Rebbe: The Life and Teachings of Menachem M. Schneerson, the Most Influential Rabbi in Modern History

by Joseph Telushkin

His opposition to university education did not emanate out of any sort of hostility to the acquisition of secular knowledge per se.

This speculation—and it is speculation, as the Rebbe never enunciated such a view—is in no way intended to sound cynical. Rather, the Rebbe saw himself in the manner in which a general sees himself; he is commanding an army and his responsibility is to send troops where they are needed. If this analysis is correct, the Rebbe’s reasoning was pragmatic as much as it was ideological. For an army to succeed, it needs a cadre of professional soldiers fully dedicated to the cause and fully willing to be sent to any post to which their commander assigns them. Unquestionably, there was only one religious Jewish leader in the last century who produced such a cadre.

What the Rebbe did want ideally was that people not even think about attending college until they had mastered the major texts of Judaism. With their bellies, so to speak, filled with Jewish knowledge, the environment of college would, he hoped, be insufficient to challenge their faith. But even in such cases, the Rebbe did not generally feel that college was necessary, certainly not for his Chasidim.

What I came to understand while researching this issue is that when Lubavitchers use the word “Messiah” in referring to the Rebbe, they do not mean what people think they mean. Perhaps the most surprising conclusion I reached is that the Messiah issue is, in the final analysis, a nonissue.

A number of Talmudic texts and post-Talmudic religious scholars advance the idea that in every generation there is one person who is worthy, and has the potential, to be the Messiah (moshiach she’b’dor).

Faithful Chasidim of different Rebbes regularly express the wish that their generation merit that their righteous leader become the Messiah. Such was also the case with many of the Chasidim of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Because of the depth of his achievements and his great stature (recognized well beyond Chabad), Lubavitcher Chasidim saw him as a “potential Messiah,” and, given that they already believed that a Messianic coming was imminent if God deemed the time right, urgently hoped that he’d be appointed by God to become the actual Messiah.

It is this sense of “Messiah” that many of the Lubavitchers intended when they spoke of Rabbi Menachem Me...

In addition to the views in the Talmud affirming a potential Messiah in each generation, two Talmudic texts offer another possibility, one that expands the net of candidates to include the possibility that the Messiah will come from the dead:

I can find no records prior to the Rebbe’s death of Chasidim speaking of such a possibility.

the Rebbe never said that he was the Messiah

Today, two decades after the Rebbe’s death, the majority of Chabad Chasidim continue to see him as the leader of the generation (nasi ha-dor). They regard him as the most influential rabbinic leader of our time, whose influence continues to be wielded through his teachings (over two hundred volumes of his teachings have been published) and through the hundreds of stories that circulate about him (see chapter 29). These Chasidim acknowledge that he died, visit his grave, and observe his yahrtzeit (some fifty thousand to sixty thousand come to the cemetery each year on the anniversary of his death). They place little emphasis on whether or not he will one day come back as the Messiah, and focus instead on what they can do to hasten the Messiah’s arrival, whoever he may be; they also yearn to be reunited with him during the Messianic age, when tradition says that all the dead will be resurrected. In addition, the Chabad leadership has been vocal against the shrinking Messianic movement.

The mainstream members of the movement are aware of the Rebbe’s reaction when people made Messianic claims about him, and they know that he felt there is no point trying to identify who the Messiah will be. They also are aware of the rabbinic writings that allow for the possibility that a righteous person may be resurrected to become the Messiah, as well as those who opine otherwise. Some of them interpret the sources as categorically ruling out the Rebbe ever becoming the Messiah, while others say that such a possibility cannot objectively be ruled out. But most of all they recognize that they have no way of knowing and it’s all simply up to God.

For the Rebbe, every step a person took, every mitzvah a person performed, was important and of value in and of itself.

He wanted the whole world to understand that in the absence of God human life becomes devalued.

in the aftermath of the Nazis who had done everything to devalue Jewish life, he wanted all Jews to appreciate that every life has infinite value. And what could illustrate this more dramatically than his commitment to reach every Jew and every Jewish community in the world? Every town. Every village. No matter how remote. No matter how minuscule. The infinite value of every life. In all of Jewish history, nothing of this magnitude had ever been attempted before.

he constructed a blueprint for all his followers to emulate, so that even in the absence of a living leader, they possess a code of instruction for how to lead their lives and how to conduct the well over one thousand communities served by his shluchim.

By studying his teachings every day, the Rebbe’s followers see him as an ever-present force in their lives.

Contrary to some noted Orthodox figures, the Rebbe asserted his belief that there was no explanation for the Holocaust:

Shazar visits the Frierdiker Rebbe, who asks his assistance in creating a village in Israel to be comprised of Lubavitchers (most of them Holocaust survivors and immigrants from the Soviet Union). The village, established in 1949, is named Kfar Chabad and is one of the first villages established in the new state. Shazar is pleased to help, though he is taken aback by the request; the opposition of the Frierdiker Rebbe and the even more intense opposition of his father to Zionism was well known to him.

During his years of leadership, the Rebbe—consumed by a concern for Israel’s security and a fervent love for Israeli soldiers who, he often repeated, daily risked their lives to safeguard Jews—moves Chabad from an anti-Zionist position to a non-Zionist one.

“B’hemshech ha-binyan tinachamu” [“Through your continued building you will be comforted”]).