Introduction to the Paperback Edition

Summary

FOR BETTER or for worse, this is no ordinary book, and writing an account of the afterlife of its original edition is no ordinary task. Within the short compass of an introduction, I need to provide an overview of the reactions that the work elicited, my assessment of their merit, the range of attitudes in the larger community towards believers in the messiahship and/or divinity of the Lubavitcher Rebbe (Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, who passed away in 1994), and the contours of faith within Lubavitch hasidism more than six years after publication. Moreover, the debates that swirled around the book impel me to provide a more sharply focused analysis of some core concerns that require further clarification. Ultimately, at least from my perspective, the issue before us is nothing less than the state—and fate—of the Jewish religion.

Criticism and Response

The spectrum of terms used to characterize the book has extended from ‘masterpiece’ to Mein Kampf, the first in a personal letter from Rabbi Shraga Feivel Zimmerman of K'hal Bnei Ashkenaz in Monsey, New York, and the second in a Yiddish article in the Algemeiner Journal by a Lubavitch hasid who announced that he had not read it but had heard about it, ‘and this is more than enough’. In the event that anyone is inclined to downplay the work's cosmic significance, I note that this article, entitled ‘Chutzpah without a Limit’, begins with several paragraphs about the transcendent chutzpah of Osama bin Laden, affirms that any significant phenomenon must emerge from within the Jewish people, identifies a certain Dr Berger as the evident source of this phenomenon, and proceeds to a measured discussion of my similarity to the NKVD persecutors of Soviet-era Chabad, and to other quintessential malefactors. The piece is illustrated with a single photo—of Osama bin Laden.

On a more serious note, two Lubavitch rabbis published book-length broadsides, one, by Rabbi Chaim Dalfin, entitled Attack on Lubavitch: A Response, and the other, by Rabbi Chaim Rapoport, bearing the somewhat puzzling title, The Messiah Problem: Berger, the Angel, and the Scandal of Reckless Indiscrimination.