Newly Published Book and Letters Cast New Light on the Rebbe's Biography and Persona

Rabbi Chaim Rapoport has recently published a revised and expanded edition of The Afterlife of Scholarship, his critique of The Rebbe by Heilman and Freeman. R. Rapoport has gathered much interesting information and analysis, expanding and reorganising his detailed arguments, and also summarising specific elements of the debate that was played out between him and the authors of The Rebbe on the Seforim Blog (see here, here and here). R. Rapoport has also included an appendix entitled The Ten Lost Years (1941-1951) detailing the role the Rebbe played in the Lubavitch movement following his arrival in America, and the more controversial issue of his rise to the leadership of Lubavitch following his father-in-law's passing. Large parts of the newly published work can be viewed via Amazon's "Look Inside!" feature.

Since my own opinion could hardly be objective (R. Rapoport thanks me for my contribution in A Note To The Reader), here is what Professor Elliot R. Wolfson of New York University, author of Open Secret, has to say:

In Afterlife of Scholarship, Chaim Rapoport offers a meticulous critique of Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, published by Princeton University Press, 2010. Rapoport challenges many of the assumptions made by Heilman and Friedman, and argues, through close textual reading, that these assumptions are based on interpretive flaws and/or lack of knowledge of Hasidism in general and of Habad in particular. Despite the overtly polemical tone, Rapoport's criticisms are never offered ad hominem. On the contrary, he painstakingly documents every point of contention, and has thereby provided ample evidence to allow other readers to assess his arguments against the portrait of the Rebbe presented by Heilman and Friedman. Whatever one might decide on the merits of his analyses, Rapoport's volume provides an invaluable treasure-trove of sources for future generations of scholarship on the seventh Rebbe of Habad-Lubavitch.

While on the subject of the Rebbe's biography and persona, two recently published letters (available here pages 18-26) are worthy of attention:

On The Eternal Relevance of Talmudic Cures

Over at the Talmud Blog there's a discussion about the medical advice offered by the Talmud.


I am reminded of a discussion in Lekutai Sichot (Vol. 23, pages 33-41) by the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson זי"ע, which sheds some light on some of the more general issues raised there. The central problem he seeks to address is that Maimonides included some (but certainly not all) of these Talmudic cures in his Mishnah Torah, codifying them as a part of Jewish Law, despite the fact that he only includes laws that are pertinent for all generations in that work (see Lechem Mishnah, Hilchot Talmud Torah 4:1, Sdei Chemed Vol. 9, Klolei Haposkim 5:11). At the same time he is clearly acknowledging that they are not eternally relevant by only including some Talmudic cures.

What Mendelssohn Did Wrong - Part Two

ASSORTED NOTES ON CHASIDIC AND NON-CHASIDIC ATTITUDES TO MENDELSSOHN

The source cited in Part One, associating Mendelssohn, Wesseley and Satanow with various levels of Klipah, is an example of antagonism directed towards Mendelssohn from the Chasidic camp specifically, and it seems quite clear that the Non-Chasidic Traditionalist contemporaries of Mendelssohn did not necessarily see him in such a negative light.

Amongst the Chasidic leadership, perhaps the most prominent in his attacks on Mendelssohn and his associates was Rabbi Pinchus Horowitz, Chief Rabbi of Frankfurt, author of the Hafloah (by which name he is often referred to) and a disciple of Rabbi DovBer, the Maggid of Mezritch. In an impassioned sermon delivered in 1782, he justified his opposition to Mendelssohn and the other Biurists, with a withering attack centering on the Biur’s rendering of the following verse:

לא תשנא את אחיך בלבבך הוכח תוכיח את עמיתך ולא תשא עליו חטא (ויקרא יט, יז)

Mendelssohn explains this to mean, “You may rebuke your friend if he has insulted you earlier”. Here is the offending passage (click to enlarge):

What Mendelssohn Did Wrong - Part One

MENDELSSOHN, HIRSCH AND THE MITTELER REBBE OF LUBAVITCH

Click here to read Part 2


Moses Mendelssohn is widely acknowledged as one of the great Jewish thinkers whose ideas marked the progression of Modern Jewish thought. However, the image of the man in his own time and his legacy thereafter, continue to mystify. Despite his almost legendary fame, there is no modern stream of Judaism that traces its roots back specifically to his worldview or labels itself "Mendelssohnian". On the other hand, it is clear that he and all others associated with the early Haskalah (Enlightenment) movement, have been generally disassociated from Orthodoxy. Relative to the great Jewish thinkers of the nineteenth century, Mendelssohn is more likely to be associated with Abraham Geiger and other reformers than with Orthodox figures such as Samson Raphael Hirsch or Esriel Hildesheimer.

By all accounts, however, Mendelssohn was a strictly observant Jew who championed the validity of the ritual component of Jewish law as Divinely mandated by the authority of the Revelation at Sinai. If so, it would seem that the differences between Mendelssohn and Hirsch, are less significant than those between the former and Geiger, for example. To be sure, Hirsch was a Rabbi with a beard, while Mendelssohn looked and lived the part of a renaissance man of letters. But their attitudes towards Torah and modern society don't seem to be so fundamentally different. There certainly are differences, but apparently they relate more to semantical aspects of Jewish thought than to the fundamental tenets of belief. Both attempted to draw Judaism into the modern world, championing the causes of general education and integration into secular culture, without compromising on Jewish law and practice.