approach that sees the Rebbe,

with necessity, to be the final redeemer and Messiah, simply because he is the seventh master

of Chabad in office during the seventh generation (in Chabadic terms, dor or “generation” is

equal to the lifespan and leadership of each of the Chabad’s masters through history).38

The significance of the number 10 for identifying the Messiah is correlated with the ten

Sefirot. The masters of the Chassidic movement as a whole, starting with the Besht, are

correlated with each of the ten Sefirot. Therefore, the tenth Chassidic master since Besht is

correlated with the tenth Malkhut-Sefira, thus making him, with deterministic necessity, the

Messiah39. However, a problem arises by counting the number of Chassidic masters since the

Besht. In fact, the Rebbe is not the tenth Chassidic master, but the ninth. The Rebbe was well

aware of this chronological problem and found a creative and revolutionary solution for this

conundrum. The Rebbe re-appoints the Rayatz to a postmortem leadership role over Chabad,

making him both the eighth and ninth Chassidic master, arguing the Rayatz to be the physical

manifestation of the highest divinity in the form of a human body40, while simultaneously

appointing himself as the tenth and final master of Chabad.41 The Rebbe assumed presidency,

38 Dahan, 2014, p. 327 ff 39 Dahan, 2014, p. 317 f 40 Dahan, 2014, p. 385 41 Dahan, 2014, p. 333–338

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it seems, as sort of an assisting role to the Rayatz, while true leadership of the Chabad was still

reserved for the late Rayatz. The Rebbe was careful to emphasize his view that the Rayatz did

not die in the clinical sense of the word, but was ‘withdrawn’ from the physical world and

ascended to the higher divine realms. The Rebbe was then the physical extension of the

‘withdrawn’ Rayatz and the tenth Chassidic master, thus making him the final redeeming

Messiah.42

2.7 Jewish interpretation of Chabad’s messianic claim

The eschatological framing of Chabad’s messianic theology is by no means accepted by

rabbinic orthodox Judaism, or by other Jewish congregations. As shown above, the messianic

self-proclaimed assertion of Chabad is not the first instance of a messianic revival movement

in European Jewish history. However, previous Jewish messianic movements in Europe ended

up in disappointment and failure, exposing the leaders of these movements to be false Messiahs.

The failure of these messianic and mystical Kabbalistic movements were clearly seen in

hindsight during the establishment of the Chassidic movement in the 17th century. Gershom

Scholem, widely regarded as the founder of the modern academic study of the Kabbalah, argues

that the Chassidic movement attempted to remove the messianic-apocalyptic edge of their

theology in order to prevent yet another messianic failure.

As far as I can see, Hasidism represents an attempt to preserve those elements of Kabbalism which

were capable of evoking a popular response, but stripped of their Messianic flavor to which they owed

their chief successes during the preceding period. That seems to me the main point. Hasidism tried to

eliminate the element of Messianism—with its dazzling but highly dangerous amalgamation of

mysticism and the apocalyptic mood—without renouncing the popular appeal of later Kabbalism.

Perhaps one should rather speak of a “neutralization” of the Messianic element.43

However, the messianic element in the Chassidic Chabadic theology was not completely

eradicated. While Dahan argues that the Rebbe indeed perceived himself to be the Messiah,

Elliot R. Wolfson, professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies at New York University (until 2014),

offers a different interpretation of the Chabadic messianic element. Wolfson argues that the

Rebbe sought out to achieve a complete redemption of the world by annulling the need for a

42 Dahan, 2014, p. 403–412. Dahan also in note 231 explores the personal implication of the unity between the Rebbe and the Rayatz while being married to the Rayatz daughter. Dahan speculates on the possibility of the Rebbe opting for an ascetic, sexually abstinent, lifestyle both to prevent a form of incest and to exclude the possibility of ever having own children. 43 Scholem, Gershom. Forwarded by Alter, Robert. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. New York: Schoken Books, 1995, p. 254

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personal Messiah and the hierarchy between the tzaddik, the mystic that channels the divine

influx and bounty to his disciples.

At the most extreme, one might be tempted to think of the eschatological drama as a cover-up, a

dogmatic cloak in which to envelop the truth that there is no Messiah for whom we must wait, the

cloak that lays bare the final divestiture of the cloak, the pretense of describing the end as the full

disclosure of the essence without any garment, a seeing of the divine light as it is manifest in the garb

of the material world, which (dis)appears, finally, to reveal its concealment.44

2.8 Theoretical framework – failed prophecies

Dahan, as showed above, argues that the clinical death of the Rebbe created a rapture and

cognitive dissonance between the Rebbe’s messianic claim and his unexpected death without

completing the final redemption of the world (see note 31).

Simon Dein, professor and lecturer in Spirituality, Religion and Health at Durham University

in the UK, and Lorne L. Dawson, professor at the University of Waterloo in Canada and a

scholar in the field of the sociology of religion, argue that a significant part of the Chabad

community reinterpreted the reality of the Rebbe’s clinical death and its disappointment with

the unfulfilled messianic claim in a more meaningful and hopeful manner.45 Dein and Dawson

claim that the factors determining whether groups survive failed prophecies, in the Chabadic

case, identifying the Rebbe as the last redeemer and Messiah, can be systematically analyzed

and argued that

[…]the survival of groups convulsed by the failure of prophecy is the result of identifiable factors

working in tandem: (1) the ways in which the prophetic milieu is prepared, (2) the nature and extent

of the preparatory activities people engage in, (3) the nature, speed, and thoroughness of the response

of group leaders to failed prophecy, and (4) the level of social support available for those who remain

faithful to the group after a prophecy is discredited.46

Dein and Dawson argue that the Chabadic failed prophecy created two antagonistic factions;

a messianic and a non-messianic faction. In their Article “The ‘Scandal’ of the Lubavitch

Rebbe: Messianism as a Response to Failed Prophecy” they identify five more subtle

44 Wolfson, R. Elliot. Open Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and the Mystical Revision of Menahem Mendel Schneerson. New York: Colombia University press, 2009. p. 248 45 Dein, Simon & Dawson, L. Lorne. The ‘Scandal’ of the Lubavitch Rebbe: Messianism as a Response to Failed Prophecy. Journal of Contemporary Religion 23:2 (2008): 163–180, p. 163 f 46 Dein, Simon & Dawson, L. Lorne, p.164

15

typological factions, each signifies an increased spiritualization and rationalization of the death

of the Rebbe:

1. “The Rebbe is not Messiah, but he could have been, if God had willed it.” – Those who

claim the Rebbe had all the qualities of a Messiah and see the death of the Rebbe as a divine

test of faith or that they have themselves misinterpret the Rebbe’s words.

2. “The Rebbe is Messiah and he is dead, but he will be resurrected.” – Those who maintain

that the Rebbe will return for the redemption and base that assertion on Talmudic and Jewish

sages who predicted that the Messiah will die prior to his resurrection and complete

redemption.

3. “The Rebbe is Messiah and he is dead, but having lost his physical body he now has an

even greater presence in this world.” – Those who argue that the Rebbe, after losing his

physical body, is indeed more powerful and will usher forth the redemption.

4. “The Rebbe is Messiah and he has never died.” – Dain and Dawson make a distinction in

this category between those who are aware that the Rebbe is not alive in the literal sense

and those who claim that the classic definition of death does not apply to the Rebbe and

holds him to be alive in the literal sense by frequently using the Hebrew phrase yechi, and

he lives, to designate the Rebbe.

5. “The Rebbe is God, so it is meaningless to speak of his death.” – Those who hold the Rebbe

to be God incarnated and incorporated the term boreinu, our creator, into the yechi phrase.

As such he is worshiped by those believers.47

2.9 Chabad publications and online presence

The scope of Chabad’s printed and online literary corpus is simply mind-boggling when

considering that it is the intellectual production of a small Jewish new religious movement. The

Chabad core literature consists of many multi-volume book series covering everything from the

Rebbe’s articles and sermons to his private and public correspondences. Igrot Hakodesh, or

Holy letters, for instance, is a 26 volume book-series documenting the Rebbe’s letters and

proclamations throughout the years. The Chabadic literary corpus has continued to steadily

grow, especially after the death of the Rebbe, focusing in part on the question of the movement’s

messianic theology.

Chabad’s prolific productivity finds its roots in one of the few documented writings of the

Besht where he describes a mystical ascendance to the Hall of the Messiah and where the Besht

47 Dein, Simon & Dawson, L. Lorne, p. 168 f

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asks the Messiah when he will come to redeem the world. The Messiahs answered “I cannot

say, however, you will know the time of my arrival as the time when your knowledge of me

will be published and discovered in the world, Vayafotzu mahayanoteicha hachutza in Chabadic

terms or ‘when your fountains will flow outwards’, then redemption will arrive. In this short

text a new condition for the ushering of the messianic redemptive era is introduced – the

discovery and publication of the Kabbalistic inspired theological secret of divinity and the

world is a prerequisite for redemption.48 One cannot accentuate enough the importance of this

‘spreading the good word’ doctrine as illustrated by this dramatic event of 1982 when the Israeli

military invaded Beirut, Lebanon:

In recognition of Moshiach’s imminent arrival, the Rebbe instructed that the primary book of Chabad

Hasidus, the Tanya, be published and learned in as many countries and cities as possible […] through

the teachings of the Tanya reaching all parts of the world the revelation of Moshiach would be

hastened […] One interesting example is the Tanya that was printed in Beirut, Lebanon! This

happened when Israel captured parts of Beirut during an operation to eradicate the enemy. The

'Chabadniks' came in with their printing press on wheels and printed the Tanya.49

Chabad’s modern online presence is just as impressive as its printed counterpart. The online

library at www.chabadlibrary.com contains more than 250,000 books and literary sources in

Hebrew, English and many other languages50. Since the Rebbe’s death, the pace of online

publications and the creation of new apps and other digital tools seems to be steadily increasing.

