LETUS RETURN, then, to our story. The most gratifying reaction to the exchange in Jewish Action came in a brief conversation with Isadore Twersky, who followed up with an even briefer letter. Twersky, who passed away in 1998, was an unusual figure: Professor of Jewish History and Literature at Harvard, hasidic rebbe, expert on Maimonides, and son-in-law of Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, one of the leading rabbinic figures of the century and pre-eminent expositor of the decidedly non-hasidic talmudic tradition of a family marked by exceptional genius. In his oral reaction, Twersky articulated his pleasure at the manner in which the article had mobilized history for a religious purpose and expressed surprise that rabbinic leaders had not declared meat ritually slaughtered by messianists to be forbidden. In the letter, he wrote: ‘excellent, compelling use of scholarship…. As I told you, the silence of rabbinic groups is astounding. Many contexts show that dor yasom [orphaned generation] is indeed an apt characterization. Your voice is heard. I mentioned to you my dissociation from the messianism over the years.’

At the same time, a distinguished rabbi in the Traditionalist Orthodox community contacted me to express his long-standing hostility towards Lubavitch. This was my first direct, personal experience of the scathing, sweeping, almost breathtaking denunciation of the movement in some quarters. The Rebbe, I was told, had regularly visited his father-in-law's grave so that it should already be established as a shrine when he himself would be buried nearby. He had his followers construct and display giant menorahs of an atypical sort, insisting on the view that the spokes of the original menorah were straight rather than curved, ‘because every new religion needs a symbol’. I did not quite know how to react and eventually came to realize that for all his sympathy to my argument, this rabbi saw nothing significantly new in the latest developments. To him, Chabad had long been a species of religion clearly outside the boundaries of Judaism.

In the early months of 1996, the little tempest that I had created spent itself, and Chabad's position in Jewish life continued much as it had before.