“A] none of them said anything about themselves, always about their rebbeim with no implication about themselves”
אמר ריש לקיש ויקרא לו אל אלהי ישראל, אמר אתה אלוה בעליונים ואני אלוה בתחתונים.
“He established there an altar, and called it [vayikra lo] El” – Reish Lakish said: “And called it El, God of Israel” – he said: ‘You are God of the heavenly, and I am the ruler of the earthly.’
Bereshit Rabbah
79
Etz Yosef on Bereishit Rabbah 79:8:1
אר”ל ויקרא לו כו’ פירושו שיעקב קרא לעצמו אל (יפ”ת ונזה”ק) וע”ש:
Rashi
נוטל שררה לעצמך. שקרא עצמו אל:
and here is the gemara in megillah 18a
(all the litvaks should know this gemara “cuz they learn much more gemara than us”
And Rabbi Aḥa further said that Rabbi Elazar said: From where is it derived that the Holy One, Blessed be He, called Jacob El, meaning God? As it is stated: “And he erected there an altar, and he called it El, God of Israel” (Genesis 33:20). It is also possible to translate this as: And He, i.e., the God of Israel, called him, Jacob, El. Indeed, it must be understood this way, as if it enters your mind to say that the verse should be understood as saying that Jacob called the altar El, it should have specified the subject of the verb and written: And Jacob called it El. But since the verse is not written this way, the verse must be understood as follows: He called Jacob El; and who called him El? The God of Israel.
shlomo cunin was simply saying the same thing as a gemarah and medrash, whoever is honest knows that just like you dont attack the medrash or gemara for saying such a statement, rather look in the mefarshim so too dont attack r’ shlomo cunin, (a much bigger tzadik then all your rav, and rosh yeshiva)
if you want to understand the statement, for the 4th time learn the maamer hibabtzu 5668, this sefer is learned by almost every lubavitcher (in yeshiva) so we can speak in our language, just like when we talk to eachother we say or hakalul biatzmuso, and dont need to give a 9 hour class what it means like i would need to do if i wanted a non lubavitcher to understand what im talking about