Sharrona Pearl, Assistant Professor of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania,

explains in her article “Exceptions to the Rule: Chabad-Lubavich Digital Sphere”:

Schneerson’s [the Rebbe] presence from beyond the grave continues to mark all aspects of the Chabad

media empire from video footage of his talks to photo montages and major billboards of his image.

In addition to the Rebbe-specific interventions designed to bring the Rebbe’s charisma into people’s

lives, the major thrust of Chabad media is [to] enroll audiences into momentary practice and further

exploration and experience.51

48 Dahan, 2014, p. 243 f 49 Dahan, 2014, p. 247, note 27 50 http://chabadlibrary.org/ (accessed April 6th, 2016) 51 Pearl, Sharrona. Exceptions to the Rule: Chabad-Lubavich and the Digital Sphere., Journal of Media and Religion, 13:3 (2014): 123–137. p. 133

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3. Method

In this section I will present the material used in this study as well as the procedure

implemented for the selection process of the enormous amount of publications available online.

In addition, I will discuss the reliability of the material that is presented.

3.1 Document analysis

Grace Davie and David Wyatt52 argue that personal and public documents are an excellent

source for attitudes and social values in the study of religion. These documents provide insight

into people’s lives, thoughts, beliefs and practices. Publically available and official documents

may provide an insight into social trends in a related and specific point in history. Furthermore,

electronic resources offer the researcher new approaches in the document analysis

methodology. Documents, printed or digital, should be considered for their content, context,

production and function in society. Documents are produce by their creators in a specific socio-

historical context for an intended audience, often painting a picture of the authors’

understandings of reality and theological doctrine. By defining ‘document’ as text-based

sources on both paper and computer screen, Davie and Wyatt focus on documents unsolicited

by the researcher and therefore independent from the research itself as unobtrusive measures.

These measures help the researcher to consider documents beyond their content alone and can

establish a relationship between documents. By citing the French philosopher and historian of

ideas, Michel Foucault, Davie and Wyatt assert that documents must be understood in terms of

time and place as their ‘condition of existence’, as they present an image of reality that is

specific to, and situated within, a socio-historic context.53 Therefore, document analysis

involves the analysis of the documents’ content while considering their production, use and

function within a specific socio-historic context.

While using this methodology, the researcher should consider the following question in

relation to chosen documents:

• Where did the documents come from?

• Who produced the documents? For what purpose/function were the documents

produced?

• How did the documents come to be in my possession and were they solicited by me?

52 Davie, Grace & Wyatt David. Document Analysis. In The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion, Stausberg, Michael & Engler, Steven (Ed.). New York: Routledge, 2011. p. 151 f 53 Davie, Grace & Wyatt David. Document Analysis, p. 152 f

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• Who is the intended audience?

• What is the historical context of the documents?

• How do the documents relate to each other (if at all)?

I will address these questions while discussing the material this study is based upon.

3.2 Hermeneutics

The documents this study is based upon are open for interpretation by their intended

audience and other readers. These documents are the source material of the hermeneutic

methodology that aims to understand their meanings. Ingvild Saelid Gilhus argues that

hermeneutics as an interpretive tool consists of a reading that moves back and forth between

parts and the whole of the text, between structure and meaning, between the text and its context

and between the reader’s horizon and the text’s horizon in an ever evolving hermeneutical circle

where each interpretation adds new layers of meaning and understanding to the interpreted

text.54 The hermeneutic approach is therefore characterized as dialogical based on the

continuous exchange between me and my source material. Gilhus, by citing the German

philosopher Hans-Georg Gadamer, suggests that interpreters are situated in a historical and

cultural context themselves and approach texts with their own prejudices.55 The implication of

Gadamer’s insight is that source material can be interpreted in a variety of ways. In that respect,

hermeneutical interpretation is never strictly objective and instead should be understood in a

theoretical reflexive way.56 My own personal background and context must be taken into

account while hermeneutically interpreting my source material. I was born and raised into

orthodox Judaism in Israel during the 1970s. As an adult I moved to Sweden, starting a family

and becoming a citizen. I consider myself to be a secular Swedish citizen, but ethnically as a

non-observing member of the world’s Jewry. Chabad, in my context while living in Israel, was

never a part of my life, but I was aware of the movement’s existence. Since January 2014, I’ve

been studying theology, mainly Christian theology, in Umeå University. However, I have no

intention to convert or adhere to the Christian faith. The fact that I was raised in Israel has some

advantages for this study. My knowledge of the Hebrew language is at a mother-tongue level,

which all my source material is written in. Furthermore, my cultural ‘insider’ perspective

enables me to interpret my source material’s cultural and socio-historical context, which for the

54 Gilhus, Saelid Ingvild. Hermeneutics. In The Routledge Handbook of Research Methods in the Study of Religion, Stausberg, Michael & Engler, Steven (Ed.). New York: Routledge, 2011. p. 276 f 55 Gilhus, 2011, Hermeneutics, p. 280 56 Gilhus, 2011, Hermeneutics, p. 281

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most part, is similar to my own cultural Jewish context. My secular context could be a

disadvantage for this study, however. By diligently taking this fact into account while

hermeneutically interpreting my source material, I will reflect on the dialogical aspect of this

methodology between my horizon of understanding and the questions I pose upon my chosen

source material.

3.3 Material

By describing my chosen source material, I will also attend to some of the general

considerations raised in document analysis methodology. Other document-analytic

consideration will be discussed in the result section of this study.

All the documents that are included in this study are available online in the diverse digital

presence which mostly Israeli Chabad-followers are responsible for. All documents are

produced by Chabadic congregations in Israel and the US. I came to have access to these

documents, simply by researching online Chabadic digital resources. None of the documents

were in any way solicited by me. The intended audience for these documents are Hebrew-

reading Jews in Israel and around the world and are utilized as a means of argumentations in

the Chabadic internal discourse regarding the Rebbe. I find it unlikely that these documents are

intended for a non-Jewish audience. All documents are produced and published after the

Rebbe’s death 1994 and I endeavored to find documents that could shed light on opposing

Chabadic approaches to the question of the Rebbe’s messianism. The documents relate to each

other as being part of this Chabadic internal discussion.

The chosen material which constitutes the source for this study can be divided into 4

subcategories:

3.3.1 Psakei din57 – while the Torah and its commandments are an absolute given, the Halacha

represents an ever developing process of renewal, interpretation and religious legislative

adjustment to the passage of time. The Torah, for instance, forbids Jews starting a fire during

the Shabbat. It says nothing about the usage of electricity during the Shabbat. Rabbinical

orthodoxy deemed it theologically fit to ban the general usage of electricity in Shabbat.

Adherence to these Halachic rulings may vary between Jewish denominations. These

documents are available online in Chabad’s own wiki in Hebrew (Chabadpedia58), on a

57 Hebrew word in plural form that literally means verdict, judgment or ruling. The singular form of the word ‘Psak din’ will also be used in this study. 58 http://chabadpedia.co.il/ (Accessed May 2nd, 2016)

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dedicated Chabadic site59 and on the haGeula’s site60, operated by the Chabadic ‘association

for the true and complete redemption’. These documents serve two purposes. In accordance

with the Chabadic doctrines above, these documents serve a theological and magical purpose

by using the Hebrew alphabet to force, in a sense, God to implement the content of the

documents in the material world, i.e. confirming the Rebbe as being the Messiah. These

documents are also used within the Jewish cultural context as law-binding legislations for

Chabad-followers.

3.3.2 Chabadic tractates – After the Rebbe’s death, a rapidly growing amount of literature has

been published which attempts to theologically explain the ‘Tamuz 3rd event’.

3.3.2.1 Yechi Hamelech Hamashiach (‘long live the King Messiah’) – a 141-page tract that

eagerly argues that the Rebbe is the Messiah on diverse theological and Kabbalistic sources and

represents the messianic faction of Chabad. Published 2005/2006 by the Torato shel mashiach

(‘the teachings of the Messiah’) institute, in Bnei Brak, and is Israel and available online.61

3.3.2.2 Hanekuda Hachabadit (‘the Chabadic point’) – a 64-page tractate that represents the

non-messianic faction and discusses the question of the Rebbe’s messianic claim. Published

2004 by Haderech HaYeshara (‘the straight road’) in Kfar Chabad, the Chabadic headquarters

in Israel and edited by Rabbi Menachem Brod, the official spokesperson of the Chabad

movement in Israel. The tractate is available online at Chabad’s official Israeli site.62

3.3.3 Sichat Hageula (‘redemption conversations’) – a weekly pamphlet, 4 pages each, that has

been published since 1994 by “The Association for the true and complete redemption”, led by

Rabbi Zemroni Zelig Tzik, also the head of the Chabad center in Bat-Yam, Israel. The pamphlet

is distributed to synagogues and Chabad centers in Israel and the US and is available online.63

It is a common belief of the messianic faction of Chabad that the ‘Tamuz 3rd event’ has

historical precedence, namely interpretation of Genesis 49:33 regarding the patriarch Jacob’s

59 http://www.psakdin.net (Accessed May 2nd, 2016) 60 http://hageula.com/moshiach (Accessed May 2nd, 2016) 61 http://chabadpedia.co.il/index.php/יחי_המלך_המשיח_(קובץ) (Accessed May 2nd, 2016) 62 http://www.chabad.org.il/Articles/Article.asp?CategoryID=287&ArticleID=850 (Accessed May 2nd, 2016) 63 http://www.torah4blind.org/archives/sg-arcindex.htm (Accessed May 2nd, 2016)

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death.64 Based on this, I chose to read the issues of Sichat Hageula that were printed in

correspondence with the parahsa, the weekly Torah portion read in synagogues, that includes

Gen 49:33. Every parasha has a name, often the first word in the portion of the Torah to be

read. The parasha in question is Vayechi (and he lives). In this study, I have read and analyzed

every Vayechi issue of Sichat Hageula from 1998 until 2015.

