Great expectations

National Review, Nov 30, 1992 by Richard Brookhiser

I FIRST SPOTTED Menachem Schneerson, the rebbe or leader of the Lubavitcher sect of Hasidic Judaism, on late-night cable TV. Tapping through the preachers, the pundits, and the shows of yesteryear, one would suddenly come upon a keen-eyed, thick-bearded old man in a black coat and fedora, speaking in Yiddish to a dense crowd of men, similarly dressed. Sometimes his listeners burst into song, which he encouraged with go-team shakes of his arm: when they stopped, he resumed. It looked live, from nineteenth-century Russia. In fact, it was all happening in Brooklyn. Only in America.

Rebbe Schneerson has not led such a meeting in years, and a stroke this spring kept him from public appearances for six months. Meanwhile, the Lubavitchers keep on with their daily lives: working to bring Jews back to Orthodox practice, and awaiting the coming of the Messiah, perhaps (they suspect, and opponents denounce them for it) in their own neighborhood.

Rebbe Schneerson and many of his followers live in Crown Heights, a Brooklyn neighborhood that has become mostly black. In August 1991, it became a mini Los Angeles when a driver in Schneerson's motorcade struck and killed Gavin Cato, a Guyanese boy; three days of rioting ensued, and Yankel Rosenbaum, a 29-year-old Lubavitcher from Australia, was stabbed by a black mob. The dying Rosenbaum identified Lemrick Nelson Jr., a black teenager, as his killer. A year later the side streets were quiet and neat. A banner spreading across one of them declares that MOSHIACH [Messiah] IS ON THE WAY--BE A PART OF IT ! Schneerson's office is in a gabled brick house on Eastern Parkway; the room made famous by cable is the basement of a run-down apartment building next door. The Friday night I went there to see a service, it was packed with hundreds of dark-clothed worshippers. In a brown suit and a yellow tie, I looked like Charles II. Women watched from behind the darkened window of a gallery reserved for them. The cantor kept the service moving along, but members of the congregation went about their prayers at their own tempo, with the hum of an orchestra tuning up. The Rebbe's red velvet chair sat on a platform to the right of the ark, empty.

Hasidism is a mystical movement that arose in Eastern Europe in the early eighteenth century, in reaction to rabbinical aridity and frustrated messianic hopes. Lubavitchers trace themselves to a Hasidic rabbi, Shneur Zalman, whose son moved to the Russian town of Lubavitch in 1814, whence the name of the sect. The sixth rebbe survived Soviet prison and the Nazi bombing of Warsaw, and came to the United States in 1940. Ten years later, his son-in-law, Menachem Schneetson, became the seventh rebbe.

"Democracy and freedom are not a cauldron of assimilation," Schneerson said early in his tenure. Instead, they offer "the opportunity for the Jew to fulfill his life's destiny." That destiny is to obey the 613 commandments of the Bible (as, needless to say, the Lubavitchers read them). Lubavitchers believe that in every Jew, however secular or religiously liberal, there is a "spark" of religious Orthodoxy. So they cruise city streets in vans gaily blaring Hasidic music; run ads in papers urging Jews to light menorahs; start Jewish dayschools in places as far-flung as Kinshasa.

One Lubavitcher I spoke with recalled the territory he had covered as a Jewish circuit rider four decades ago: Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Canada, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic. One of his sons had just returned from a trip to Bangkok, Manila, Singapore, and Tokyo. The Lubavitchers bring an all-American flair to these activities. They may have

come from Russia and be headed for Zion, but their PR is pure Madison Avenue.

For the last year or so, the Lubavitchers have been bearing an additional message, vouchsafed by the rebbe: the Messiah is coming soon. All Orthodox Jews are supposed to believe that the Messiah will come, and to pray for the event, but the Lubavitchers would seem to be on an accelerated timetable. Schneerson, one young Lubavitcher put it, "has told me Moshiach is coming. He has never told me anything false."

He has also never said that he is the Messiah-in-waiting, though the inference arises from the devotion Lubavitchers accord him. In every generation, Orthodox Jews believe, there is a potential Messiah, and in this generation, Lubavitchers believe, who else could it be? Yet "at the end of the day," as one Lubavitcher told me, "it doesn't matter who is Moshiach, but that he come."

Schneerson himself is good at deflecting even normal forms of praise. I watched several hours of videotapes of a function he performed until his stroke, giving away dollar bills which were then to be given to charity. Thousands showed up for bills and blessings, Hasids and non-Hasids, kids in Putira costumes, old men on crutches, and dozens of American and Israeli politicians. I don't know Hebrew, so I couldn't understand the Israelis, but I assume they were as unctuous as the Americans. I'll take messianists over pols any day. One oily Brooklyn assemblyman told Schneerson to his face that he was "amazing." "What good does it do the community if I am amazing?" Schneerson replied.