mentalblog.com comments:
Great review, although towards the end it got a bit muddled so you may need to rewrite that part.
What do you mean by Assafs tone regarding the Rayat'z?
I would love to get more info on R'Fishel Schneerson who appears to be ver different from Rayat'z.He was an academic,learned and I believe less prone to fiction.
Assaf is very meticulous, he examines every source form multiple angels. Even when he disagrees, he tries to find a valid historical kernel in all of the sources. This is the best I can do to convey the flavor of the chapter. I will not rewrite it but I will add about the subjects mentioned in the last paragraph.
You have already mentioned that on the forum 'atsor kan choshvim' there is very interesting discussion with Assaf himself commenting!
Though there are some knowledgable Lubavitchers on that general forum, this issue has divided the men from the boys.The Lubavitchers are responding in the typical immature innuendo that we have come to expect from the vast majority of them (see Tzemachs nemesis Theantitzemach.blogspot for an example of this general phenomenon, though here for once he has wisely decided to avoid this topic like the plague)One of them, unusually knowledgable for a Lubavitcher, (halavan, iirc)even goes as far as 'tearing apart' Assafs meticulous research, while at the same time admitting that he had not even read the book!!!(A point that Assaf gently reminds him of)
Again, the issue should not be mistaken - if there was nothing on the topic from our rebbeim, Assaf can write as he wishes. As the FR described this story clearly, a Lubavitcher Chossid has that as the final word on the subject. It's not an issue of "intelligent" Lubavitchers vs non-intelligent.
I have nothing personal against Assaf. He clearly did his homework, and gathered all the evidence, archival and anectdotal. However, the reliance at all on church documents is questionable, their agenda would be obvious. Mental instability was a claim used by the Soviets for imprisonment ("institutionalization") as well.
"church documens"? There are letters from the Mittele Rebbe and his brother (faximile in the appendix). Letter from Alter Rebbe's Rebbetzin, R. Moshe's mother, etc.
attn: atlas; fuck you
i think galitzin was appointed by the Emperor to oversee and encourage all jewish conversions at the time.
Alexander Nikolaevich was minister of education. He was later involved in busting of Dekabristov.
i think he was chairing a special committee founded by the Emperor circa 1815 to encourage jewish conversions, i will have to look it up.
Guravitzer has joined the 'boys'.
I'll will think twice before I accept anything you say.You are clearly a partisan person who has overdosed on the 'kool aid'
Zanky, I am who I am. Tzemach, I clearly avoided saying his entire premise was false, only that the particulars from church docs are not reliable. I have a feeling you understand exactly why I or any other Lubavitcher do not accept, or have no interest, in Assaf's writings. He doesn't get me hopping mad, his book doesn't either. I might even take a look at the book and some of the documents one day. Ultimately, on this issue, I have someone who I trust saying the opposite.
where can i buy the book in amercia?
The town of Selush (it means "grapes" in the Czech language) bordered the Tokay region of Hungary (also known for its grapes). This is where the Alter Rebbe's father Boruch is buried. Once while visiting a relative of my wife's in Teaneck I noticed a book published by Selush survivors after the war commemorating the Jewish community which was no longer, and in the book was reproduced a photo of the kever of the Alter Rebbe's father, Boruch. What caught my eye intially was the caption which read in part ..."av Ba'al HaTanya". My mother-in-law, a Selush survivor, told me that on Lag B'Omer it was customary for the town's children to visit the kever. BTW, before the war Selush was in Czechoslovakia, now it's part of the Ukraine.
I forgot to write the much more important comment: Tzemach, thank you for your blogging during the war. Yours was the only blog that truly meant anything during that time.
Guravitzer:I understand that you never knew the Rayat'z , you were probably born after his passing:What is your 'trust' in him built on?
It is clear to anyone who has half a brain that his 'history' book is not 'historical' in the classical sense.Are we supposed to 'trust' people even when their versions are clearly wrong?
You know what?That's the reason I left Chabad, when I realized that it was an infantile group, that was led with closed eyes to believe anything and to deify their leaders.I t is only a certain type of naive and partisan fool that can remain in such a cult.
The problem starts when every single morsel of information is viewed by one side as a proof that they won the football match and conversely the other side claims their own victory and defeat of the others. This is our schizophrenic fate.
I disagree in the case of Lubavitch.
