The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference (Hardcover)

by David Berger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Review
'Years from now, this work will likely be seen as a primary text that formed part of the internal Jewish debate.' N. R. Deutsch, Choice 'The growth of Lubavitch does cause concern, and Berger's book must be read to why it can be a danger to all of Judaism. This book is a brilliant exposition of the parameters of contemporary messianism ... both the author and the publishers must be commended for their courage and openness.' Uri Ben Alexander, European Judaism 'A passionate account of one man's involvement in a controversy that may well be one of the new century's major religion stories.' Alan Cochrum, Fort Worth Star-Telegram 'Compelling ... imperative reading, as it carefully and systematically documents the true nature and scope of contemporary Lubavitch missionary work.' Allan Nadler, Forward 'Passionate, powerful, brilliant ... records not only conviction, but evidence and argument ... This is simply the most important book of Judaism-not about Judaism but of Judaism-to appear this year, and the most urgent in decades.' Jacob Neusner, Jerusalem Post 'A profoundly fascinating and at the same time a profoundly disturbing story of admiration turning to adulation, thence through mass hysteria and mysticism to messianism ... authoritative.' Geoffrey Alderman, Jewish Journal of Sociology 'A courageous and very troubling memoir ... His criticism cannot be easily dismissed ... Berger has performed an important service to world Jewry by raising an issue that for too long has been swept under the rug.' Lifestyles Magazine 'A courageous and important book ... It is courageous because it is the first book of its kind and is directed against an icon of Orthodoxy. It is important because it has something important to say to a number of different constituencies ... carefully and clearly argues, and generally persuasive ... enhanced, in this regard, by its memoir form, which draws the reader into Berger's legitimate agony as his awareness of the problematics of Chabad messianism grows along with his equal despair that no one else seems to care.' Lippman Bodoff, Midstream 'Until now, no one has made the case as forcefully as Berger ... If its j'accuse is ignored and its author dismissed, it will mean that the leadership of Orthodoxy is too timid to confront a major challenge to Jewish faith, and that would be tragic indeed.' Jack Riemer, Moment [a similar review by Jack Riemer appeared in American Jewish World] 'Throughly engrossing book ... Berger's abiding Orthodox religious commitment, deep familiarity with religious texts and ideas, and specialized training in historical scholarship have singularly positioned and qualified him to embark on this defense of Judaism ... Astute historian that he is, he offers trenchant and compelling explanations for this lack of aggressive Orthodox reaction to this latest false messianism ... an articulate, thoughtful, and passionate book.' Benny Kraut, Shofar 'Carefully and vigorously argued ... a compelling, jarring, deeply disturbing polemic and precisely what Professor Berger intended it to be: [A] memoir, a history, a religious tract ... an indictment, a lament, and an appeal.A" It is passionate, yet scholarly and precise. Its message is emotional and religiously inspired, yet its careful treatment of evidence bears the unmistakable mark of a seasoned scholar.' Yaakov Kermaier, Tradition ENDORSEMENTS 'The principle is right, the passion is right, and the deeply classical nature of David Berger's book is very moving. It is rare that the scholarly study of Judaism so intensely engages with living Judaism. Berger's erudite ferocity is exhilarating.' Leon Wieseltier --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Description
This book is a history, an indictment, a lament, and an appeal, focusing on the messianic trend in Lubavitch hasidism. It demonstrates how hasidim who affirm the dead Rebbe's messiahship have abandoned one of Judaism's core beliefs in favour of adherence to the doctrine of a second coming. At the same time, it decries the remarkable equanimity with which the standard-bearers of Orthodoxy have granted legitimacy to this development by continuing to recognize such believers as Orthodox Jews in good standing. This dramatic abandonment of the age-old Jewish resistance to a quintessentially Christian belief is a development of striking importance for the history of religions, and it is an earthquake in the history of Judaism. David Berger chronicles the unfolding of this development from a personal viewpoint. He describes the growing concern that impelled him to undertake an anti-messianist campaign-publications, correspondence, and the sponsorship of a Rabbinical Council of America resolution excluding this belief from authentic Judaism. He argues that a large number, almost certainly a substantial majority, of Lubavitch hasidim believe in the Rebbe's messiahship; a significant segment, including educators in the central institutions of the movement, maintain a theology that goes beyond posthumous messianism to the affirmation that the Rebbe is pure divinity. While many Jews see Lubavitch as a marginal phenomenon, its influence is in fact growing at a remarkable rate-to the point where its representatives are poised to dominate Orthodox religious institutions not merely in isolated outposts but in several major countries throughout the world. This book analyses the boundaries of Judaism's messianic faith and its conception of God. It assesses the threat posed by the messianists of Lubavitch and points to the consequences, ranging from undermining a fundamental argument against the Christian mission to calling into question the kosher status of many foods and ritual objects prepared under Lubavitch supervision. Finally, it proposes a strategy to protect authentic Judaism from this assault. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 195 pages
• Publisher: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization (September 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1874774889
• ISBN-13: 978-1874774884
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars See all reviews (80 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #967,473 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

