I see that I have generated some interest so here is my story in brief before I get to the nitty-gritty, and believe me every word I type here hurts.
I was born and rasied in Brooklyn (not CH) in a Lubavitcher family. My parents were never shluchim but they did mivtzoim whenever they could and had labelled all our rooms as “Beis Chabad” as the Rebbe had instructed.
My education was in Lubavitcher schools and yeshivah and I was in my late teens when the Rebbe had his first stroke. We weren’t happy at the time, to say the least, but we weren’t devastated as we were all confident that this was just a very brief stage in the relevatin of Moshiach.
When the second more serious stroke came we were even less devastated for two reasons. 1. Since it was not possible that the Rebbe should die, and by all physical appearances it appeared he was going to, it meant that the revelation was even closer. 2. The second stroke was on the exact same date as the first, 27 Adar, and that was obviously a sign that everything was good (more about that sign later).
The Rebbe passed away on Gimmel Tammuz and at the time I was learning in 770. The levayah was really weird. Most of us bochrim were just waiting for the coffin to open and the Rebbe to jump out. Some people were even dancing. That seemed strange to me and even wrong, but who was I to disrespect someone else’s bitochon when it was stronger than mine.
I stayed on in 770 and slowly cracks started appearing. Sorry, I take that back. The cracks were always there and I just started noticing them.
Without mentioning names of people I once held in the highest respect, the same people who had proved to us that the Rebbe was Moshiach because it had to be someone alive and no one else alive was as great as the Rebbe, were saying that there was no reason to say that Moshiach had to be someone alive. And some of them were saying this at the levayah as if they had always had it planned.
That would hav had to be my first awakening because from then my entire belief system came tumbling down. The Rebbe had said X, and X had always meant Y, and Y must have meant Z so we had to believe with 100% emunoh that Z was true. But now Z was clearly untrue. So the camps divided. Some said that the Rebbe never actually said X. Some said that our math was wrong and that X didn’t really mean Y and then Z, and a third group said that we were right all along and that even though we could all see that Z was untrue the truth was that it was true! (I’ll let you fill in X Y and Z with the various factions and beliefs.)
Also the Rambam didn’t mean after Gimmel Tammuz what the Rambam meant before Gimmel Tammuz, and the Gemora in Sanhedrin could be interpreted according to the new and correct facts, not the way we and the entire Lubavitch saw the facts before Gimmel Tammuz.
It was then I understood what a number of contributors have been saying all along. It was all based on the words of one man and lo and behold that man had been wrong.
But we are Lubavitches, and Lubavitchers are Russians, and Russians are obstinate, how else could we have survived behind the Iron curtain for so long? So the conclusion reached by the masses was that we have to start from the end and work our way back.
Start with “The Rebbe is Moshiach”. That is the number one believe that is not negotiable. Anything that doesn’t fit with that must be wrong.
The conclusion after more than twenty years of living a lie is that Chabadhlucha, as naïve as she might be, Seichel Hayashar, Moshiachat and all the others are spouting things that are based on the above fact: the Rebbe is Moshiach. Who cares if he said it himself? Who cares if the Rambam or Chazal disagree? I myself have heard big Lubavitchers say outright that it doesn’t matter if the Rebbe fits in with the Rambam’s definition of Chezkas Moshiach. The Rebbe is the greatest man who ever lived and he was greater than the Rambam. Ask a Lubvitcher whether he believes that and if he is honest he will say that he does.
Boruch Hashem when my world came tumbling down I didn’t lose my faith in Hashem, and as I wrote in my first post I am one of the very very few who have stayed Chassidish despite leaving LUbavitch. That was the hardest part of the nisoyon, and I have no one in Lubavitch to thank for my staying frum.
To all my former colleagues in Chabad, forget about trying to convince others because you are living in a non-existent world where the Rebbe was always right and the Rebbe was a Novi.
No, he wasn’t a novi, and if you insist on calling him a novi then he must have been a certain type of novi mentioned in parshas Shoiftim.