They have always fed everyone about how truthful, how special, how deep their leaders and chassidus are.Based on that for example the Rayat'z said that EVERY JEW is visited on Sukkos by the 'chassidishe ushpizin' who 'just happen' to be the Lubavitch line.It is also why 'Moshiach' has to be a Lubavitcher Rebbe, because as the leader of Lubavitch he 'has' to be 'Nosi Hador' (the nosi thingy appears to be a Lubavitch obsession, btw).Therefore it is important to show that this is all fantasy land.This is probably why many esteemed rabbis felt a discomfort with this Lubavitch superiority complex.They were right:Since then Lubavitch has gone on in infamy to coronate a false messiah,the naive cultists such as Guravitzer the cannon fodder for this craziness.They have not stopped yet:They are pushing a massive agenda that the Rebbe is actually alive,physically! this in addition to his 'old' qualifications of being 'all knowing' and 'all powerful' and 'God in a body' ch'v
Tzemach:David Assaf mentions you and thanks you for sending him a link for the pics from Ula.
Btw the poster there 'Halavan' a usually knowledgable guy,a Lubab is againg showing what a typical 'boy' he is when it comes to Lubavitch :Accusing and throwing innuendo against Assaf.Pathetic.
Here is the link: http://hydepark.hevre.co.il/
topi...opic_id=1948392
Hey Zanky
Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Or did it?
Oofah!
Thanks, Zanky, I know what you mean.
"Guravitzer has joined the 'boys'."
zanky
is one at all allowed to question david assaf without being infantile? or is david assaf above all reproach and we are to take everything he says as word of g-d?
quite frankly you are behaving in very much the same manner as those whom you accuse
D. Assaf emailed:
Corrections: the correct names are: Golitsyn (not Galitzin) and Litvin (not Levitin).
I have made the correction although Galitzin is clearly interchangeable see here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Vas...evich_Galitzine
I actually called my mother as one of the Golitzins went to scholl with her (I met the family in Moscow. They lost all the palaces, lived in a tiny soviet apartment but remained aristocrats through and through). She confirmed that it is spelled with O, so indeed Golitzin, but not Golitsyn, TZ as in Tzemach.
Zanky; What you write about "how truthful, how special, how deep" is true. Even though many of my friends are meshichistim and I am the first to acknowledge their fine qualities, the ideological core of lubavitch yearns for acknowledgement and power. More disappointingly, even if this powerlust is gratified, most lubavitchers don't manage it well. Sad to say, the corrupting nature of power is not dispelled by the purifying power of Torah (nigla or nistna). It's been a long golus & I am prepared to overlook human weaknesses among friends but the the lubavitch "superiority over all" gag is stale and insufferable.
I noted a couple of questions while reading about R' Moshe's unhappy tour through life.
1. The Russian officer Alexander Puzhanov had been a guest of R'Moshe's in-laws in Ula? For unknown reasons he developed a grudge against his hosts (or, more likely, out of an anti-Semitic sense of humor -- Wouldn't it be funny if the looney converted, ha ha), A. Puzhanov had something to do with R'Moshe's conversion. The problem is that someone named Podpolkovnick Puzhanov talked R'Moshe into converting. Who was Pod? What was his relationship to Alex? Brothers? Cousins? Anti-Semitic co-conspiritors who coincidentally had the same last name?
2. Leon Yulevitch may have been the witness to the conversion. Peyotr Alexandrovitch sounds to me like the new name a convert would receive upon conversion/baptism. When a person is confirmed in the RC church, they choose a confirmation name for themselves, which is always a saint's or martyr's name. Undoubtedly a convert choses a new name too. Peyotr Alex. must be some saint's name. It's possible that Leon is too, but it's unfamiliar to me. Btw I never heard of anyone actually using their confirmation name at any time except during the actual confirmation. It also appears on a document evidencing the confirmation.
3. The commenter who doubted church records: Unwise. If we doubt the veracity of church records and documents then at least a thousand years, if not more, of European history is tossed into the wastebasket. If it was advantageous for local Christian churches and their priests to fabricate converts then it would have happened many times and sooner or later the scandal would leak if only into some secretary's letter to his/her brother/sister that made its way into some archive that decades or centuries later some historian delved into. I'm not saying convert fabrication never happened; I am saying that the church wanted real live converts, not fakes.