92 of 119 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shocking, Frightening, and COMPLETELY TRUE, October 28, 2001

By	Stephen M Tolany (Thornwood, NY USA) - See all my reviews

In his new book, which has been received with great acclaim from academics and rabbis from across the spectrum, Rabbi Dr. David Berger tells the story of how he and other Jewish leaders have been trying to get the Orthodox Jewish community to realize that a large, well-organized, and powerful messianic missionary group has been misrepresenting itself as Orthodox Judaism around the world.

Berger tells us how in 1994, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson died, and the radical tendencies in his chasidic teachings started to become even more manifest and obvious among his followers, the Chabad/Lubavitch chasidim. This group, with its headquarters in Crown Heights, had long been controversial. Deans of leading talmudical accademies in America, such as Rabbi Aaron Kotler, Rabbi Isaac Hutner, Rabbi Yaakov Weinberg, and Rabbi Henoch Leibowitz, had been making known their intense displeasure with the group and its leader for many years, and in the late 1980s the elder sage Rabbi Menachem Shach in Israel had pronounced Rabbi Schneerson a "False Messiah", citing, among other things, the statement of Rabbi Schneerson that a rebbe was the "Being and Essence of God in a human body." Despite the deeply felt and almost universal elite rabbinic opposition to the Lubavitch movement, the majority of the the Orthodox Jewish public, especially the Modern Orthodox community and its local rabbis, could not bring itself to think ill of the Lubavitch chasidim, who, as agents of their teacher, Rabbi Schneerson, had been engaging in Jewish outreach and Jewish education in a remarkable and selfless fashion around the world, founding synagogues and centers of Jewish education in far-flung communities no one else seemed to care about.

Berger's book describes how he has been fighting against either profound sympathy for Lubavitch or a general sense of apathy in trying to bring the Orthodox, especially the Modern Orthodox, Jewish community to recognize how far the Lubavitch group has strayed from normative Judaism over the years.

In the months following Rabbi Schneerson's death, a radical theology has emerged, one in which Rabbi Schneerson is viewed as having established himself as the Messiah, has completed his mission on Earth, and needs only to be "greeted" and "taken into our hearts" in order to return to the world. Some claim that he will be resurrected, others claim that he never died, that his body is as physically alive and healthy as ever, in the most literal sense. Hundreds of Lubavitch rabbis around the world, including the chief of the rabbinical court in Montreal, and many rabbis highly placed in the offical Israeli rabbinate, have signed a bizarre legal ruling that maintains that every Jew in the world is bound by Jewish law to accept Rabbi Schneerson as the Messiah. They maintain that Rabbi Schneerson was literally a prophet, and that he proclaimed that he was the Messiah who had arrived, and Jewish law requires Jews to accept the word of a prophet as binding.

Berger presents extensive and incontrovertible evidence that "a significant majority" of the Lubavitch movement accept Rabbi Schneerson as the Messiah, and that they are teaching his messiahship to tens of thousands of children in their schools around the world, including many children in the former Soviet Union (where they are poised to dominate all Jewish institutions) and Russian immigrants in Israel.

Berger also analyzes all of the "proofs" Lubavitchers claim to have brought to support their "Second Coming" ideology, and shows with the devastating critical precision of an accomplished academic scholar and rabbi that the rejection of this belief is not only integral to Judaism, but was a critical defining element for Jews over most of the last two millenia, when they often lived among a dominant Christian population that believed in precisely such a teaching. Already, Christian missionary groups have been taking eager advantage of the Lubavitch debacle. For instance, a recent "Jews for Jesus" billboard shows a picture of Rabbi Schneerson with a caption that reads, "Right Idea, Wrong Guy".

Berger takes great pains to address the problem of Lubavitch messianism as an issue separate and distinct from the problem of the frightening new worship of Rabbi Schneerson as a divine being that has appeared in several mainstream elements of the group. Although the two problems are entangled phenomena, Berger wants to make it clear to his readers that even if no Lubavitchers were worshipping Rabbi Schneerson, the idea of idenitfying a dead man as the Messiah and then waiting for his ressurection is a profoundly dangerous, and un-Jewish idea.

