"How can a rebbe do something like that?"
Katle Kanye on the violence in New Square perpetrated by the rebbe's staff:
They'll ask how a rebbe can do something like that. He's a rebbe, after all. And I'll say that a rebbe is just like them. He can be in the papers with a different-colored bekeshe every week and he's no less a sheigez for all that. They'll want to know who the real rebbe is. I'll tell them that they shouldn't first look at the tzaddik and decide that whatever he does is right, but they should know what is right — and if a rebbe doesn't behave that way, he's worth nothing.
And if they say that all rebbes are the same, so they're all worth the same thing, I'll tell them that they shouldn't look for greatness on the front pages of the papers or at the head of the table, but among Torah scholars, genuine people, simple Jews who work hard and come to shul to daven and hear a shiur. And what about gedolim? From the time of Yehoshua bin Nun on they are mostly either fools or robbers and often both. And if we've survived a bitter exile it's in spite of them and not because of them.
From here we can segue to right and wrong, stealing and banditry, murder and bloodshed. And – on the other hand – compassion, politeness, and honesty. It makes no difference whether it's a Chasid or a modern Jew, a frum person or an irreligious one, a Jew or a non-Jew, black or white — all are alike when they behave like human beings. [...]
And if you'll ask me why I'm so furious about this? It's simple. Even though many of those killed in the Holocaust were God-fearing – nevertheless we took the blessing of 'Your seed shall multiply like the sand of the sea' and buried our heads in it. If we don't admit our problems and do something about it, it'll go on this way, or our kids will get disgusted with us, like many have already. But if we do admit them, and tell our kids that the tzaddikim are not our models and the gedolim are not our guides but what it says in the Torah and the Talmud – with a good bit of the "fifth section of the Shulchan Aruch" and humanity – maybe then there's hope.