3.3.4 Beit Mashiach (House of the Messiah) – a 64-page (sometimes more) weekly magazine

published since 1994 as a result of a secession of sorts from the official Chabadic weekly

magazine Shvuon Kfar Chabad (‘Kfar Chabad weekly’). The magazine is published by the “the

Chabad World center for receiving/welcoming the Messiah” 65, led by Menachem Mendel

Hendel. The Magazine is available online.66

I chose to read and analyze 2 main issues of Beit Mashiach based on thematic selection

process: Issue #838 (June 22nd, 2012) commemorates the 18th anniversary of the ‘Tamuz 3rd

event’ and that includes editorials from 18 prominent Chabadic Rabbis depicting their view of

the Rebbe under the rubric “And now he lives and exists”. Also, issue #1000 (December 18th,

2015) celebrates the magazine’s 1000th issue, and discusses in length the current belief in the

Rebbe as the Messiah and interviews high ranking officials and Rabbis within the movement.

3.4 Procedure

Based on previous research, theory and methodology and by utilizing the hermeneutical

interpretive perspective on my source material, I attempted to identify and describe the

theological interpretive tools Chabad-followers utilize in order to ‘survive’ as a group the

cognitive dissonance the Rebbe’s clinical death in 1994 caused to the notion that he is the final

redeemer and Messiah. By utilizing the hermeneutical circle and by carefully and diligently

reading my source material, I have gained a hermeneutical interpretive insight based on a

reading that moves back and forth between parts of the texts and the texts as a whole and

between the documents’ socio-historical and cultural contexts and their intended audience and

my own socio-historical and cultural bias.

64 See http://chabadworld.net/page.asp?pageID=%7B321C053A-90A9-45CA-8391-7039C9E826E7%7D&displayAll=1 and http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1730051/jewish/Jacob-Our-Father-Did-Not-Die.htm (Both accessed May 2nd, 2016) 65 http://www.chabadworld.net (Accessed April 6th, 2016) 66 http://beismoshiachmagazine.org/hebrew-archives/ (Accessed April 6th, 2016)

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In this process I found discrepancies between the currently held academic understanding of

the movement as being split into messianic and non-messianic factions and the image of a

united and messianic movement that only differs in theological hermeneutical interpretations

for maintaining the belief in the Rebbe as Messiah. I will further elaborate these discrepancies

in the result and discussion segments of this study.

3.5 Validity and reliability

Since there are no known demographic figures of the Chabad movement as a whole or the

proportional part of the whole who see the Rebbe as the Messiah, it is hard to ascertain with

absolute certainty, how comprehensive the belief in the Rebbe as Messiah is within Chabad.

This study focuses mainly on the movement’s messianic faction, which indeed seems to be the

predominant stream of Chabadic thought.

Other methods of research were considered for this study; such as discourse analysis

methodology. However, due to the theological nature of this study coupled with the fact that

the source material described below are Chabadic documents, I finally chose the hermeneutics

and document analysis methodologies as the most applicable methodological choices for the

task in hand.

This study is by no means to be regarded as objective in the term’s strictest sense. Instead,

by being well aware of my hermeneutical interpretive bias simply due to my background and

personal beliefs developed throughout my studies, I will theoretically and reflexively ensure

the validity of my research, according to Gilhus. “We are on the right track when we think that

everything that is said in the text is taken into account and that the different parts of the

interpretation are consistent with each other and with what we already know”.67

67 Gilhus, 2011, Hermeneutics. p. 278 f

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4. Results and discussion

In this section I will present the results of the study, based on hermeneutical analysis of the

selected material (see section 3.3 Material) and in relation to this study’s aim – to ascertain

what kind of theological interpretive tools Chabad-followers utilize in order to ‘survive’ as a

group in light of the cognitive dissonance the Rebbe’s clinical death in 1994 caused to the

notion of him as the final redeemer and Messiah.

4.1 Original psak din

The first Halachic ruling identifying the Rebbe as the long-awaited Messiah was already being

drafted during his lifetime. In 1990, a small group of Israeli Chabadic Rabbis drafted the very

first psak din assigning the Rebbe to be the Messiah and last redeemer. The Rebbe made several

references in sermons and articles to the initial draft of the pask din, just before he suffered

from a debilitating stroke in 1992. In fact, these references are used as an introductory part of

the published psak din. It is noticeable that the phrase ‘in reality’ appears several times in

relation to the proclamation of him as the Messiah in the psak din, based on the Hebrew word

mamash. This word serves a double purpose; one is to be understood literally as ‘in reality’.

However, it also represents the Rebbe’s acronym – Menachem Mendel Schneerson, thus

creating a linguistic link between himself and the existence of a living Messiah in the material

world.

In 2004, after years of discussions, more than 300 rabbinical leaders world-wide, within and

outside of Chabad, including the two chief Rabbis of Israel68, signed this original psak din,

declaring the Rebbe to be a true prophet of our times. The Rebbe, they asserted, had foretold

events of the Israeli-Arab Six-Day War 1967 and later also assured the Israeli Jewry that no

chemical weapons will be fired upon Israel during the Gulf war in 1991.69 As a true prophet,

they argue that the Rebbe must also be considered to be the Messiah. Theologically, the psak

din clearly accepts the notion of the Rebbe perceiving himself to be the prophetic Messiah, but

also makes theological references to Moses Maimonides, or the Rambam, the Jewish

philosopher, scholar and physician (1135–1204) who wrote commentary on the Mishna, the

68 The religious rabbinic authority has two chief rabbis; one leading the Ashkenazi Jewry and the other leads the Sephardi Jewry. See also Dahan, 2014, p. 101 69 The Six-Day War in 1967 between Israel and its Arabic neighbor states resulted in the occupation of the west bank, Gaza strip, Sinai Peninsula and the Golan Heights. The Gulf war in 1991 refers to the American led coalition that liberated Kuwait from Iraqi occupation and that led to the shooting of so called Iraqi Scud-missiles on Israeli cities with the threat of using chemical weaponry.

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collected Jewish oral laws that resulted in his book “Mishneh Torah” (‘The Torah Reviewed’).70

This book clarifies the some of the theological means to identify the true Messiah. The psak din

refers to three Halachic rulings of importance for the identification of the Messiah, based on

the Rambam’s text:

Any prophet that will arise and say that God sent him is not obliged to perform a sign that involves a

change in the natural order like the signs of Moshe [Moses] our teacher or of Eliyahu or of Elisha [the

prophets]. His sign is rather to tell us events that will happen in the future, and his prediction will be

proven […] Even if a small detail [of the prophecies] doesn't happen, we know that he is a false

prophet, and if all the events come to pass, we believe him.

Mishneh Torah, Chapter 971

The Rebbe does not have to show himself to be a miracle worker, Chabad reiterates. He is

the Messiah solely by prophesizing events that, with the passage of time, have been proven.

This psak din is the theological cornerstone for the Chabadic identification of the Rebbe as

Messiah. The dirah batachtonim doctrine becomes apparent in this psak din, originally written

in Hebrew. By means of publishing the psak din with the magical power of the Hebrew

alphabet, the Rabbis that signed the document in the material world are exerting authority over

the divine, thus attempting to force God to comply with the Rebbe’s messianic claim.

Inherently, this psak din is concluded with the words “The Rebbe, King Messiah will be

revealed to us imminently mamash”.

4.2 Newly revised psak din

Initially I was only aware of the existence of the original psak din, but to my surprise I have

found a newly published72 Halachic ruling submitted online by “The Association for the true

and complete redemption”. This revised Psak din was published online on March 1st, 2016 and

includes both an introductory part, discussing theological understanding of the Messiah, and a

legislative Halachic ruling.

We [the Rabbis who signed the psak din] must proclaim and publish that according to the true reality

formed by the Torah, the Rebbe King Messiah lives and exists in a physical, material body in this

70 "Moses Maimonides". Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2016. http://global.britannica.com.proxy.ub.umu.se/biography/Moses-Maimonides (accessed April 13th, 2016) 71http://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Foundations_of_the_Torah.10?lang=en&layout=lines&sidebarLang=all (accessed April 13th, 2016) 72 http://hageula.com/moshiach/psak/15129.htm (accessed April 13th, 2016). This is the same association that publishes the source material “Sichat Hageula”.

