Sechel, you are misrepresenting R’ Leff’s views.
He completely opposes the idea that Mashiach can come from the dead. His letter for the kuntros simply states that while he once said that there are no sources at all for such a belief, now he sees there are.
As he wrote in another letter:
“OK, the truth is that according to basic Jewish sources Moshiach cannot come from someone who died.
Eventhough there seems to be sources in the Talmud that seem to imply perhaps that that is a possibility
there are other ways of learning those sources. And the fact that for 2000 years all the great rabbis used this
as an argument against Christianity that a Moshiach who came and died and is to return is not a Jewish
concept it is very hard now to say that it is a Jewish concept because for 2000 years we said it is not a
Jewish concept. And therefore the Rambam seems to say clearly that if someone comes and claims to be
Moshiach and he dies or is killed that he is definitely not Moshiach unless before he died and was killed he
built the Beis HaMikdosh, brought all Jews back into Eretz Yisroel, which obviously the Lubavitcher
Rebbe did not do before he died.”
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