pacific grove | Ten years after the death of the last Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, his influence on the Jewish world continues to grow.
Thousands of mourners visited Schneerson’s grave in Queens, N.Y., on Tuesday, June 22, for his 10th yahrzeit. Israel’s two chief rabbis have called for a worldwide day of communal prayer, saying “the flourishing success of other groups, not only among Chassidic circles,” but among “the Jewish community at large, is in large measure due to the rebbe.”
That’s quite a claim — but one that Jewish figures of nearly all kinds echo.
“The rebbe has left an indelible impression on Judaism in the 20th century,” said Rabbi Norman Lamm, chancellor of Yeshiva University and one of the leading figures of the modern Orthodox movement. Though he criticized Chabad for building a “personality cult” around its rebbe, whom many Lubavitchers believe to be the Messiah, Lamm called Schneerson “an indomitable leader, a pre-eminent scholar and a truly creative visionary of organization.”
Lawrence Schiffman, chairman of New York University’s Skirball department of Hebrew and Judaic studies, will hold an academic conference next year on Schneerson’s legacy. “He showed the Jewish community that it was possible to revive and rebuild — after assimilation, persecution or both — and that this could be done on a tremendous scale,” Schiffman said.
Schneerson most often is credited for his outreach work — not just the practical accomplishments, such as creating schools, holiday services and adult education, but the underlying philosophy that focused on each individual Jew with caring, warmth and love.
“The rebbe was the first person on American soil to put priority on what today is called kiruv,” or drawing Jews closer to their religion, said Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, executive director of the Orthodox Union. “Today everyone is doing it, but there’s no question that Chabad was doing it decades before anyone else.”
Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, also said the approach of welcoming all Jews “with open hearts is a principle established by the rebbe, and that has outlasted him.”
Schneerson’s background was unusual for a Chassidic rabbi. Born in 1902 in Russia into a Lubavitch family of prestigious lineage, he learned in yeshivas as a youth but went on to study at the University of Berlin and the Sorbonne in Paris. In 1941, he fled Nazi-occupied Europe for New York.
In 1951, a year after the death of his father-in-law, the sixth Lubavitcher rebbe, Schneerson was proclaimed the seventh rebbe by Chabad elders. Schneerson died childless and without appointing an heir, fueling speculation that the messianic age might be approaching and that Schneerson was the Messiah.
Sue Fishkoff is a freelance writer in Pacific Grove and author of “The Rebbe’s Army: Inside the World of Chabad-Lubavitch.’
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