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world and we can simply not hide this truth. […we] dement from God at all times to comply with the

nation of Israel’s request “and he shell redeem us again soon” […] and there should be a revelation of

of His Holiness Admor Shalita73 […]right now and in reality [mamash]74.

The 88 Rabbis that signed this psak din base their theological argumentation mainly on

Talmudic sources and the Rebbe’s own texts dealing with the Messiah and his duties of

redemption. They cite Rabbi Bahya ben Asher (1255–1340) or Rabbeinu Behaye, a Jewish

scholar who utilized the Kabbalah as an exegetic interpretive tool for understanding the Torah.

According to the revised psak din, Rabbeinu Behaye wrote “Messiah, son of David, will have

no death, but he will have eternal life” and “The future redeemer will be revealed and then

concealed”, thus advocating their belief that the Messiah can conceal himself for a time after

being revealed. They also maintain the argument that the patriarch Jacob never died as ‘proof’

of possible concealment of a great religious leader.

It is difficult to ascertain how widespread and theologically accepted this revised psak din is

within Chabad, primarily due to its temporal novelty. The theological argumentation presented

is brief and unsystematically organized. The theological argumentation is also written in a way

that is hard to penetrate without knowledge of Talmudic and Kabbalistic text and their

interpretation, thus suggesting the intended audience of this document to be either Chabad

members or external religiously educated Jews. I highly doubt the authors of this document

intended it to be read outside Judaism and indeed, unlike the original psak din, this revised

equivalent is not translated into any other languages, at least up to the time this study was

published.

4.3 Chabadic tractates

As mentioned previously, Chabadic tractates, often written in Hebrew, constitute a rapidly

growing amount of literature which attempts to theologically explain the ‘Tamuz 3rd event’, as

the clinical death of the Rebbe is referred to.

4.3.1 Yechi Hamelech Hamashiach (‘long live the King Messiah’)

The Yechi tractate aims to expound and elaborate on the subject of the Rebbe as the living

redeeming Messiah by means of theological argumentation. It starts by declaring that the

meaning of the world (haolam), which was created in a way that concealed (ha’alem) its creator,

73 Admor is a Hebrew acronym for ’our master, our teacher and our Rebbe’. Shalita is an acronym for ’May he live a good and long life, Amen’ 74 Own translation and italics.

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is messianic redemption ushered into the world in the end-of-days. The tractate discusses

theological sources for the belief that the Messiah will reveal himself in the diaspora and

interprets the Talmudic text Sanhedrin 98:2 as saying that the Messiah is sitting by “the gates

of Rome”75, the mightiest political power of its time. In our time, the US can be considered as

the mightiest political power of our time, hence the tractate concludes that the Messiah will be

revealed in the US. Right from the outset, the tractate theologically refers to the Rambam76 for

motivating the belief in the Rebbe as the Messiah and argues this truth to be valid in our days.

The Rambam’s criteria for identifying the true Messiah are:

1. The Messiah, first and foremost, must be from the biblical house of David,

2. The Messiah must befit the laws of the Torah and fulfil its commandments,

3. The Messiah must compel all of Israel to follow the Torah and mitzvoth, and must

strengthen it diligently,

4. The Messiah must fight the wars of God in the literal violent sense of the word ‘war’,

and defeat all surrounding nations,

5. The Messiah must build the third Holy Temple in Jerusalem and finally,

6. The Messiah must gather all the scattered remnants of Israel in the diaspora.

The tractate seems to be almost obsessed with attempting to correspond these criteria with

claims that all Chabad masters, the Rebbe included, are decedents of the house of David. The

second criterion is also fulfilled by describing the Rebbe as spending all his life studying the

Torah, despite the many obligations his leadership required. The third criterion, to compel all

of Israel to follow the Torah and mitzvoth, according to the tractates, is manifested by the

extensive world-wide missionary network of the Shluchim, the Chabad emissaries that work for

spreading Chabadic theology. The Rebbe’s reintroduction of lost Jewish traditions such as

eating the fruit of the Carob tree, St. John’s bread, during the yearly Jewish agricultural holiday

Tu Bishvat, is held to be proof of the Rebbe’s work for diligently strengthening the Mitzvoth.

The tractate considers in tandem, criteria 4 and 6, i.e. the Messiah fighting God’s wars,

defeating all surrounding nations and the gathering of the scattered remnants of Israel in the

diaspora. Perhaps the most impressive ‘victory of nations’ could be the American “Education

and Sharing Day” which was inaugurated by the US congress to honor the Rebbe’s efforts for

education and sharing for Jews and non-Jews alike. It is celebrated on Nisan 11th, the Rebbe’s

75 http://midreshet.org.il/ResourcesView.aspx?id=19534 (accessed April 13th, 2016) 76 Rambam’s Mishneh Torah, Kings and Wars 11:4 http://www.sefaria.org/Mishneh_Torah,_Kings_and_Wars.11.4?lang=he-en&layout=heLeft&sidebarLang=all (accessed April 13th, 2016)

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birthday (usually in April each year). On April 18th, 2016, President Barack Obama proclaimed

this day by writing:

Today, we pay special tribute to Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, for

his tireless devotion to extending access to education to more people -- regardless of their gender or

background. […] On this day, let us carry forward the Rebbe's legacy by recognizing the limitless

potential of each young person and empowering the next generation to lead our country, and our

world, toward an ever brighter tomorrow.77

The Messiah is also required to build the third Holy Temple in Jerusalem, in the area that is

the flashpoint of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Of course, no such Temple exists and Chabad

employ a creative theological interpretation for this criterion. The tractate clearly states that the

Rebbe revealed himself to be the Messiah during the Jewish year 5751.78 In the Rebbe’s

sermons and published litterateur during this inaugural messianic year, the Rebbe clarified how

he in fact built a suitable substitute for the Temple in Jerusalem. Chabad notices that when

transcribed into Yiddish, in Jewish numerological terms79, the numeric value of the Rebbe’s

house in Brooklyn, ‘770 Eastern Parkway’, is exactly the same as the Hebrew phrase Beit

Mashicah, ‘House of Messiah’, where the Rebbe declared his messianic redemption.

The Rebbe’s death is dealt with in the tractate in a systematic theological manner. The

tractate begins its reasoning on the subject by stating that the kingship of the house of David is

like the moon – sometimes revealed, other times concealed. After the Rebbe’s revelation of the

King Messiah, the “Tamuz 3rd event” conceals the Rebbe from our eyes. Again, the parallel is

drawn between Moses as the first redeemer and the Rebbe as the final redeemer. Before Moses

redeemed the nation of Israel from the Egyptian slavery, Moses was concealed in Midian (Ex

2:15). The concealment of the Rebbe is thus a divine test of faith. The tractate retells one of the

Rebbe’s stories of the patriarch Abraham’s journey with Isaac as a divine test of Abraham’s

faith where he was asked to sacrifice Isaac to God (Gen 22:1–15). The devil, in this Rebbe’s

version, created a great river in the path of Abraham’s journey. While entering the dangerous

river, Abraham called out to God in despair and the river disappeared. These obstacles, or tests

of faith, are not real in either the spiritual realms or in the material world and should be ignored,

the tractate insists. Our Rebbe King Messiah lives eternally, his eternal soul is in fact the very

77 https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/04/18/presidential-proclamation-education-and-sharing-day-usa-2016 (accessed April 20th, 2016) 78 5751 started September 20th, 1990 and ended September 8th, 1991 79 Jewish numerology or Gemateria, attribute a numerical value for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. By adding the numerical value in each letter in a word or a phrase, a total numerical value can be calculated and related to other words or phrases based on their respective numerical values.

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same soul of the first redeemer, Moses, and which in each generation has been embodied in

each president of the generation (Nasi Hador). The theological formula is clear: ‘the Rebbe is

Moses, the first redeemer – Moses is the Torah – the Torah is an eternal, unchangeable Truth

and thus the Rebbe is the last redeemer, as the embodiment of the Messiah’s eternal soul has

become eternal in this material world. True to the Chassidic theology that sees the Torah as the

source of the created world, the tractate maintains that our inability to see the living Rebbe is

nothing but an illusion; the Rebbe king Messiah eternally lives in a physical body, in our world

and our time.

As an addendum to the tractate, the authors discuss the Chabadic common practice of

communicating with the Rebbe for advice, guidance or support by writing a letter to him and

randomly inserting it into one of the 26 book volumes of his Igrot Hakodesh book-series. By

opening and reading the page randomly selected, a direct and prophetic answer from the Rebbe

is given within the page’s text. Or, as the tractate expresses – “The Shepard does not leave his

flock”80, he is always, even in his current concealed form, approachable and reachable for his

congregation.

4.3.2 Hanekuda Hachabadit (‘the Chabadic point’)

This tractate was published in 2004 close shortly after the original psak din, discussed above.