It sometimes happens that in the search to approach the truth as closely as humanly possible, we learn unpleasant, even shocking things -- sometimes about people we admire, people near and dear to us, etc. We can't do anything about them; but we can prevent ourselves from repeating their error(s) and teach our children the right way to live and live among others.
It's not surprising the R'Moshe had a breakdown. He was isolated from his family and community and forced to converse with a mystic!, who spoke strange sounding Germanish. I would have broken down too. Why a mystic? That alone would have scared me out of my mind.
non sequitur, stop posting nonsense. enough of verbal diarrhea! next post deleted.
Zanky, i a thinking about a post to repsond to Kan "Choshvim" conversation.
Listen I am not a historian but Tzemach if I were you I would watch your back ( and front ) and also your front.
If you have respect for the dead and the Rebbe ( which I now believe you never did ) then let the subject be, The Rebbe said many times dont start with his family or any of Bais Harav bad things might happen.
I think Tzemach that it might be you who ends up converting
Umm.. starts with a threat, then an appeal to alter the history (in name of of "respect" and ends up with an ambiguous non-brochoh and wraps up the kabooble with a clerical title. What does he think he is? an imam or something! Sounds like some IP forensics may be needed.
oh dear!
Tzemach, I'm impressed with your Derech Eretz for the Rayatz (of course we are in agreement).
OK. Everyone just take a deep breath and chill out.
Tzemach,I would be glad to see a post about the 'Kahn Choshvim' dialogue.
To the Lubab:Keep your vile threats to yourself!
TA –
The RAYYATZ wrote fiction, not history. Without going into any details, I can tell you that long before I was separated from Chabad, I was told by a very credible Chabad source who had open access to all archival material that much of what the RAYYATZ wrote (that was not already published) had to be kept secret because it did not match up with fact.
It is a lot to ask of Assaf to be respectful beyond the norm to a man who peddled fiction as fact, especially when that man's library – the one Chabad still tries (correctly) to recover – is made up overwhelmingly of secular works of fiction. This is the library the RAYYATZ wanted saved, along with his silver goods, when the US Government saved him from the Nazis. You'll recall there is no record of the RAYYATZ asking these men to save any live Jews, just his books and his silver.
As for Jacobson, he did not save the RAYYATZ. A non-frum attorney in DC did that. Lubavitch owed him lots of money for his work and did not pay. (The attorney needed this money to live. It was not excess profit. He couldn't pay his electric bills.) The RAYYATZ was unsuccessful at rescue in part because he did not use the man who saved him. The RAYYATZ also did not pay that bill.
Shmarya, you are worse than Tzig. And that says a lot:
http://theantitzemach.blogspot.c...-blah-
blah.html
A whole lot! But what I wrote is true, nonetheless.
I want to be open minded about all subjects except those that are presented as heretical. I am not yet convinced that there is heresey in contradicting the details of a story that is presented by a Rebbe.
The basis of all of Judaism is stories that are recorded in the Torah. Many of these stories have been challenged by historians, archiologists and other investigators of note. So what! We have a masorah, tradition, not sceince. You believe the story of the burning bush, that is where it all begins, one persons experience, you have the Torah. Moshe Rabbenu, Moshe our Rebbe.
So, for the public that does not accept the leadership of the Lubavitcher Rabbeim on yourselves why should you care what stories the Rabbeim tell (other then Tzemach and others making a little parnosa from the clicks and books, i'm all for it)? It's their masorah. For those of you that do accept the Rabbeim why should you care what challenges are presented? Tradition is not sceince it is faith and faith is not coercive, you want, you believe you don't, Nu!
Although it's true Chassidim have an unusual degree of faith in their leaders, much more then misnagdim have in theirs, where is the damage. After 300 years of this branch of Judaism's existence I don't see it going away nor do I see it pushing others away maybe even to the contrary.
By the way our burning bush, in my opinion, is the Baal Shem Tov studying with Achiya Hashiloni!
"Tzemach and others making a little parnosa from the clicks"
Very funny...
The Tzig is an absolute imbecile.A nutter who overdosed on the Lubavitch kool aid.Reading his dumb attempt at blogging is worse than watching grass grow
Re:Shmaryas take on the library.Lubavitch has put in unbelievable ammounts of money and time into saving books that are probably easily replaceable(the important ones were probably with the Rebbe).The documentation of the efforts put into saving the library while Warsaw was burning are damning.Lubavitchers are so out of tune with reality that Rachel Altein, R'Jacobsons' daughter,the rabbi who organized the Rebbes succesful rescue from burning Europe, does not even realize how sickening the attempts to save books are when Jews are burning.She published a book with some good archival material it can be seen here:http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0826606830/
104-6138563-6891134?v=glance&n=283155.