But Berger still outlines the contours of the group that worships Schneerson, and uses much of the second half of his book to present evidence that they are not the fringe element we thought they were, and that they have theologians of their own who are developing a theology of Schneerson that presents him as a "man-God" and that looks remarkably like certain stages of early Christianity. As Berger points out, even non-messianic (indeed even the few anti-messianic) Lubavitchers regularly claim, even after his death, that "der rebbe firt der velt": "The Rebbe runs the world." In Crown Heights, many of the school classrooms have a picture of Schneerson on the Eastern wall (towards which Jews pray), and in the main sanctuary of the movement at 770 Eastern Packway in Brooklyn, Lubavitchers now face the balcony (where Schneerson used to stand) during prayers. The students and children are insructed to "direct their hearts and thoughts" to Rabbi Schneerson, who is "omnipotent" and "omniscient", and will fulfill all of your wishes when you pray to him.

Mainstream Lubavitch institutions employ rabbis who have published lengthy defenses of the idea that the Rebbe is an incarnation of the infinite essence of God, and that this idea is meant in a completely literal sense, that he is not merely an intermediary between us and God.

Those who are as skeptical as I was at first to hear these incredible claims should buy the book (or borrow it from a library) and examine all the evidence for themselves. The reknowned rabbinic scholar Jacob Neusner, author of over 700 hundred books and former head of Jewish Studies at Brown University, declared in a recent issue of the Jerusalem Post that Berger's book was the most important Jewish book published in many years, and that Berger has established himself as a "sage-prophet" in having had the courage to write it.

Very possibly.

14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A forbearing and modest criticism, February 20, 2003

By	bukhtan (Chicago, Illinois, USA) - See all my reviews

Rabbi Berger has written a learned and humane polemic against the apotheosis of Menachem Schneerson. He explains why it is ridiculous and sacrilegious for Jews to acclaim a dead man as the Messiah in an unredeemed world. His arguments are clear and cogent, using the great Rabbinical texts, yet comprehensible to interested laypersons.
Rabbi Berger has limited his criticism to those elements in Lubavitch who revere the dead Rebbe as the Messiah, or even worship him as God himself. The book is in no way a general attack on Lubavitch. The vitriol heaped on the author by some signifies nothing more than reactive hysteria.
Those who are looking for a criticism of Lubavitch or the Ultra-Orthodox generally will not find it here.

41 of 54 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent start, but more needs to be written, October 28, 2001

By	Marc Seidenfaden (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

In my opinion, the chief weakness of this book is that the author doesn't show you how the modern-day disturbing behavior of the Lubavitcher chassidic movement is rooted in the teaching and leadership style of their deceased rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.

Towards the end of the book, Berger skirts the issue a bit, and hints to the fact that any Lubavitcher chasid who would want to return to authentic Judaism while still maintaining a reverence for Rabbi Schneerson would have to "explain away" many disturbing things Rabbi Schneerson said in his lifetime. For instance: The Rebbe said that the Third Temple would descend from the sky and land next to the Lubavitch headquarters in Brooklyn and then proceed together with it to the land of Israel. The Rebbe also announced that he was a prophet. He said that the work of the Messiah was completed, and that the Messiah had arrived, and that all that we had to do was "greet" him. He also said that his deceased father-in-law (which means himself in the code of the movement, since they supposedly shared the same soul) was going to rise from the dead to redeem the Jewish people.

It's good that Berger makes this point, but we need others, perhaps rabbis who have left the movement, to come forward and write much, much more. People will only become completely convinced that David Berger is right and that Lubavitch is a dangerous deviant movement when they are shown how Rabbi Schneerson himself was the prime cause of the catastrophe. Criticizing the Lubavitcher chasidim while praising their rebbe will get us nowhere.

Although Berger finally seems aware of the fact that the Rebbe himself was the architect of mess the Orthodox community finds itself in today, but he refuses to make that point explicitly, probably because he realizes that he'd have to write another entire book to prove that point. He may also have realized that it will be easier to convince the public that the current behavior of the movement is disturbing than it would be to convince them that a beloved old sage was a modern-day false messiah. Most importantly, Berger wanted to write a book about things he knew he could prove conclusively and authoritatively in a short volume. Venturing into the realm of the Rebbe's leadership and teachings to show how he created the movement in its current state is simply something that someone else, another concerned scholar, will have to do.

So, in conclusion, David Berger's book is valuable, compelling, and excellently crafted, but only the very beginning of what is going to have to be done to repair the world of Orthodox Judaism.