The editor in chief of this tractate is Rabbi Menachem Brod, the official spokesperson of the

Chabad youth movement in Israel and a columnist in the Chabad Israel’s official magazine

‘Kfar Chabad’. The tractate also claims to have been approved by Rabbi Yitzhak Yehuda

Jaruselvski, the general secretary of the rabbinic board of Chabad in Israel. The tractate states

that our times of concealment which created division of ideas and opinions can be resolved by

constricting ourselves to the methods of adhering to the Rebbe as he had thought us. The

tractate’s point of theological departure is the image of the Sheppard who does not abandon his

flock, though in a different context than in the Yechi tractate. Here, the theological reasoning

refers to the Torah and to the Rebbe’s texts dealing with the Rayatz’ life and death. Generally,

both tractates deem the terms ‘death’ or ‘died’ in regards to the Rebbe as outrageous. Instead,

it refers to the clinical deaths of Rayatz and Rebbe as histalkut, which can be understood as

withdrawal. This histalkut is not to be understood as a form of removal. The tractate assures the

reader that the Rebbe is still with us. In fact, he still is Nasi Hador, the president of our

80 Compare with Isaiah 40:11 and the Gospel of John 10:11 where Jesus depicts himself as – ”I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” (NIV)

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generation, but now in a higher realm with increased ability to influence the divine and draw

its influx to our world. One of the tractate’s theological cornerstones is the Rebbe’s home at

770 Eastern Parkway as ‘the Holy Zion’ in the diaspora. It highlights and encourages frequent

pilgrimage to this Holy Zion in Brooklyn as means to adhere in dvekut to the Rebbe in his

current state.

Every Chassid traveling to the Rebbe knows, that despite the importance and wondrous discoveries

that can be found in holy congregations, prayers, conferences and other holy occasions, the pinnacle

of the travelling experience is the entrance to the Rebbe’s Holy room, where the traveler stands face

to face with Holiness […] Simply put, when one walks to the tabernacle [in Brooklyn] - one walks to

the Rebbe. When one enters the Holy Zion – one enters the place where the Rebbe is in the material

world. When one stands there – one stands before him, exactly as one stood there when entering the

Rebbe’s Holy room…Walking [as in traveling] to tabernacle is an expression of the Chassid’s natural

emotion of longing to approach the Rebbe in the place the Rebbe exists in his Holy body in

corporality.81

Furthermore, the tractate clearly articulates a hope and belief in the imminent mamash

resurrection of the dead, with the Rebbe as their leader. “There is no doubt that this sentiment

is greatly accentuated when one stands in the place where he is and where the resurrections will

commence and complete the true redemption.”82 By means of exegetical interpretation of the

Rebbe’s literature, the tractate indicates that the life of the tzaddik is a spiritual one and

continues after his histalkut. However, there are some differences in how the tzaddik handles

himself before and after this ‘withdrawal’. The Rebbe, despite his current spiritual being, is still

with us as before in the material world. He feels our sorrows, hurts and sufferings and takes

care of all our spiritual and material human issues and looks over us as individuals and as a

congregation, now with even greater power to influence the divine on our behalf. The tractate

argues that the expansion of Chabadic missionary presence around the world and the fact that

the movement did not split after the Rebbe’s ‘withdrawal’ are solid proofs that the source which

gave the movement life before the Rebbe still gives life and vitality to the movement today.

This is the meaning of the conviction that lives in the heart of every Chassid – the Rebbe lives and

spiritually exists with us in the material world. The Rebbe lives our lives in all its aspects in the same

way we experience our lives to be in this material world.83

81 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, 2005/2006, p. 9–11. Translated and italics by me. 82 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 12 83 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 16

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The tractate discusses the time just after the ‘withdrawal’ of the Rebbe and the threat to the

movement’s theology it caused. It notices the theological attempts to assert that the Messiah

indeed can come back from the dead by pointing out that the same Talmudic text of Sanhedrin

98:2 (see p.27) can also support the notion of the Messiah dying before his second coming and

completion of his redemptive work.84 Noticeably, the tractate does not recant or challenge the

validity of the interpretation of this Talmudic text, which allows a hermeneutical interpretation

of a resurrected Messiah. Instead, it criticizes those within Chabad who believe in the Rebbe’s

embodied existence after his ‘withdrawal’. The tractate underlines the Torah’s notion of

eyesight as the fundament of belief. The reality we can see with our corporeal eyes, our sensorial

understanding of reality and the world, is real in its most basic sense and cannot be interpreted

as illusion, according to the tractate.

The perception of the Rebbe as a true prophet is not contested by the tractate. It then brings

to mind the validity of the Rebbe’s texts citing him as saying that there will not be a

‘withdrawal’ of the president of the generation (Nasi Hador) in our time. These were not

explicit prophetic texts by the Rebbe, argues the tractate. These were only expressions of

prayers, wishes and hopes that were not answered, despite difficulties understanding why that

came to be. Yet, explaining the Rebbe’s texts which imply the impossibility that our generation

of redemption will be left without a living Nasi Hador in a corporeal body, is more arduous to

whitewash. The Rebbe, as is the Tanya, are clear on the theological idea that in each and every

generation, there must be a living person, a president of the generation as the living extension

of Moses or ‘Itpashtuta demoshe’ in Chabadic term. How does this correspond to the fact that

the Rebbe has ‘withdrawn’?

The true and sincere answer to this question is that we do not know nor understand this. […] Does

someone have any explanation for our current predicament? [...] Do anyone understand why after all

the explicit and clear discourse [about the Messiah], both by His Honorable Holiness the Rayatz in

his time, and all the more so by the Rebbe, the president of our generation, and still Messiah did not

come?85

The tractate continues its theological search for possible theological explanations for the

Rebbe’s ‘withdrawal’. Yet again, the tractate insinuates a second coming of the Rebbe by citing

Rebbe text claiming that before ‘a great revelation’ and the time of complete redemption, there

could be a phase of concealment and ‘withdrawal of life’, thus interpreting our current time as

84 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 17 85 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 39 f. Translated and italics by me.

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‘unusual and extraordinary’ in ways that are difficult to explain.86 Furthermore, the tractate

discusses the demise of the second Jewish temple in Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and its theological

consequences. At that time, it was believed that the existence of the world itself was dependent

on the daily sacrificial rituals in that Temple. By that reasoning, the destruction of the Temple

and the discontinuation of the sacrificial rituals should have resulted with the destruction of the

world. To deal with this dissonance, Jewish scholars of the time argued that the world was

dependent on corporal rituals for its existence, but in the unusual and extraordinary situation

the absence of a Temple constituted, the world still existed by virtue of the spiritual Jewish

prayer.

…there are unusual situations wherein matters in the corporeal are being conducted by a spiritual

reality. And perhaps this is a somewhat explanation to our current situation, wherein the work of the

president of the generation that should be conducted by a living person in corporality in this material

world, is being done after his histalkut.”87

Finally, the tractate maintains the notion of the Rebbe’s immanent arrival. It discusses what it

labels as a common Chabadic belief that the Rebbe will return – “For a brief moment I

abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back.”88 The Sheppard will not leave

his flock for long in this state and is yet another allusion to a second coming of the Rebbe. By

referring to the Rebbe’s inaugural article as he assumed leadership over Chabad, the tractate

finishes with – “Let us go forth in this way [the Rebbe as a spiritual leader at this moment of

time], with unity in heart so we can soon mamash see and be with the Rebbe, down here in a

corporeal body, as the aim [of the Torah and] of the ten measurements [reference to the divine

emanations, the sefirot] and he will redeem us.”

4.4 Sichat Hageula

This weekly pamphlet which has been printed since 1994, exemplifies and reiterates the belief

in the Rebbe as the Messiah. Each pamphlet includes a ‘good news’ column which mainly

informs the reader about messianic missionary related news and tools – new productions of

books and other marketing-related multimedia as well as rallies and public sermons for

hastening the return of the Rebbe, religious activities for non-Hebrew speaking Jews in Israel

and many other related news. Throughout the years, the pamphlet has rehashed the dirah

86 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 41f 87 Tractate ”Hanekuda Hachabadit”, p. 42 88 NIV, Isaiah 54:7

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batachtonim doctrine by discussing passages from the relevant weekly Torah portion. It

interprets these portions accordingly and designates these interpretations as ‘sparks of

redemption’ and ‘Messiah’s teachings’. The main themes in these sections of the pamphlet are

the eternal life of the patriarch Jacob, the Chabadic doctrine of drawing the divine to the

redeemed and eschatological material world, and the unquestionable belief in the Rebbe as the

final redeemer and Messiah. Issue #329 goes further in its analysis of the Rebbe’s family

surname Schneerson, which also partially was used as a first name by previous Chabadic

masters, Schneor. Schneor is then read as schnei or, ‘two lights’ in Hebrew, interpreted as the

family’s ability to connect and understand both the apparent Torah and the hidden Torah and

its messianic secret. Other theological discussions take a somewhat unexpected turn. Issue #479

discusses the theological ramifications of discovering alien life after the space rover ‘Spirit’

landed on the planet Mars in 2004. Alien life is possible, argues the issue, but not intelligent,

sentient life, since the unique Torah was given to the only intelligent life in the universe. The

issues of these pamphlets are filled with miraculous stories of healings and good fortune. Issue

#527 tells the story how a group of Chabadic missionaries got away with getting a speeding

ticket in NY thanks to the Rebbe, while issue #580 tells the story of a Chabadic emissary seeing

the living, corporeal Rebbe with his own eyes while praying at 770 Eastern Parkway. The

pamphlets also discuss the Rambam’s criteria of identifying the Messiah as a true prophet. Issue

#629 retells the story of the Rebbe prophesizing the destruction of the evil Babylonian empire,

today’s Iraq, during the Gulf war of 1991.

