World

Life, Afterlife

New bios of Lubavitcher Rebbe dig for the man behind the myth.

Sue Fishkoff
Jewish Telegraphic Agency

San Francisco

S

ixteen years after the death
of Rabbi Menachem Mendel
Schneerson, a flurry of new
publications indicates not only how
enduring the interest is in his life and
legacy, but also how potent the mine-
field is surrounding his mythology.
Writing a biography of a larger-than-
life figure is never easy. And when that
figure is the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe,
the charismatic leader of the worldwide
Chabad-Lubavitch movement, the usual
challenges of sifting through sources
and evaluating mountains of research
material are complicated by internal
politics, religious sensibilities, personal
loyalties and a lack of reliable first-per-
son information.
Until now, the only recountings of
Schneerson's life have been idealized
biographies written by Chabad follow-
ers. Now there are two new biographies
by academics outside Chabad circles,
with a third in the works.
New York University Professor Elliot
Wolfson came out last fall with Open
Secret: Postmessianic Messianism and
the Mystical Revision of Menahem
Mendel Schneerson, an examination of
Schneerson's leadership within the con-
text of Jewish esoteric tradition.
Next month will see the publication
of The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife
of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, by

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the seventh Lubavitcher rebbie, died in 1994.

Samuel Heilman of City University of
New York and Menachem Friedman of
Israel's Bar-Ilan University, an examina-
tion of Schneerson's early life and what
the authors describe as his growing
messianic pretensions.
And Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, author
of several bestselling books on Jewish
life and thought, is in the early stages
of a book focusing on the source of
Schneerson's charisma and the influence
he continues to exert on people's lives.
The Heilman-Friedman book is gen-
erating the most controversy. Written for
a lay audience, it frames Schneerson's
mission, and that of the Chabad

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movement he led, as motivated by
Messianism, here defined as the attempt
to hasten the messianic era through
human actions.

The Messiah
The messianic mission was so much at
the heart of the late rebbe's leadership,
the authors argue, that one cannot be a
follower of the rebbe without full com-
mitment to that goal.
The authors take a psycho-bio
approach to Schneerson's life, trying to
get inside the man's head to uncover his
motivation — always a tricky business.
They focus on Schneerson's 14 years in

Berlin and Paris — the so-called "lost
years" between his 1927 marriage to
Chaya Mushka, the daughter of the sixth
Lubavitcher rebbe, and 1941, when the
couple escaped Nazi Europe and arrived
in New York to rejoin the Lubavitch
court.
Left to his own devices, they write,
Schneerson would have preferred to
"settle in Paris, become a French citizen
and live as a Jew of chasidic background
pursuing a career in engineering."
While not explicitly claiming that
Schneerson and his young wife fell away
from their chasidic roots, the authors
return again and again to the short
beard and secular dress Schneerson
favored until his arrival in New York,
along with other similar details, as evi-
dence of an Orthodox, but not haredi
lifestyle.
"There is no question he was an
observant Jew, but he lived in places
where Chasidim didn't live and he did
things they wouldn't do:' Heilman said.
It was, the authors write, a combina-
tion of survivor's guilt — Schneerson
was the only member of his close fam-
ily to escape the Holocaust — and the
improbability of his becoming an engi-
neer in America that led him by the late
1940s to set his sights on a new career
goal: succeeding his father-in-law to
become the seventh Lubavitcher rebbe.
Eventually, they assert, Schneerson
believed he was "the prophet of his
generation," the man destined to bring

Life, Afterlife on page 30

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