Beyond The End Of One's Nose

There is no doubt that Chabad takes whatever it does to extremes.  There is no Jewish group more active in more far-flung places of the world than them.  Despite a lack of local resources that would drive out less-committed Yidden, Chabad emissaries live full Jewish lives in scattered places around the globe, providing a taste of Yiddishkeitto any of our brethren who happen to wander by.  Their dedication to kiruv is also unmatched and they work with great fervour to bring back lost Jews to Torah.
Unfortunately it is human nature to let extremism cut both ways.  While a moderate often refuses to take a defined stand on anything, an extremist will have a firm opinion about everything and a refusal to budge from it.  The problem with Chabad's extremism is that its desire to bring Jews back to Judaism is matched by a belief that their Judaism is the only real kind. 
As Rav Shmuely Boteach, former black sheep of the movement, notes in a recent piece in The Jerusalem Post:
I knew then in theory what I just witnessed in practice: Chabad emissaries would one day take over the Jewish world. Why? Because of the grandness of their vision and the passion with which they pursued their mission. Other Jewish organizations sought to educate people about their tradition, but Chabad sought to raise all Earth’s inhabitants to a higher God-consciousness, and to make Judaism the driving force in every decision of daily life.
The passionate dedication of the Chabad emissaries was infectious. They did not preach the Torah. Rather, it coursed through their veins, seeping out of every pore. Hassidic teachings about the approachability of God and the accessibility of a higher spiritual reality were grafted onto the average Chabad activist’s very DNA, becoming an inseparable part of his or her character and personality.
WITNESSING THE fulfillment of that promise at the conference was an awakening. Chabad is no longer merely a Jewish movement. It is Judaism. I find it astonishing that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu flew in to attend the Jewish federations’ annual General Assembly but bypassed the Chabad conference. If an Israeli prime minister wants to be part of the unfolding of modern Jewish history, he has to address Chabad. No other organization even comes close to its global reach or grassroots impact. And it is growing exponentially.
They don't read newspapers and are unlikely to care about what Rav Boteach says but one can imagine going to the Rebbes of Ger, Belz and Satmar (both of them), all of them significantly larger in size than Lubavitch despite a total lack of outreach, and telling them: "Did you know that Chabad is Judaism?"
Indeed, Rav Boteach should know this.  All the shluchim should know that theirs is not the largest sect within Orthodox Judaism and that within the Chareidi community they are relegated to the fringe with the Bratzlovers, a kooky sect that might be scrupulous in the performance of some mitzvos but which endorse beliefs and worldviews unacceptable to the main group.
Then there's the Modern Orthodox and Dati Leumi who would also be shocked to know that they are not Judaism.  Never mind the pantheon of thinkers and towering figures they lay claim to.  Never mind all the learning and practice.  They aren't Judaism because they're not Chabad?
Yet there is the other side that Rav Boteach mentions and must be emphasized. As Rav David Berger notes in his book on the subject, Chabad is expanding within significant parts of the Jewish community through a clever strategy.  Just as leftists realized long ago that if one infiltrates the school system to ensure that children are raised with a socialist/politically correct philosophy so as to create a large group of support later on, Chabad realized long ago that going where no frum Jews could be found was like mining for gold.  There is a reason Chabad is found in isolated small Jewish communities that no one else pays attention to, why they show up on campuses even in cities with a large Torah-observant population and why they pay so much attention to Jewish communities and travellers in such places as Russia and India. 
Generally one does not find Chareidim in these places since they prefer large centres where they have resources, yeshivos and other such supports.  One doese not find Dati Leumi there either since the movement's focus is on Eretz Yisrael, not golus.  Asd a result, if you're a non-religious Jew living in a small town in the American mid-west, or a student venturing onto a university campus, or a villager someone in Siberia, chances are the only frum Jew you'll ever meet is a Chabad shaliach. 
The consequence of this is obvious - if all you ever want from the Chabadnik is chicken soup on Friday night and the occasional raucous Purim party, that's fine but if you want to learn more about Judaism you will be introduced to Torah observance but through the Chabad lens which is, in many ways exhaustively documented elsewhere, different from conventional Torah observance.  What's more, you will be taught that theirs is, like Rav Boteach say, the Judaism of our ancestors, the only real type, the kind that Moshe Rabeinu, a"h, brought down from Har Sinai.
One might raise an objection by pointing out that Aish HaTorah and Ohr Sameach are hardly different in that approach to kiruv.  This is definitely true.  Ask an Aish or Ohr rav about the age of the Earth and you will be told the only legitimate answer is 5771 years.  They won't teach you about the Rav or Rav Kook either in those places. 
But the significant difference is that Aish and Ohr generally restrict themselves to large communties, as I noted above regarding Chareidim in general.  You won't find Aish in Woebegone, Minnesota.  You just might find Chabad.
Through their kiruv, Chabad is indeed working very hard to present a specific type of Torah Judaism to the non-religious masses who don't know about the depth and variety of Torah observance.  They are working hard to convince the multitudes that Nusach Ari is the only siddur God hears you pray and that a certain deceased rabbinical figure really is the Moshiach, that it is a fundamental principle of Judaism and an actualhalacha to believe this, and that he is just waiting for the opportunity to reveal himself and bring the final salvation.
That Chabadniks don't realize that Judaism is far bigger than them and that their beliefs are not standard in the rest of the Torah community is regrettable.  That the rest of the Torah Jewish community is sitting back while they divert our non-religious brethren into their narrow camp isn't.