However, the most apparent theme of these pamphlets which had been restated through

almost every issue read in this study, is the extreme right-winged political stance Chabad takes

in the Israel-Palestine conflict. The political tone is clear and uncompromising – no part of the

Holy Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel, can be given away as part of a peace treaty with the

Palestinians and Israel’s Arab state neighbors. Issue #277 from 1999 even calls for an Israeli

occupation of Damascus. Issue #426 calls for dismantling the Palestinian autonomy in the

occupied West-Bank and issue #730 from 2009 calls for the reoccupation of the Gaza strip in a

massive military operation that would crush local Hamas authority. Issue #928 from 2012

celebrates the civil war in Syria and other military conflicts in Arab states after the ‘Arab spring’

of 2011, designating their downfall as their tikkun, and a sign of the imminent redemption.

4.5 Beit Mashiach

Through its thematic structure, this weekly magazine exemplifies the depth and width of the

belief in the Rebbe as the Messiah. Issue #838 which commemorate the 18th anniversary of the

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Rebbe’s ‘histalkut’, features 18 prominent Chabadic rabbis discussing the Rebbe, his

‘withdrawal’ and the guiding theology of the movement after the ‘Tamuz 3rd event’. Issue

#1000 of the magazine also features the members of its ‘spiritual guidance committee’, Rabbis

who are responsible for the magazine’s theological guidelines. Rabbi Naftali Astolin, the

Chabadic emissary in Los Angeles, bases his belief in the Rebbe as the Messiah in our days by

referring to the Rebbe’s ‘Bati legani’, inauguration article, and claims “The Rebbe clearly

established that he will be the one to finalize the redemptive work until its completion […] and

since he did not complete his work, therefor he is alive […] and continues his holy work without

changes.”89 Rabbi Cahim Zvi Groner, the Chabadic emissary in Melbourne, Australia added to

this understanding by writing “It does not matter what we see and what we understand. As

Chassids, we stick to “the Rebbe’s word” and if the Rebbe promised something, it will come to

be.”90 Rabbi Zalman Librov, the Chabadic emissary to Flatbush, NY and also a member of the

magazine’s ‘spiritual guidance committee’ writes “Anyone who studies the Rebbe’s literature

knows that in the last years [until his stroke in 1992] the Rebbe often cited [religious texts]

about the Messiah of our generation […]. These quotes were unusual until recent years, but

beginning in 1990 they became all the more important for the Rebbe […]. If this was important

to him, surely they must be important for us Chassids [his followers].”91 The featured Rabbis

in both issues of the magazine agree that the apparent worldly success of the movement is

theological proof that Chabad is on track in its messianic mission. Rabbi Shabbtai Bloch, the

head of ‘The headquarters of the people’s land and security’ asserts that the success of the

movement is based on Rebbe-texts from 1990 – 1992 and claims “It is very reassuring to

witness how much the world is ready to hear about redemption and Messiah, even those that

once opposed everything Lubavitch.”92 Rabbi Menachem Ben-zion Grossman agrees with

Bloch’s analysis and adds “we see that the Rebbe lives and leads us as before and beyond that.

Our tractates are being distributed in the tens of thousands of copies with the word [the Rebbe]

Shalita [see note 73] printed on and no one open their mouths about it. It is now simply accepted

and everyone knows that Chabadic Chassids belief the Rebbe lives.”93 Rabbi Shlomo Maijeski,

another member of the magazine’s spiritual committee, underlines the need to believe in the

Rebbe as the Messiah, as a theological means of influencing the Rebbe to draw the divine

bounty into the world. He writes “Those who belive the Rebbe lives [in the material world] –

89 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 18 90 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 20 91 Beit Mashiach, 2015, issue #1000, p. 46 92 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 19 93 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 21

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the Rebbe draws the divine influx for him as a living Rebbe that is with us in the material world

mamash. Those who do not believe that and think that the Rebbe was literally ‘withdrawn’, the

Rebbe draws the divine influx for him as if the Rebbe is above [in the spiritual realms] and he

is below [in the material world].”94 Rabbi Ido Rahav, the head of Chabad’s congregation in

Northern Tel-Aviv, bases his belief in the Rebbe in the 1990–1992 Rebbe-texts and calls these

his intellectual, theological approach to his messianic belief. “My second approach is more of

an emotional one and is related to the miracles happening in everyday life due to the Rebbe’s

blessings. People write to the Rebbe and see wonderful, miraculous things [coming into

being…] People feel how this business is alive and breathing.”95

4.6 Discussion

4.6.1 Chabad as a unified messianic movement

As a phenomenon under the leadership of the Rebbe during the second half of the 20th

century, Chabad created an almost unprecedented Jewish messianic movement within recorded

history. The success of its far-reaching missionary enterprise is obvious by the sheer numbers

of emissaries around the world and by the political leeway the movement enjoys both in the US

and Israel. Chabad’s theology and history is a part of the ultra-orthodox Chassidic movement,

emerging in Eastern Europe in the 17th century. Chabad inherited the Chassidic movement’s

amalgamation of the significance of the Torah and mitzvoth with Lurianic Kabbalistic inspired

pietism and mystical adherence to the divine through the image of the tzaddik, the ascending

righteous one who draws the divine influx to our material world. Chabad’s theological

cosmology is theosophic by nature and describes the creation of the world in terms of kabalistic

tzimtzum, the divine infinity contracting its light to allow the creation of the world and sefirot,

the ten divine emanations and their representations originating in the infinite divine Ein-sof and

leading down in a hierarchical order to the created material world. Chabad is a distinct archetype

of a panentheistic cosmology that sees the physical world as permeated by God and

simultaneously ontologically hinged on the divine, thus making the material world an

illusionary existence in relation to the ultimate divine truth. Chabad’s mysticism centers on the

Torah’s innerness and the potency of the letters of the Hebrew alphabet as the divine’s essence,

creating ascendancy. In Chabad’s theology, the original sin of Adam and Eve consuming the

forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge was through time rectified by 7 tzaddiks, ending with

94 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 29 95 Beit Mashiach, 2012, issue #838, p. 33

35

Biblical Moses and the Giving of the Torah with its inner powers at Mt. Sinai to the chosen

people of the covenant. Moses is, in Chabadic terms, the first redeemer. Since the days of the

Besht, the founding father of the Chassidic movement and Rashaz, the founding father and first

president of Chabad, the movement diligently proclaimed messianic soteriological teachings

that involved strict observance of the Torah and mitzvoth and ritualistic mystical practices of

ascendance to the divine.

The loss of life and the systematic eradication of Jewish society and culture that the holocaust

caused to the European Jewry created a cognitive dissonance between the Chabadic perception

of the essential and constructive role the Jewish people play in the divine redemptive plan for

creation. As a response to the rupture the holocaust caused in Chabadic thought, the sixth master

of Chabad, the Rayatz, formulated a doctrine that postulated the imminent arrival of the

Messiah as an equally miraculous response to the unfathomable horrors of the holocaust.

During the Rayatz’s lifetime, the movement reoriented its theology towards a radical messianic

and eschatological approach, bestowing upon the masters of Chabad, the role of presidents of

each generation, thus perceiving themselves as the authoritative and supreme leaders of the

world’s Jewry. Predominantly by the Rebbe, the movement theologically clarified the concept

of divine redemption according to the dirah batachtonim doctrine; the redeemed world will

come to be in our material world. God will descend to the world and redeem it in its physical

form. The dead will rise, human beings will have eternal life and God’s essence as expressed

in the Torah, will permeate all aspects of reality. The distinction between creator and created

will be abolished and the divine inclination will encompass all, thus rendering human free

choice and religious observance superfluous. The dualistic and panentheistic Chabadic

cosmology is transformed into a redeemed world, pantheistic in corporality.

This study aimed to answer the question of what kind of theological interpretive tools do

Chabad-followers utilize in order to ‘survive’ as a group in light of the cognitive dissonance

the Rebbe’s clinical death caused to the notion of him as the final redeemer and Messiah? Being

well aware of my personal hermeneutical interpretive bias, I suggest that the interpretative

reading of all the documents discussed in this study clearly indicates that the theological

interpretive framework and tools the movement and its followers utilize in order to ‘survive’ as

a group is mainly based on the Rebbe’s own literature on the subject. The Rebbe, in his vast

literature, letters and sermons, particularly during 1990–1992, left behind the theological

infrastructure for the understanding of him to be a true prophet and Messiah. His followers

today simply base their faith on Rebbe-texts from the Rebbe final years before his debilitating

stroke in 1992. Chabad-followers have a clear perception of him as meeting all criteria set forth

36

by the Rambam for identifying the Messiah and theologically argue that the patriarch Jacob did

not die in reality. The Chabadic dirah batachtonim doctrine with its Lurianic Kabbalistic

systematic elements further identifies the Rebbe as the last redeemer and Messiah simply by

being the seventh master of Chabad and the president of the redemptive seventh generation.

The Rebbe is therefore theologically being perceived as the physical expansion of the eternal

soul of Biblical Moses – the first redeemer is the last redeemer. This is in my opinion, the key

for understanding how Chabad ‘survived’ as a unified radical messianic group even after the

Rebbe’s clinical death.

