Source: http://www.travelblog.org/North-America/United-States/New-York/blog-34099.html
Schneersohn: the cult leader
He claimed redemption from exile in America was imminent. The Jews he believed were essentially different from the the non-Jew. Assimilation: the adoption of non-Jewish culture and ways was morally wr... [more]
“Here God ordered the blessing.” This is Crown Heights also known as the Rebbe’s neighborhood, a section of Brooklyn in New York City. The Rebbe was Menachem M. Schneersohn, the deceased leader of Habad Lubavitch, an extremist Jewish cult. These days one can see all types of photos of the Rebbe in the Judaica stores of Crown Heights, from when he was young man with a black beard to when he was an elderly man. Those who believe that the Rebbe was or is the Messiah wear skull caps upon which it is written in Hebrew the words, “Long Live Our Master, Teacher, and Rabbi, the King Messiah forever and ever. Others , who believe that the Rebbe was merely the Moses and leader of world Jewry try to emphasize his human qualities. In one photograph for example he wears glasses and in others he plays chess with his father in law.
Crown Heights has developed in recent years. The Jewish Children’s Museum was completed recently. It is made of metal and glass and towers over many of the old stone and brick buildings on Eastern Parkway. Inside the Judaica store of the museum an Israeli man with a pale
From somber cult leader to Messiah
Some of Schneersohn's followers after he died considered him the Messiah who will redeem the Jews from exile in America and supernaturally bring them to the Land of Israel.
face explains to a young sister that one can purchase Hanukkah candles in 770 Eastern Parkway, Lubavitch headquarters, more cheaply but as a woman she can not go in there. She should send her brother.
770 Eastern Parkway has been referred to as “Lubavitch World Headquarters” but many cultist like to call it, “The House of Our Master in Babylon.” The Lubavitchers believe that they are in exile in America as the ancient Judeans were in Babylon. They hope and pray to be redeemed from the unholiness of exile in America and the gentile nations and returned by supernatural means to the “Land of Israel.”
The residents of Crown Heights could be defined in many ways. They are Hasids, Lubavitchers, and Jews but the terms Jewishist and Jewishism are more apt to describe them and their ideology. They are Jewish fundamentalists, nationalists, and reactionaries. They believe that their entire lives should revolve around Judaism. Judaism is not a mere religion for them . It is the best way and the only way for those of Jewish descent. All other ways are considered degenerate and inferior and criticized. The Jewishist has little to do with the non-Jew, the non-Jew
Habad-Lubavitch cult members in Crown Heights, Brooklyn
Cult members dress in the clothing of the 19th century. It is wrong they say to dress as the gentiles do. They do not cut or trim their beards.
is considered impure. His world, the world of 99.99% of humanity, is wrong. Thus “goyishche” or non-Jewish clothes, names, music, philosophy, education, food, and social associations are all disdained. The worse sin is that of “intermarriage”, marrying a non-Jew. Those who follow “goyische”ways are ostracized condemned and become pariahs. They are guilty of social and cultural crime.
The Lubavitchers lament the modern era. They trace themselves back to Hasidism of the 18th century, a mystical anti-intellectual and anti modern movement of Eastern European Jews. They remember Napoleon’s plan to emancipate the Jews of Eastern Europe and grant them equal rights as a plot to destroy Judaism while the Czar’s way of traditional persecution and progrom they find more familiar and less threatening. They look favorably to the time when Jewish society was autonomous under the direction of Rabbis in the Middle Ages. But their golden age was three thousand years ago when the Jews lived in the Land of Israel under the direction of the Torah which they consider to be the teachings of God as interpreted and handed down by prophets and Rabbis. In their view as time moves further and further from the glory days of three
On their way to the "House of their Lord in Babylon"
Young cultists walk towards their center in Brooklyn
thousand years ago,the world becomes more corrupt and evil.
Rather than live integrated into a democacy with equal rights the the Lubavticher cult would prefer to live in a society which does not accept them because if this were the case there would logically be less assimilation. Assimilation, the gradual acculturation of persons of Jewish descent into the societies in which they live, is considered a spiritual holocaust. They believe that the holocaust of World War II occurred because the Jews of Europe committed the sin of assimilation. The ideal for them is separation or segregation from the corrupt and degenerate non-Jew. According to them, a Jew can not convert out of his or her religion because in his essence he is a Jew He has a Jewish soul. The Jew they believe has a godly soul and an animal soul while the non-jew, the goy, has only an animal soul. Thus they argue those who follow their true essence as Jews are free. Those who do not are enslaved to their bodies and desires and living as gentiles when they are really Jews.
To follow one’s essence and be free, the Lubavitch cult argues the Jew is
The cult proclaims Crown Heights, "The Rebbe's neighborhood"
In Crown Heights,"the Rebbe's neighborhood", Jewish women are urged to dress modestly.
expected to obey god’s will as manifest in the Torah-the teaching of god-bestowed on the ancient Israelites and having written, revealed, oral and concealed aspects to it. These teachings are considered absolute law valid forever. Every decision in life and every action is made in accordance with it from when one can have sex with one’s wife to when to wake up in the morning. The opinions of men and women are considered unimportant. The Lubavitcher cultists are authoritarian; they believe that rabbis have the authority to interpret this Torah or teachings of god and decide on every behavior of men and woman and human society and that Menachem M. Schneersohn, their leader was the supreme Rabbi of his time, the Moses of his generation. In their view, therefore, all men are not equal and democracy is not the proper way to govern a society.