Is Lubavitch losing its heart?

This is a column which I am certainly not the most qualified to write, but ringing in my ears are the words of the Mishna: "In a place where there are no men, stand up and become one." In the absence of anyone else speaking about an area in which Chabad would do well to improve, and because it needs to be said, here goes.

I came to Chabad before my 10th birthday, and it rapidly became the love of my life. By the age of 14, I had, much to the consternation of both my parents, left home to move into a full-time Chabad yeshiva. I married an outstanding young Lubavitcher woman, almost immediately moving to Oxford to become there the emissary of Rabbi Menachem M. Schneersohn (the Rebbe), and named my kids after the great Chabad personalities who were my inspiration.

What was it that drew me? There was, of course, the Rebbe. There was also Chabad's commitment to educating Jews about their heritage, which drew me to the organization's sense of mission and purpose.

But I would be lying if I did not identify a completely different reason as the principal magnet that made me want to join the movement. Quite simply, Chabad were the nicest people in the world. I said to myself, any movement that could produce people this hospitable and selfless must be in possession of a great truth.

Back then Chabad was, for the most part, poor. You would see beat-up old jalopies roaming the broken streets of Crown Heights. Chabadniks' pockets might have been small, but their hearts were huge. You could be a hippie with long hair and tattoos. But as soon as you arrived at any Chabad center, you would not only be invited to spend the Sabbath but to join the family and move in.

I had grown up surrounded by the materialism of modern America; meeting people who cared little for their own egos and gave everything they had to strangers was magnetic. Sign me up!

BUT WITH Chabad about to commemorate the 14th anniversary of the Rebbe's passing, the time has come to reinforce this most central of Chabad values.

Chabad is by now the most effective Jewish educational organization in history, and no movement works harder for the Jewish people or caters to more unaffiliated Jews.

But success has brought the usual challenges. Chabad emissaries are becoming more ego-driven and territorial, too often bickering with one another. A seemingly incessant spate of court battles should serve as a wake-up call.

In Crown Heights, the official Chabad leadership seems engaged in permanent litigation with - mostly - Chabad messianic forces, for the soul of Lubavitch. Nearly all of it takes place in mainstream rather than Jewish courts, making them highly public affairs.

In London, an ugly public battle ousted one of the heads of Chabad UK of the past half-century. Sydney, Australia witnessed another ugly public battle for the control of Chabad institutions.

These are just a few examples. The press has reported on many more in places as far away as Russia, Ukraine and Israel.

WHY IS this all happening?

Whereas some mystical sects emphasize the abrogation of the ego and the abnegation of self, the genius of the Rebbe was to tap into the human desire for recognition, what philosophers call "the thymotic urge," and channel it into rescuing the Jewish people from oblivion. The Rebbe told his hassidim that they would go out into communities and distinguish themselves by becoming leaders. He took men and women with only yeshiva educations and made them believe in their capacity to transform great universities and whole countries.

This courageous vision led to an explosion of unused potential and transformed Chabad from a modest hassidic group into a global powerhouse of awe-inspiring proportions.

But harnessing the ego has its risks.

The model worked perfectly so long as the Rebbe was alive. Chabad had before its eyes an unequalled example of selfless devotion to a higher cause. There was not an ounce of materialism in the Rebbe's life, and his devotion to people in need transcended the saintly and bordered on the angelic.

The night the Rebbe died I penned an essay called "The Colossus and Me," where I related how the first thing I ever noticed about him were the holes on the bottoms of his shoes. The most powerful Jewish leader of the 20th century had next to no assets.

Now no one expected any of us in Chabad to be as selfless as the Rebbe. But there was an expectation that one be inspired by his example. Without the Rebbe as a living presence, some in Chabad are forgetting that ego is only redemptive when it is consecrated to a goal higher than oneself. Anything else runs contrary to the fundamental Chabad teaching of bitul hayesh, nullifying the self to become a tool of God's plan.

The sharp elbows and growing nepotism Chabad is exhibiting means that some are forgetting they are merely messengers and not the message itself.

SHORTLY AFTER the Rebbe's death in 1994, when I had my own battle with Chabad over the thousands of non-Jewish members of my Oxford organization and my appointment of my friend Cory Booker, an African-American Rhodes scholar, as our president, I thought perhaps I had indeed erred. So I placed myself in a self-imposed exile and lived through the disquiet of being isolated from my community.

But now, with Cory becoming one of America's most influential politicians and Chabad honoring him at dinners and appointing him to their prestigious boards, it is clear that a vision of inspiring all people with Jewish values - non-Jews included - has been embraced by Chabad.

I say this not to vindicate myself. The Chabad activists whom I am discussing are my superiors in sacrifice for the Jewish people and devotion to the communal good. They are the heroes of the Jewish people. I say it rather to point out that Chabad should create a fair and impartial mechanism by which young emissaries can come to discuss how they are treated by those above them and whether or not it is just. This would be true in any organization, and it should certainly be true in an organization as righteous as Chabad.


As any organization becomes more powerful, it must also become more self-critical.

CHABAD IS facing unique challenges. A growing number of Chabad youth are leaving the fold. The Chabad dating scene is beginning to exhibit some of the shallow mores of the secular culture, with money and looks playing a not-insignificant role. And gratuitous bickering among some in its leadership are undermining the morale of the young future emissaries they are meant to inspire.

When a Chabad rabbi sends away a family who has worked under him after an ugly dispute, he mistakenly conveys the belief that the ends of spreading Judaism justifies the means of doing so at any cost.

All of this can be reversed. But not if it isn't discussed.

Chabad is the last great hope for the Jewish people, and we are all in its debt. But an organization whose very name means "city of love," risks diminishing its light unless it remembers that it succeeded not only because of its rich mystical philosophy or the considerable charisma of its representatives, but because of the seeming ego-lessness of its adherents and the infinite love they bestow on all who knock on their door.

The writer, who hosts a daily national radio show in the US, is the author of many books including Judaism for Everyone and The Broken American Male and How to Fix Him.
www.shmuley.com

Excerpt from: Righteous Indignation: How Are We To Understand the Alleged Spinka Scandal?

..To this day, the most renowned Hasidic sect, Chabad-Lubavitch, religiously celebrates the anniversaries of the release from Russian jails of its revered founding Rebbe, Shneur Zalman of Lyadi in 1798, as well as the subsequent liberations of his descendants, Rabbi Dov Ber Schneerson in 1826 and Rabbi Joseph Isaac Schneerson, who had been imprisoned by the Soviets in 1927. Behind all these unjust incarcerations lay the mischievous work of Jewish informants, initially from among the misnagdim, Hasidism’s mainstream rabbinical opponents, later the maskilim or Jewish champions of the European Enlightenment, and finally the radicals of the notorious Yevseksia, the “Yiddish division” of the Communist Party. Indeed, during the dark days of Soviet Communism, zealously anti-ecclesiastical members the Yevseksia did the government’s dirty work of shutting down synagogues and yeshivas and jailing their rabbinic leaders. It is thus for legitimate historical reasons that, in the Hasidic psyche, the deepest contempt is reserved for Jewish informants, or mosrim.