There is no doubt in my mind that Chabad as a whole, based on these theological terms,

expect the Rebbe to reveal himself imminently and complete his redemptive works. What

differs within Chabadic interpretations on the Rebbe’s current absence are the theological

mechanisms utilized to explain the ‘Tamuz 3rd event’. This brings into light this study’s

theoretical framework which postulates that the death of the Rebbe created two antagonistic

factions; a messianic and a non-messianic faction. I propose that this categorical distinction is

false, perhaps intentionally96 promoted by the movement in order to avoid ridicule by

Rabbinical Judaism that rejects the notion of a dead Messiah. Both of these factions are equally

messianic. On the one hand, the so called messianic faction upholds the notion that the Rebbe

is alive in a corporeal body in our world and time, but that we cannot experience him as such,

due do a divine test of faith in this illusionary world. The non-messianic faction, on the other

hand, regards the Rebbe’s death as histalkut, a ‘withdrawal’ from the physical world, enabling

him to exert influence on the divine. Both of these alleged factions expect an imminent return

of the Rebbe from his absence, either by resolving the divine test of faith and revealing himself

in flesh or by being resurrected as a form of a second coming of the Messiah. This theological

mechanical distinction, however, does not diminish the belief in the Rebbe as the Messiah, and

as a united movement, all await his return and the completion of his redemptive works. Chabad

as a united movement, agrees on the fundamental importance the Rebbe’s private room at 770

Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn to be the Holy of Holiest, the diasporic Holy Temple, holding the

presence of the Rebbe in his ‘withdrawn’ or ‘illusionary hidden’ state. By encouraging frequent

pilgrimage, sending letters to the Rebbe at his address or the usage of his picture in worship,

are ritualistic phenomenon, and unite Chabad as a group. The apparent material prosperity the

96 I have found in the source documents numerous remarks made by what seems to be internal code, utilizing phrases such as ”the one who understand , will understand” and “to our anash”, an acronym for ’our people’. The ’Hanekuda Hacharedit’ tractate clearly states in the section ‘why are we writing about this?’ that ”we can all see the disgrace these assertions [of the Rebbe living in a corporal body in our world] bring to Chabad and the Rebbe by bringing mockery and ridicule [to them]” (p. 49)

37

Chabad movement has enjoyed in recent years is seen by all Chabad-followers as a

manifestation of the Rebbe’s continued powers as the harbinger of the divine influx to the

world.

The four factors Dein and Dawson postulate for determining whether a group will survive

failed prophecies, in my opinion, also explain how Chabad ‘survived’ the Rebbe’s clinical

death. The prophetic milieu had been diligently prepared ever since the Rayatz days and

particularly by the Rebbe in 1990–1992. Chabad-followers, based on Jewish traditional

liturgical practices and theology, engaged and immersed in the Rebbe’s radical messianism.

Upon his clinical death and just after the initial chock his death had on his followers, a rapidly

growing theological literature emerged aiming to understand the implication of the Rebbe’s

unexpected absence. Also, the closely knit, and sometimes reclusive, social structure of

Chabad-followers quickly and fundamentally supported the faithful in their struggle and gave

them comfort by theological explanatory means.

4.6.2 Chabadic messianic implications in the Israel-Palestine conflict

The source material included in this study clearly indicates an extensive Chabadic political

engagement in the Israel-Palestine conflict, particularly by Chabad Israel. The political posture

Chabad adopts in this conflict, is a radical and uncompromising right-wing nationalistic stance

that refuses to acknowledge a Palestinian state or to accept the ‘land in exchange of peace’

formula, refusing to give back occupied territories in order to enable for peace and the

establishment of normalized relations between the state of Israel, the Palestinians and Israel’s

Arab state neighbors. Again, Chabad’s messianic theology and soteriology which sees the

Rebbe as the redeeming Messiah, is the base of this political stance. According to Chabad’s

dirah batachtonim doctrine, the Rebbe is the tenth master of Chassidism since the Besht is

associated with the Malkhut (kingship) sefira. This sefira is simultaneously and theologically

associated with Eretz Ysrael, the Holy Land (not to be confused with the secular State of Israel)

in the same way the Rebbe is the incarnated embodiment of it. The Rebbe, in his lifetime fought

vigorously against any land concessions to the Palestinians or to Israel’s neighboring Arab

states, as witnessed in the source material. Wolfson notes:

The extreme right-wing political tendency of Lubavitch, illustrated in the official uncompromising

resistance to returning any of the captured territories to the Palestinians, has commanded much

attention. There is no attempt on my part to defy or to defend this position, but it is also necessary to

38

take seriously that the seventh Rebbe, in consort with a stance taken by his predecessors, affirmed a

diasporic conception that unhinges the very notion of the land from a narrow topology.97

This uncompromising political stance, refusing the sundering of the land of Israel is a crucial

element in the movement’s soteriological reasoning. The final redemption entails the

sanctification of the world as a whole as Eretz Ysrael in the redeemed era; until then it must not

be divided or given to gentiles. In 2005, the Israeli security forces (the Shabak) deemed Chabad

as a national threat for Israel’s security.98 These political implications of Chabad’s messianic

theology are apparent even today and are also a fundamental unifying factor of the Chabad

movement. The Chabadic Israeli organization deemed ‘The headquarters of the people’s land

and security’ was established in 1992 and signed in 1995, in order to fight against the ongoing

Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the so called “Oslo Accords” and its territorial

concessions. Both Rabbi Shabbtai Bloch, earlier mentioned in this study as a representative of

the Chabadic theological interpretation that sees the Rebbe’s absence as an illusionary test of

faith, and Rabbi Itzhak-Yehuda Yaruzelvski who contributed to the tractate ‘Hanekuda

Hacharedit’ and can be seen as a representative of the theological interpretation that awaits the

Rebbe’s resurrection, are in fact associated with this organization.99 It is also remarkable that

this organization includes Baruch Marzel, the founder of the extreme-right political movement

Ozma Yehudit or ‘Jewish Power’ that advocates ‘a Jewish-religious form of democracy’, ‘a

total war’ against its Arab neighbors, inadvisable to Israel.100

4.6.3 Theological similarities with early Christendom as means to deal with the rapture

The theological interpretive tools Chabad-follower utilize to ‘survive’ as a group raise the

question of theological similarity to another originally Jewish, new religious movement gone

global, namely Christianity of the first centuries A.D. Joel Marcus wrote in his article “The

Once and Future Messiah in Early Christianity and Chabad”:

In both movements successful eschatological prophecies have increased belief in the leader’s

authority, and there is a mixture of ‘already’ and ‘not yet’ elements. Similar genres of literature are

used to spread the good news (e.g. miracle catenae and collections of originally independent sayings).

97 Wolfson, 2011, p. 106 98 http://www.nrg.co.il/online/1/ART/869/638.html (Accessed May 9th, 2016) 99 http://chabadpedia.co.il/index.php/מטה_לשלום_העם_והארץ (Accessed May 9th, 2016) 100 http://www.ozma-yeudit.co.il/המצע/ (Accessed May 9th, 2016). Baruch Marzel was also the head of the extreme-right “Jewish National Front” political party in Israel that advocated also the forceful transfer and relocation of Israeli Arab to neighboring Arab states.

39

[…] The cataclysm of the Messiah’s death has led to belief in his continued existence and even

resurrection.101

Subsequently, some clear parallels can be drawn between the Chabadic theology of the

Rebbe as the final redeemer and Christian systematic theology. To compare the Rebbe to Jesus

Christ would undoubtedly raise more than a few disapproving eyebrows within Chabad, but I

suggest that the case for this parallel can be made by using the Christian-theological term

‘Christology’ that is defined as:

…“Christology” sets out to locate Jesus of Nazareth on a conceptual map. It attempts to place him

along the coordinates of time and eternity, humanity and divinity, particularity and universality, and

answer the question of how an event which took place at a specific time and place can be relevant for

all people and all times. The classical Christian account of the significance of Jesus of Nazareth is

framed in terms of the concept of the “incarnation” and the doctrine of the “two natures” of Christ –

divine and human.102

Jesus is, by Christian definition, the final redeemer and Messiah of men. Indeed, the term

Christ can be understood as the Hebrew Bible’s term for “the anointed one”, primarily reserved

for Biblical kings, but later was linked to Jewish expectation of a Jewish king from the house

of David during the turmoil of the Roman imperial rule over Palestine in the centuries around

Christ’s life. This expected king would be the Messiah (in Greek Christos), chosen by God to

lead the redeemed people of God. The Roman occupation of Palestine led to increased

nationalistic and messianic expectations, as does Chabad’s political nationalistic activism

which in a way draws parallels between the Roman Empire and the secular State of Israel. The

Christian concept of Jesus as the Word or in Greek Logos incarnated can be found in John 1:1

– “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The

importance of Chabad’s theology of the divine power of the Hebrew alphabet can be understood

as a parallel to the Christian Logos. The Yechi tractate argues that the Rebbe is the Messiah and

the incarnation of the Torah and its sacred truth. Wolfson notes:

I will note that the “corporeality” in this expression is not to be understood as the material flesh that

is subject to generation and corruption, but, in accord with a notion of the corporeal attested in much

older kabbalistic sources, as the hyperliteral body, the body that is letter […] The fiat of divine creation

101 Marcus, Joel., The Once and Future Messiah in Early Chrisitanity and Cahabd. New Testament Studies, 47, 2001., p. 331–401. p. 381 102 McGrath, Alister E., Chrisitian Tehology: An Introduction. Fifth Edition. Wiley-Blackwell publication. London, 2011. p. 266

40

is the word, which is to say, the stuff of creation consists of this word, the Torah, the name, the twenty-

two Hebrew letters.103

Jesus Jesus Christ was perceived by early Christians as the redeemer and savior of humanity.

