12 - From Margin to Mainstream: The Consolidation and Expansion of the Messianist Beachhead

Summary

THE PRIMARY OBJECTIVE of this book is to establish the principle that anyone who proclaims the messiahship of the Rebbe stands outside the parameters of Orthodox Judaism and must be treated accordingly. From this perspective, the question of the size of the Lubavitch movement and the percentage of hasidim who affirm this belief is secondary. Nonetheless, the importance of the Chabad community and the nature of its messianic profile have major implications along a broad front of halakhic, sociological, and public policy issues, and I have no choice but to confront them.

With respect to the movement as a whole, the Lubavitch Youth Organization publishes a directory including an incomplete but very impressive list of emissaries in countries covering the alphabetical spectrum from Armenia to Venezuela. After consultation with official spokesmen in New York, a journalist reported that ‘Chabad's facilities have grown by almost a third in [the] six years [since the Rebbe's death]. The movement has established more than 500 Chabad institutions throughout the world, raising the global total to 2,600, with 3,700 couples serving as emissaries.’

Even as we recognize the fluidity of the term ‘institutions’ and the possibility that these numbers are exaggerated, there is no question that the worldwide Chabad presence is growing at a stunning rate. I have made some random enquiries from what I believe to be reliable local sources to supplement publicly available information, and they reinforce this impression to a degree that will surprise even knowledgeable observers.

I was taken aback to learn that Chabad rabbis constitute 50 per cent of the English rabbinate. Milan has a powerful Chabad presence, Venice boasts a Chabad centre where many Jewish tourists eat and spend the Sabbath, and the most important ritual slaughterer in Rome is a Lubavitch hasid. Any Jewish traveller to France, where the Lubavitch directory lists thirty-five major emissaries, will testify to the visibility and significance of Chabad institutions and services there. Half the twenty-six synagogues in Sydney are led by Chabad rabbis, and, in the words of my informant, ‘Kashrut, including shechita (ritual slaughter), is governed in Sydney by the Kashrut Authority, which is supervised by one rabbi only—Habad, of course’. Chabad, he went on to say, ‘has completely dominated the efforts to bring Russian immigrants into the community’.