An Angry Response

The comment  was made by Rabbi Yitzchok Wolf, a man I truly admire. Rabbi Wolf is one of Chicago’s  leading Lubavitch leaders here in Chicago. He is the principal of Cheder Lubavitch, one of the larger days schools on the Chiacgoland area. It is a school that actually has a secular studies curriculum. Which is a bit ironic considering the vehemence with which he rejects TIDE.

One of the reasons I admire him is that he was one of the first Lubavitch leaders to openly oppose the idea that the Lubavitcher Rebbe was Moshiach. After the Rebbe died, many Lubavitchers (known as Moshichists) continued to believe that he was Moshiach. Something  most of them believed was to be imminently announced by the Rebbe himself while he was still alive. The Moshichists still believed it posthumously.  And that he would reveal himself as such after being resurrected from the dead. (Some Moshichists  actually believed that he hadn’t really died at all - but instead was just hidden until the propitious moment in time when he felt it appropriate to return and reveal himself as Moshiach.) 

The controversy at the time of the Rebbe’s death was so great that Lubavitch was in danger of being rejected by virtually all of mainstream Orthodoxy. Rabbi David Berger actually wrote a book that tried to accomplish that by claiming such views to be at best Apikursus (heresy). If not worse. He had the support of Telzer Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Chaim Dov Keller in that regard. Rav Keller has been a frequent critic of Lubavitch.

Rabbi Wolf was in the forefront of fighting the Moshichists in Lubavitch. He understood the danger of allowing these views to hold sway. Today, about 25 years after the Rebbe’s death, these ideas have been mostly marginalized by Lubavitch – with the ironic exception of Lubavitcher headquarters (known as 770) in New York. Which, if I understand correctly is still controlled by Moshichists. 

(I have to wonder why Lubavitch, still tolerates them 25 years after the Rebbe’s passing. By now, those Moshichists should have been expelled from 770. But that issue is beyond the scope of this post.) 

Today, one rarely hears even a hint about the Rebbe being Moshiach.  Rabbi Wolf should be credited for his huge contributions in this regard. That being said, what most Lubavitchers actually believe in their hearts is hard to know. Based on multiple conversations I have had with many Lubavitchers, I believe that at some level they still believe in at least the possibility of the Rebbe returning as Moshiach.

With the exception of this problematic view - which my Rebbe, Rav Ahron Soloveichik considered foolishness, or as he put it a Shtus (but NOT Apikursus) - I have a largely favorable view of Lubavitch. A movement the late Lubavitcher Rebbe turned into a powerhouse of outreach and good deeds. I have discussed their accomplishments many times here. To say the Rebbe was a Gadol is an understatement, despite the fact that I disagreed with him on some things. One of which came up last Friday.

As I noted last Friday, the Lubavitcher Rebbe trashed the Hashkafa of TIDE (Torah Im Derech Ertz) founded by R’ Samson Raphael Hirsch. He did it in a letter written in 1962 which was recently featured on a chabad website. Rabbi Bechhofer wrote a refutation of the Rebbe’s views based on the fact that the reasons stated by the Rebbe in rejecting TIDE showed that he didn’t really know Hirsch’s actual philosophy as expressed by TIDE.

At this point I should add that I was remiss in my original titling of that post. Even though I did not intend it as a slight – but rather as evidence that even a Gadol can make mistakes – I was wrong. I made a mistake and should have realized that it pressed the hot buttons of a lot of people. I have since re-titled it to what Rabbi Bechhoffer suggested as a title. I apologize to those who saw that as some sort of slight. It was not intended that way.

Back to Rabbi Wolf. I saw him in Shul this morning where he verbally accosted me. And as he did in the above mentioned comment he accused me of being a Chabad basher - thus revealing my 'true' feelings about Lubavitch.  

He is wrong about that – just as he is wrong about the views of other Gedolim of the past. He claimed that TIDE was rejected by all those mentioned in his comment. Making TIDE sound almost like Apikursus! The fact is that there was no Gadol that considered it that way. At most they believed (incorrectly in the view of those that have studied TIDE) that Rav Hirsch intended TIDE as a Hora’as Shah – a B’deieved in order to stem the tide of rapid assimilation out of observant Judaism  taking place in the Germany of his day. They believed that TIDE should not be seen as a L’chatchila - the primary way to serve God. Not one Gadol said it was detrimental to American Jews as did the Lubavitcher Rebbe.

But that is not even the main issue Rabbi Bechhofer was addressing. It was the obvious fact that based on the Rebbe’s explanation of TIDE, he clearly did not understand what TIDE is. 

I got into a heated exchange with Rabbi Wolf this morning where he complained that I picked on the Rebbe instead of all the other Gedloim he said rejected TIDE. And he kept repeating the thoughts he expressed in the above comment. 

Rabbi Wolf refused to acknowledge that the Rebbe could be mistaken about anything, even while he paid lip-service to the fact that it is possible. He kept insisting that the Rebbe knew what TIDE was and rejected it for the right reasons. But the Rebbe’s  letter and Rabbi Bechhofer’s refutation could not be clearer.

It makes me sad that a man that I admire so much – and for good reason – becomes so unreasonable when it comes to his Rebbe. It would be far better if he acknowledged Rabbi Bechhofer’s argument and admitted that the Rebbe based his views on an incomplete understanding of TIDE. Or at the very least to try and show why he believed the Rebbe was right with his own reasoned refutation of Rabbi Bechhofer.