Early Christians utilized a symbolic and mystic use of the Greek alphabet as an interpretative

means of identifying the redeemer, as does Chabad’s theological and soteriological pursuit, in

order to uncover the hidden secrets of the Torah through the Hebrew alphabet.

In the full knowledge that it was God alone who was Savior, that it was God alone who could save,

the first Christians nevertheless affirmed that Jesus of Nazareth was their savior. A fish came to be a

symbol of faith to the early Christians, as the five Greek letters spelling out “fish” in Greek (I-CH-

TH-U-S) came to represent the slogan “Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”.104

Christian eschatological theology is predominantly based on Christ’s preaching of the

coming of the kingly rule of God and Paul’s writing in the New Testament that illustrates the

tension between the “now” and the “not yet”. Paul emphasized that Christ inaugurated a new

era or aionos in Greek, which he designated as the new creation in Christ – “Therefore, if

anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”105 In his

article, Marcus noticed the parallel dichotomies of now/not yet in both Chabadic and Christian

thought with implications for the Chabadic Israeli political activism, as mentioned above:

Note also the emphasis that a cosmic change has already occurred and that redemption is merely a

matter of becoming aware of it – similar to Paul’s announcement of a momentous alteration of the

universe […] and of the new way of seeing necessary to perceive it. […] the Rebbe’s teaching also

contains a ‘not yet’ element, just as the Jesus tradition does. Ravitzky [Aviezer Ravitzky, professor of

Jewish philosophy, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem] for example, points out that at the same

time that the Rebbe was announcing the imminence of redemption, he was also warning against the

long-range negative effects of concessions to the Palestinians that the Israeli government was

contemplating106

One of Christianity’s major themes is Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples before the

crucifixion. It is the Biblical source of the fundamental and central Christian Eucharist

sacrament, the Holy Communion, offering Christians consumption of the bread and wine as the

body and blood of Christ. A variant of this Christian Last Supper is apparent in Chabadic

theology and is based on Rebbe-texts. Dahan notice that the Rebbe talked about Seudat

103 Wolfson, 2011, p. 112 104 McGrath, 2011, p. 272 105 NIV, 2 Cor 5:17 106 Marcus, 2001, p.384 f, my italics.

41

Mashiach (the Messiah’s meal) on the last day of the yearly Jewish holiday of Pesach. The food

and drink consumed during this Seudat Mashiach are described in Rebbe-texts as the “blood

and flesh” of the essence of the Messiah through the Holy Spirit. The social communal

consumption of this meal reveals the essence of the Messiah both for the Jewish social

collective and individually in every participating Jew. The Rebbe encourages us in his writing

to partake in this corporeal Messiah’s meal wherein the Holy Spirit elevates human beings to

be a reflection of the Messiah in the collective aspect of the final redemption.107

Other Chabadic terminology can also support the notion of Christian influence on Chabadic

thought.108 The idea of ‘spreading the good news’ as the evangelical concept of spreading the

Gospel of Christ to the world, parallel the Chabadic stories of the Rebbe’s genius and wisdom

ever since his childhood. According to Luke 2:46–47 “After three days they found him in the

temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.

Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers”.109 Even the

Rebbe’s silence on the question of whether he perceived himself to be the Messiah of the house

of David can be paralleled to Christ’s approving silence on the matter while entering Jerusalem

with the crowd cheering “Hosanna! “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Blessed

is the coming kingdom of our father David! Hosanna in the highest heaven!”110 Dahan tells the

story111 of the extensive Chabadic billboard publications in Israel and the US just after the

Rebbe died. These massive billboard publications featured the picture of the Rebbe together

with the biblical text of Psalms 119:89 – “Your word, LORD, is eternal; it stands firm in the

heavens”112. Again this is a clear reference to John 1:1. Indeed, the same psalms make extensive

use of the equivocal theological term of ‘eved Adonai’ (the servant of the Lord), as both Chabad

and Christianity refer to their own respective personal Messiahs.

Writing about the parallels between Chabadic theology and Christian systematic theology is

far from being complete and could with ease constitute a separate comparative study. Note that

I do not suggest that Chabadic doctrine and Christian theology are one and the same, however,

107 Dahan, 2014, p. 589–590. Dahan refers to the Rebbe’s extensive Itvahaduiut literature. Compare also with the NT passage on Jesus’ teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up at the last day. For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in them.” – NIV, John 6:54–56 108 Also mentioned in Marcus’ article. See p. 389–393 109 NIV, Luke 2:46–47 110 NIV, Luke 11:9–10 111 Dahan, 2014, p. 139, note 158. 112 NIV, Psalms 119:89

42

I propose that some parallel similarities are difficult to ignore and could be attributed to the

common source of the Jewish-Christian tradition.

4.6.4 Adherence to rabbinical orthodoxy in a united movement

Chabad as a united movement, in word and deed, strictly adheres to the rabbinic orthodox

Halachic Judaism and all its aspects. This is the key, in my opinion, for understanding how

Chabad, while utilizing theological interpretative tools in order to ‘survive’ as a united group,

is still considered to be an integral part of Judaism, despite the theological similarities with

Christianity. This strict adherence to the Mitzvoth and Halacha constitutes, in my opinion, a

common and fundamental theological denominator for Chabad-followers that helps preserve

the tight social knitting of the movement. This social knitting is based on theological

understanding of mitzvoth in Chabad’s soteriology and facilitates the sense of belongingness

that was and still is needed for the movement to stay united in the belief of the Rebbe as

Messiah. I support the notion that if Chabad in any given future will go astray from Halachic

Judaism’s major theological themes, i.e. the status of the Shabbat, dietary Halachic laws or the

demand for male circumcision, it will find itself excluded from Rabbinic Judaism in the same

way Christianity was banned and branded as a heretical doctrine.

4.6.5 Chabad post-Rebbe theology as a redefinition of Holocaust theology

The Chassidic theology of the 17th century and onward came to a violent and abrupt

cognitive dissonance between its perception of the unique role Jews as the chosen people play

in God’s redeeming plans and the unfathomable horrors of the Holocaust. The Rayatz opted

during the 1940s for utilizing messianic theological doctrines, already pre-existing and dormant

within the Chassidic movement’s Lurianic Kabbalistic principles. These doctrines were

theological interpretive tools utilized in order to ‘survive’ as a group in light of the cognitive

dissonance the Holocaust caused in terms of the mass extermination of 6.3 million Jews and

the almost total eradication of Jewish social and cultural life in Europe and to preserve the

notion of the Jews as agents of redemption in God’s redemptive plan. The Rayatz’ assertion

that an incomprehensible tragedy like the Holocaust must be, in some way, equalized and

answered by an equally miraculous blessing, the coming of the Messiah and the redemption of

the world. Chabadic theology, identifying the Rebbe as the seventh master of Chabad, thus the

long-awaited Messiah, left little theological leeway. Based on the movement’s theology, the

Rebbe, with great theological necessity, had to be the Messiah that made sense out of and put

43

a positive meaning to the Holocaust (if such term can be used in regards to the Holocaust). The

Rebbe’s clinical death constituted a cognitive dissonance to the movement not only by the

Rebbe’s actual death but also in terms of the Rayatz’ theology of the restoration of the post-

Holocaust world. For if the Rebbe was not the Messiah and we are not the generation of

redemption, how can one then explain the holocaust and its horrors? This could be, in my

opinion, one of the factors that internally within Chabad justifies the right-winged political

activism in Israel. This is also the reason, in my view, why the Rayatz is still highly revered

within Chabad, although to a lesser extent then the Rebbe. It was initially the Rayatz and later

his successor, the Rebbe, who further developed the dirah batachtonim soteriological doctrine.

I found no evidence that this doctrine was abandoned in the post-Rebbe-Chabad, regardless of

which theological tools are utilized in order to explain the Rebbe’s ‘withdrawal’. The almost

existential need to come to terms with the horrors of the Holocaust coupled with a messianic

theology run deep within Chabad and could be, in my view, yet another factor of explaining

how the group ‘survived’ the cognitive dissonance the Rebbe’s death caused.

The Chabadic Sheppard leading the remnants of the Jewish people must therefore be the

long-awaited Messiah. His current absence will be imminently mamash resolved by

resurrection for some, or by obliterating the illusion that prevents us from seeing that he still

walks among us alive, for others. The near quarter century that has passed since his clinical

death did not diminish the Chabadic messianic idea that still unites the movement. Indeed,

Chabad is rapidly growing in terms of physical institutional presence around the world and in

terms of available missionary medial information online and in traditional printed formats. The

question remains, to see how the Chabadic theological doctrine will develop further, given the

progress of our worldly and unredeemed time.

4.7 Postscript

This study was not only an academic exercise aimed as qualification for obtaining an

academic degree. Chabadic messianic theology entails far-reaching political implications for

one of the world’s most violent flashpoints. These implications and their theoretical-theological

fundaments should be known, which are perhaps a part of my hermeneutical bias.

I would like to thank my wife Paulina for putting up with my constant studying, my fellow

student Rebecca Einarsson for her constructive remarks, my supervisor at Umeå University,

Olle Sundström, for his insightful comments and Camille Krawiecka for proofreading this

study.

44

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