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On Writing about the Seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe and His Hasidim*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 December 2011

Samuel C. Heilman
Samuel C. Heilman*
Affiliation:
Queens College, Flushing, New York
*
[email protected]
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Extract

When Menachem Friedman and I resolved to write what became The Rebbe: The Life and the Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, we did so because as sociologists we were puzzled, as we put it in our preface, by how a “a small Hasidic group that seemed on the verge of collapse in 1950 with the death of their sixth leader” had replanted itself in America and in less than a generation “gained fame and influence throughout the world in ways no one could have imagined” at the time their next and thus far last rebbe, Menaḥem Mendel Schneerson, took over the reins of leadership in 1951. More than that, we were quite amazed that this group, which at its height during the twentieth century was never among the largest hasidic sects and probably numbered at most about 100,000 worldwide, had managed to become among the most well-known hasidim in the world. We were no less struck that they had found ways to make their Jewish outreach efforts, as well as their extraordinarily parochial belief that the contemporary world had entered messianic times (and that only Lubavitchers and their rebbe knew how to hasten his coming), both newsworthy and known far beyond the borders of the hasidic world. Through a series of directed campaigns that aimed to transform Jewry and the world, many, if not most Lubavitchers had also tried to convince the world that their leader, who had reigned over them from Brooklyn for forty-three years, was the Messiah incarnate, even as he lay dying at Beth Israel Hospital in New York.

Type
Exchange
Information
AJS Review , Volume 35 , Issue 2 , November 2011 , pp. 393 - 400
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Jewish Studies 2011

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Footnotes

*

In keeping with the standard Ḥabad practice, Prof. Heilman adopted the spelling Menachem for Rabbi Schneerson's given name and Chabad for Ḥabad. We have taken the liberty of conforming that spelling to the standard practice of our journal.

References

1. Heilman, Samuel & Friedman, Menachem, The Rebbe: The Life and the Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010) also in Hebrew. Tel Aviv: Kinneret Zmora Dvir/Mercaz Zalman Shazar, 2011Google Scholar.

2. See, e.g., Weiner, Herbert, Nine and a Half Mystics (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1969)Google Scholar.

3. Schneersohn, Joseph Isaac, Igrois Kodesh, vol. xv (Brooklyn: Kehot, 2010)Google Scholar. We cannot know what factors inspired the Lubavitchers to publish these letters, which remained in their archives for more than sixty years (and some even longer), only after our book came out. In the recently published Hebrew version of the book, we integrate the new information in these letters into our account, and will do so in subsequent English editions. There may be other documents and letters that would shed more light on the Schneersons' motives and feelings still unrevealed in the archives, but we remain ignorant of them. We have also added information on our website, www.therebbebook.com.

4. Gries, Zev, “The Hasidic Managing Editor as an Agent of Culture,” in Hasidism Reappraised, ed. Ada Rapoport-Albert (London: Littman Library, 1997), 142, 141Google Scholar.

5. Many of these are available in the Living Torah archive of Chabad, www.chabad.org/therebbe/livingtorah/default_cdo/aid/.

6. The Rebbe, 99.

7. If a letter exists with this objection, we have not yet found it.

8. The Rebbe, 114. Indeed in Woody Allen's homage to this period in his recent film “Midnight in Paris” we half expected to see the young Mendel Schneerson in one of the scenes.

9. The Rebbe, 65. For Lubavitcher reactions, see www.therebbebook.com, reviews.

10. Goffman, Erving, Frame Analysis (New York: Harper & Row, 1974)Google Scholar.

11. See Gans, Herbert J., “Symbolic Ethnicity and Symbolic Religiosity: Towards a Comparison of Ethnic and Religious Acculturation,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 17 (1994): 577–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12. Wolfson, Elliot R., Open Secret (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), xivCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. The Rebbe, 166.

14. Loewenthal, Naftali, Communicating the Infinite (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), 95Google Scholar. The reference here is to what the emissaries of the first rebbe, Shneur Zalman, were inclined to do.

15. The Rebbe, 166.

16. Kirschenbaum, Menachem, The Rebbe Inspiring a Generation (Brooklyn, NY: Avner Institute, 2008), 43Google Scholar.

17. Greenberg, Gershon, “Redemption after Holocaust According to Mahane Israel—Lubavitch 1940–1945,” Modern Judaism 12 (1992): 62CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18. Ibid. See also Hakriya v”Hakedusha 1, no. 7 (March 28, 1941): 1Google Scholar.

19. See, e.g., Schneerson, Menachem Mendel, Sichos Kodesh 5720 (1960), 175, for a description and summary of the events on 10 Shvat 5720 (February 2, 1960)Google Scholar.