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: