Some stories start at the end, but it’s really the beginning.
In the universe of Hasidic people, even Jews in general, there must be few exceptions to those who do not know that Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson, considered the most influential rabbi in modern history, died on June 12, 1994.
In his condolences, the then president of the United States, Bill Clinton, called him a “monumental man” and described him as “responsible for promoting the instruction of ethics and morality in our young people,” according to Joseph Telushkin in his biography. titled with one word: Rebbe.
The magnetic leader died and the myth was born.
The Rebbe – so called because he is an unparalleled Hasidic guide – is credited with helping the Chabad movement, known as Lubavitch because of the Russian city in which it was founded three centuries ago, expand globally from the barracks at 770 Eastern Parkway, in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights. The place is known simply as 770 and was the scene ten days ago of a confrontation between men in black suits and hats, and the police over illegal works to connect two rooms between basements.
This incident brought back to the present day Schneerson, the seventh and last Rebbe, “the best known since Maimonides,” writes the biographer. Although posters with his photograph and the slogan “the Messiah is here” have been hanging for a long time, his popularity on the streets of New York has intensified, despite the fact that he annoys the leaders and the majority of the Chabadists.
In fact, the influence of his creed not only does not diminish, but has grown in these three decades, emphasizes Rabbi Motty Seligson, communications director of the synagogue. Inside the Jewish community and outside, he insists. To this end, he cites the 2017 criminal justice reform in the US as one of his legacies, as it was one of the issues on which he persevered in the 1970s and 1980s.
“The movement has grown 200% since 2001,” says Seligson. “Although there is a board for logistical and institutional functioning, the Rebbe is still the leader. “He is the guide of our guidelines, teachings and inspiration,” she highlights. “His is not the job of a company CEO, a spiritual connection occurs here,” the spokesperson clarifies. Positions can be replaced, idols cannot.
“It is a legend for Jews in general,” says Yochonon Donn, a Hasidic journalist who is not part of the Lubavitch “sect.” “It is said that wherever you go there will be Coca-Cola and a Chabad community,” he emphasizes. “He has not had a successor because they believe that he is irreplaceable,” he clarifies.
Donn remembers that, as a teenager, he attended those long lines in which the Rebbe gave a dollar to each of the visitors and that with this “the goodness in the world increased, he maintains. “He was a charismatic man who inspired people to go everywhere as emissaries,” he adds.
Rabbi Seligson was a child and also resorted to these practices of collective catharsis. He still treasures banknotes that his spiritual reference gave him. “The lines went around the building,” he recalls.
It all began on a Sunday in 1986, when Schneerson began the practice that illustrates his legacy. He gave a one-dollar bill to each visitor. In exchange, the person who received it had to allocate another to charity, to the cause that each one decided.
“When two people meet, something good must result for a third,” Telushkin summarizes, in the words of the protagonist, the philosophy behind this initiative.
“Each one was briefly with the Rebbe and received the blessing, in addition to the dollar,” says the biographer. On each day there were 6,000 to 7,000 people. Given the waste, community leaders begged the leader to recommend that the charity be directed to the institution itself. He replied that no, he would never do that.
As Donn indicates, Schneerson was a very spiritual man, with great humanistic training. He studied in Berlin and Paris (at the Sorbonne), where he graduated in mechanical engineering, although he never practiced.
He was born in Ukraine on April 18, 1902. He fled the USSR in 1927 heading to Germany. He was in Warsaw and with the emergence of Nazism, in 1940, he managed to arrive in New York, along with his wife Chaya Mushka, daughter of the sixth Rebbe, who was already installed in 770, in Brooklyn. The death of his father-in-law led him to be the seventh Rebbe. This Saturday marked the 73rd anniversary of his promotion.
Described by his marked optimism, once he settled in New York, he only left the city three times and all three to travel within the state. He did not go abroad again.
“His popularity and legacy are not without controversy,” writes Telushkin, alluding to something that is in full relevance today with the war in the Gaza Strip. “His views on Israel’s security and his opposition to any territorial commitment to Israel earned him support but also intense opposition,” she adds.
His death left another controversy. Was he the messiah or not? In his speeches and writings, Schneerson argued that he did not meet the requirements. This does not prevent there from being a conspiratorial minority that thinks he will return or that he did not even die. These radicals, young people from Israel, are credited with having built a tunnel, without entrusting it to anyone, to expand the synagogue, which has become too small, always based on the plans formulated by the leader, and which ended with clashes with police.
“It is one thing to pray for the messiah, which we do three times a day, and another to identify the messiah,” Seligson answers. The dispute goes against the vision of the leader, messenger of the brotherhood of all Jews.