Heilman Samuel Friedman Menachem - The Rebbe

THE REBBE

The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

SAMUEL C. HEILMAN AND MENACHEM M. FRIEDMAN

Copyright 2010 by Princeton University Press

Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540

In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock,

Oxfordshire OX20 1TW

All Rights Reserved

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Heilman, Samuel C.

The Rebbe : the life and afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson /

Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-691-13888-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, 19021994. 2. RabbisNew York (State)

New YorkBiography. 3. HasidimNew York (State)New YorkBiography.

4. Habad. I. Friedman, Menachem. II. Title.

BM755.S288H45 2010

296.83322092dc22 2009050871

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro

Printed on acid-free paper.

press.princeton.edu

Printed in the United States of America

1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

Dedicated to our grandchildren:

Gilboa Henry

Boaz Martin

Reut Sarah

Matan Zvi

Roee Yisrael

Shachar Moshe

And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb,

And the leopard shall lie down with the kid,

And the calf and the young lion and fatling together;

And a little child shall lead them.

ISAIAH 11:6

We are now very near the approaching footsteps of Messiah, indeed, we are at the conclusion of this period, and our spiritual task is to complete the process of drawing down the Shechinah [Divine Presence]moreover, the essence of the Shechinahwithin specifically our lowly world.

May we be privileged to see and meet with the Rebbe [Yosef Yitzchak] here in this world, in a physical body, in this earthly domainand he will redeem us.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson, in Basi LGani, his inaugural talk as leader of ChaBaD Hasidism on the first anniversary of the passing of his predecessor, the Rebbe Yosef Yitzchak, 10 Shvat 5711 (January 17, 1951)

Long Live Our Master, Our Teacher, and Our Rebbe, the King Messiah, forever and ever.

Lubavitcher Song

Following

Schneur Zalman of Lyady (September 4, 1745December 27, 1812) Alter (Old) Rebbe, founder of ChaBaD

Dovber (November 24, 1773December 28, 1827) Miteler (Middle) Rebbe, son of Schneur Zalman

Menachem Mendel (September 20, 1789March 29, 1866) Zemah Zedek, nephew and son-in-law of Dovber

Shmuel (May 11, 1834September 26, 1882) Maharash, seventh son of Zemah Zedek

Shalom DovBer (November 5, 1860March 21, 1920) RaSHaB, second son of Shmuel

Yosef Yitzchak (sometimes called Joseph Isaac) (June 21, 1880January 28, 1950) RaYaTZ, only son of RaSHaB

Menachem Mendel (April 18, 1902June 12, 1994) RaMaSh, middle son-in-law and cousin of RaYaTZ

Note: Most of the rebbes spelled their family name as Schneersohn, however the seventh rebbe chose to spell his Schneerson. We have followed his preference for referring to him only.

This is a book about Lubavitcher Hasidim and their leader, or Rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Both the Rebbe and the Lubavitcher Hasidim became caught up in the belief that they were living in messianic times and that they could hasten the coming of the Messiah and the day of redemption through their own actions. That concern with the Messiah began with the fifth of their seven rebbes, Shalom DovBer Schneersohn (18601920). It was intensified in the thinking and deeds of his only son, Yosef Yitzchak (18801950), the sixth rebbe, who made these concerns public during the dark days of the Holocaust, and reached a climax with the seventh and most recent rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson (19021994), son-in-law and cousin of his predecessor. This active messianism became in many ways a response to the extraordinary events of the last hundred and fifty years of Jewish history, including the ferment of European Jewish life and the erosion of the traditional world of Judaism through secularization, migration, socialist revolution, war, and Holocaust. All these, as well as the advent of Zionism and the founding of the state of Israel, along with the post-Second World War relocation of Jewry to Western democracies, convinced the seventh rebbe and the Lubavitchers that the scene was now irrevocably set for the coming of the Messiah. Under the leadership of Rabbi Menachem Mendel, they saw themselves as being on a mission to transform Jewryand indeed the world.

In time, not only would they and their rebbe be persuaded that their efforts would have a mystical effect on the world and shift the balance of reality from one in which people remained unredeemed to one in which they had prepared the world for redemption. In the course of their campaign to hasten the coming of the Messiah, they also became convinced that their rebbe was the redeemer incarnate. This book tells the story of the Rebbe, how and why his own messianic convictions ripened and expressed themselves, and what happened after he died. It is a story of the unprecedented success of a small Hasidic group that seemed on the verge of collapse in 1950 with the death of their sixth leader but replanted itself in America and gained fame and influence throughout the world in ways no one could have imagined when Menachem Mendel took over the reins of leadership in 1951. It is an account of the consequences of heightened expectations and global attention to their mission, and finally of their having to cope with the physical decline and death of their would-be redeemer and the apparent failure of his prophecies and their expectations.

This is a tale of great drama, triumph and tragedy, filled with hopes and prayers, mystery and intrigue. It is also the story of how one man and some of his followers were swept away by his beliefs and expectations and led to assume that death could be denied and history manipulated. It recounts how an ancient ideathat there is a messianic redeemer, and he will comecould be brought onto the agenda of the modern world and make headlines, of how a small and relatively obscure group of Hasidim could capture the imagination of the world and deign to transform it.

Because we believe that what a man is may be so entangled with where he is, who he is, and what he believes that it is inseparable from them, the story necessarily also touches on some of the major historical currents that swirled around the life of this man and his movement. It merges social and personal history with mysticism and religion.

The book actually began in Chicago during the early 1990s, when we were both involved with the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fundamentalism Project under the leadership of Martin Marty and R. Scott Appleby. During that time we were both independently researching the Lubavitcher Hasidim and their Rebbe. Our thoughts came together in