Same would go for the unfortunate and unjust ruling aka 'didon notzach' against the Rebbes grandchild which has turned into a 'new' lubavitch holiday
"The RAYYATZ wrote fiction, not history. Without going into any details, I can tell you that long before I was separated from Chabad, I was told by a very credible Chabad source who had open access to all archival material that much of what the RAYYATZ wrote (that was not already published) had to be kept secret because it did not match up with fact."
If someone tells you something had to be kept secret because of [conspiracy here] then wait for a second source on that secret.
On saving books when Jews are burning--the Jews died before Warsaw did--if we are referring to the Soviet crushing of the Catholic uprising (or after--if the original Nazi conquest is intended).
And you know Jewish life--even the trivial amusements of Jewish life that give it spice: going to the shore, picnics, picking out a nice dress, etc.--goes on, even when Jews are burning or Jews are suffering--amnesia or defiance. We still dance.
וכי בן מנשה היה אלא לפי שלא נדמו מעשיו למשה אביו וכו
btw, it was always given to understand that something terrible had happened to Moishe. the story as told by Rayatz of R' Shoime Karliner cursing Rayatz was understood to mean Moishe. the story of disputes was always rold in this context.
You are getting confused faruq, S. Karliner was before Rayatzis days? I think he was in the days of ZZ AKA TZTZ What was the story anyway?
i ment cursing the Alter Rebbe. it was one too many today...
R' Shloime was one of the sheluchim to the Alter Rebbe to persuade him to approve the cherem. the AR refused. R' Shloime Karliner said something terrible to the AR, " די זייער שווערע ווערטער וועלכע הרה'צ הר'ש האט געזאגט דעמ אלטען רעב'ן"
one of the reasons the AR refused to approve the cherem, according to the Rayatz, was a possibility that a muchram (where is Berl, CH?) may become heretical. is was rumored that R' Shloime said something in this context referring to the AR's offsprings.
Berl, CH is in da self imposed golus…
Though I have nothing of substance to add to this coversation ( though between zanky and 'jacobson' there is precious little already ) from my reading of the Rebbe Rayatz letter, it becomes very obvious that something went TERRIBLY wrong with R Moshe. I am a bit amazaed at the comments. Tell me, would you be able to put together a similar book, based exclusively on excerpts from Rabinic sources, chassidish or litvis? Does the Torah temimiah go into any detail about the atheists, socialiats and bundists that volozhin produced? I'm sorry, the idea that 'all must be revealed' is not one inherently of a yiras shomayim. In Lubavitch, knowing the unknownable was, and is, a favorite hobby of many.
"The problem starts when every single morsel of information is viewed by one side as a proof that they won the football match and conversely the other side claims their own victory and defeat of the others. This is our schizophrenic fate."
In this Tzemach is quote correct.
ZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzanky
DELETED moron
Edited By Siteowner
Sorry i left the part out that a herem would mean the children
be cut of from judaism.
the AR said it would a chilul hasem to the vilna Goen
that such a learned man should have such embarrassment.
when the karliner said what he said the AR said
"got zol nisht heren dein verter"-God should no heed your words.
(in this context of the story it is said that R Shlomo meant R moshe
which makes sense from the above that is in fact what happened
which the R rayatz records this story it seems that maybe he knew but for respect out of the family he refrained from saying the whole truth)
Without going into arichus here, Asaf leaves open the option that he escaped in the absence of death records of his death etc, (thereby leaving the possibility of some type of nomadic galus). The document signed by the Mitteler Rebbe implies that there was coercion into R. Moshe signing etc. Saddest part but possibly the "redeeming factor": his mental state (also mentioned by the Mitteler Rebbe).
ps In the Rebbe's Reshimos (both printed and unpublished) it seems that the Frierdikeh Rebbe "allows" for much of the story albeit with kidnapping and coercion. Much of the Rayatzes history was repetition of what he heard from elders of Chassidim (as he states).
The conversation about the Cheirem can be read in "Reshimas Hayoman" (recently republished).
****
The stuff about Rayatz not working to save people is rediculous lies etc. These lies have been proven time and again and it's sad that people still try to grind the ax.
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