When the Lubavtichers came to the United States from Europe, after World War II, they proclaimed that “American was not different”. While in the Soviet Union, they waged a cultural war against the communist, atheist and secularist policies of the society and this continued in the United States. Like in Russia, many of the chief secularists in this country where of Jewish origin. The secularists strove to create a society where a person would not be be judged or discriminated against because of his religious pedigree, where religion was taken out of the public sphere. The Lubvatichers saw this as a danger to their society. But unlike the Satmar, another Jewish cult, they did not close themselves off from the gentile world. Their leader Schnnersohn decided to fight against it. In his war, he created for Jewish youth an organization with the English name, “The Armies of God”. He constructed “Jewish Commandment Tanks”. He sent missionaries all over the world to convert assimilated Jews into fellow cultists. His mottoes: “Every Jew will have a portion in the World to Come.” and “No Jew will be left behind.”
Schnnershohn himself was a childless, friendless and somber individual who only spoke publicly in the Judeo-German language of Easter Europe and rarely left Crown Heights. Yet among members of the cult he was admired almost as a god. The cultists believed he could intercede with god on their behalf to heal illnesses. They believed he could foresee the future. They sought his advice and asked for his blessing in every matter of importance. His somber and severe face adorned the walls of many cultists homes. At the same time, few cultists knew anything about the man whom they considered to be the highest human spiritual authority in existence. Most had never even had a conversation with him.
The great progress of the Habad-Lubvavitch cult took place in the 1960’s and 70’s when many in America were searching for an alternative to the culture of materialism of this country. Those of Jewish descent sometimes found that Lubavtich offered a spiritual alternative to the eastern philosophies and religions which were growing in popularity. Musicians, artists, and practioners of meditation joined the movement. But like those who embraced the Hare Krishna movement, they soon found out that they were not accepted by those who were born into the the old time religion. They eventually formed a sub-society in Lubavitch, a lower caste. The original Lubavitch cultists were reluctant to socialize or marry with them.
In the 1980’s and 90’s, Lubavitch cult saw the pinnacle of its power. It began to get large funding from wealthy Jewish philanthropists. Many of these philanthropists saw Lubavtich as a tool to preserve Jewish culture and society in America. With monies donated, Lubavitch set up schools, soup kitchens, synagogues, children’s camps around the world. They launched aggressive media campaigns against the assimilation of Jews into American society. They also lobbied for an end to the separation of church and state in America. They tried to get religious education into the public school system making use of the “release time” program and the argument for a “moment of silence”. They made alliances with Christian Fundamentalists who also wanted to create a theocratic state in America.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, the cult made in roads in its old territory of Russia and Eastern Europe as well. They found support from the billionaire Russian Oligarchs, many of who were Jewish. They captured the Chief Rabbinate of the country. They saw an outlet for their social services among the Jewish poor. They enjoyed the resurgence of religion ,ethnic tension, and poverty in Russia and the countries of the former Soviet Union because these factors led to a strong market for their fundamentalism and Jewish chauvinism.
In Israel, the cult found support from many traditional Israelis of Middle Eastern origin who chafed under the antitradtional philosophy of the labor movement. The Israeli government also welcomed the pro-Israel orientation of the cult and its anti-assmimlationsist ideology. The cult took an aggressive position on the issue of the territories captured by Israel in the 1967 war. They believed it was redeemed land of Israel which should not be returned to the Arabs. But the Lubavtich cult ultimately had disdain for Zionism and the objectives of the modern Jewish nationalist movement. Previous cult leaders opposed Zionism because of its antireligious aspect. The Lubavitch cult believed that the Jews would be returned to the Middle East miraculously by the Messiah. In the meantime they followed the maxim,”Make here the Land of Israel”, meaning construct everywhere Jewish life. Menachem M. Schneersohn, the cult leader, never visited Israel and refused to do so.
As part of the war against the predominant trend in Jewish life, the Lubavtich cult resisted moving out of Crown Heights to the suburbs. This was despite the fact that every area around their small enclave had become first predominantly African-American and later Afro-Caribbean. Their philosophy was that not one inch of Jewish land should be given up. In Europe, like other fundamentalist Jewish sects and cults, they did not encourage their members to move to America, since America was considered contaminated. In America, they preferred to be separate. In their socio-religious hierarchal world view, the Rebbe was on top, followed by renowned Rabbis of the cult, the Lubavitch rank and file, new cultists, other fundamentalist Jews, Modern Orthodox Jews, traditional Israelis and Assimilated Jews, and finally white gentiles. At the very bottom were African-Americans who were seen as animals from the jungle. Their opinion of their African American neighbors was reinforced by the high level of crime in the Black community. Yet where as Crown Heights was a predominantly Jewish area in the 1960’s, in the 1970’s and 80’s it was a predominantly African American neighborhood. By the 1990’s the neighborhood saw the influx of people of the Caribbean Islands-The West Indies.
Unlike the African Americans, the West Indians did not accept so readily an inferior status in the neighborhood and they soon came into conflict with the Lubavitchers in the course of a riot that occurred in 1991. The riot developed after a young boy Gavin Cato was run over and left for dead by a Lubavitcher driving a car in the cult leader Schnnersohn’s motorcade. During the course of the riot, the West Indians protested the racist attitudes of Habad cult members which led to the child’s death but because of growing Lubavitch political power, legal action was not followed against the Lubavtichers for the death of the child and the protests of the West Indians and African Americans were met by deaf ears.
After the the cult leader died in 1994, there was a split among members of the cult. Some considered Schneersohn to be the messiah who will save the Jews from exile
while others thought he was merely the “Moses of the generation”. In the course of the last decade the two splinter groups have grown apart. The Messianists now have their own schools and institutions. In the last few years, the cultic qualities of the Habad-Lubavitich group have become more apparent to many as the conflicts between the two groups have entered the public sphere.
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