Will the Rebbe Return?

Fill in the blanks in the following statement: "It does not matter at all if the physical pulse is active or not, and if various phenomena associated with physical life as we recognize them exist, the physical life of ---- never operated in the manner familiar to us, and that true physical life continues with precisely the same force as before. More than this: ... ---- is the 'master of the house' with respect to all that happens to him and all that happens in the world. Without his agreement, no event can take place, and if it is his will, he can bring about anything, and who can tell him what to do? It follows that if he wills it, he can at any moment cause his physical sense to act in a manner familiar to us, and his failure to do so is solely the result of the fact that it is not his will to do so."

The answer, surely, is clear: the missing word in the above statement must be "Jesus." Perhaps it is a Christian statement, or possibly a Jews for Jesus tract?

Guess again. The correct answer is "Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson," the Rebbe, who died in 1994. The quote is from Rabbi Levi Yitzchack Ginsberg, a religious mentor at the major Lubavitch center in Israel. It was published in a 1996 catechism in Safed, Israel, designed to provide answers about the Messiah and Redemption. (The source of the quote, according to the citation, was Ginsberg's book "Mashiah Akhshav", volume IV, published before the Rebbe's death.) Ginsberg's point needs little clarification: the Rebbe is the Messiah.

This quotation, and many more like it, can be found in a new book, "The Rebbe, the Messiah, and the Scandal of Orthodox Indifference," (London and Portland: Littman Library, 2001). Author David Berger, an Orthodox rabbi and a professor of Medieval Jewish History at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has carried on a lonely battle to expose and denounce what

among Chabad Hasidim that Schneerson is the Messiah--and that he will ultimately be resurrected to usher in the messianic era.

Berger describes his book as a memoir, history, religious tract, and indictment. It is also a call to arms. "I write...with the hope that this account will awaken believing Jews from their torpor, alert them to the catastrophe that has befallen their faith, and inspire them to take the simple yet difficult steps needed to transform this moment from a turning point into an episode," he writes. "If we do not seize this opportunity, a nearly irrevocable transformation will have been effected, and by the time the truth sinks in, it may well be too late to act."

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