mentalblog.com comments:
Berger's view is totally reasonable according to Torah, Yiddishkeit, vast majority of Am Yisroel, vast majority of Shomrei Shabbos, science, common sense, psychological normality...
And the Lubavitch meshichists say because they can't see another candidate they deny Hashem, Torah, Am Yisroel and toivel themselves in nihilism.
Dear Tzemach,
If as you have indicated on this blog, there are no Schneersohns left in Chabad, and if as you have amply illustrated on this blog, the majority of active Chabadniks have left the Jewish mainstream, as it were, then are we to conclude that Chabad Chassidus was a spiritual and intellectual dead end? Is this an ideology or a philosophy as flawed and failed as Sabbateanism?
Is the meschichism of Chabad simply a resurgence of the old antinomian Sabbatean ideas? And if, so were the Misnagdim who suggested that Chassidus was just incognito Sabbatean/Frankism right after all?
Only asking.
All the best,
gandalin
there is a crucial point that youre missing.
the leader of this particular movement never claimed to be the messiah.
this idiocy gained traction with his illness when he could no longer speak and really took off once he was gone
DELETED stop changing your name
Gandalin, I am not too interested in who was right or wrong. I am very interested in patterns, archetypes, whatever you want to call them. I believe a messianic idea is a pattern throughout history, beyond Rabbi Zvi. For me this pattern is very broad and I include into it any adorations or elevation of human to a redemptive supernatural status. For me Vilner Gaon also falls into the same category, so are totalitarian tyrants of this world (lehavdil). Somehow humans have a built in need to be subjugated to a supernatural being and they seek potential candidates like a heat seeking missiles.
TA, idol worship is neither new nor a poorly understood feature of human psychology. It lies in our difficulty in dealing with the doubt and uncertainty that is inherent in the world.
I would argue that the rabbi-centered shtetl model that we see developing in modern Orthodoxy (i.e. ask you rabbi everything: when to have kids, whom to marry, when you can have sex with your husband) is a dangerous (though still halachically acceptible) approximation.
I didn't say "idol worship".
Some, even many (all?) human beings have a need for a heroic leader -- someone whom they can look to for guidance, someone who loves them unconditionally, someone whose approval they seek and need in order to feel good about themselves, someone who will take on all their problems, at least in an emotional sense. In other words they want a parent substitute or someone to assume the position of the "ideal parent."
One of the reasons that I distrusted certain aspects of christianity as a young person was that I compared the cult of jesus with that of hitler and stalin. Although one was presented to me as being good and the others bad, it struck me that the psychological source (an emptiness or need that the savior/hero fills) of those cults was the same. Thus it was very dangerous to invest so much of one's self in a human being no matter who they are and how compelling they may be. In fact, it might be said that the more compelling they are, the more dangerous they are because then one is more likely to lose the independence of one's rational, good sense.
In viewing certain Chabad attempts to reconcile variant traditions that really are not compatible in maintaining the Rebbe's Messianic candicacy (e.g. Rambams prescription for invalidating the candidacy of a presumed or announced candidate who does not succeed in (non-metaphorical) tasks vis a vis citations of possible [deceased] candidates post-resurrection) I was struck by something Moshe Idel wrote in examining the various Messianic claims culminating in Sabbatei Zvi's:
the Messianic consciousness finds itself unable to maintain intellectual consistency because the spiritual/psychological/social drive towards engaging in Messianic reparation (or following those who do) will seek for support in traditions and proof-texts that may have originally treated different aspects or hypotheses (or simply been at odds). But the aspirant will attempt to incorporate all of them because it is the Messianic consciousness that drives the adoption of the text and not the other way around.
But Chabad is not an antinomian movement--it is "ortho-praxic".
B"H
I doubt it's correct to say that Chabad is "ortho-praxic" (for those who don't know it means having an ideology incompatible with Orthodoxy but still staying faithfull to observance of practical halocha) based on the reasaons you list.
And if these reasons are enough one should place Mizrachi (religious Zionists ) and for that matter their opposite Naturei Karta into same category for the same reasons -prommoting ideologies based on "weak" sources.
To take this further one can put many others into same category using your theory...
what are the things that set chabad apart from mainstream judaism, that we are more orthopraxic? I think not. that we are more ortho-dox? that would depend on which scholar you ask as to who is more authentically in line with the "old tradition"
Ariel--you are wrong--I am picking no fight here: to me "orthopraxic" does NOT mean having an ideology incompatible with Orthodoxy--it is neutral: ALL IT MEANS IS HAVING ORTHODOX PRACTICE--it is NOT a criticism--it is ONLY a HEKSHER that a given community is traditional in its observance and not antinomian or non-observant
Mendalbomb: my observation is only that what sets Chabad apart from other traditional Judaisms is certainly not antinomianism as claimed by some
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