Problem with Melech HaMashiach from the Dead

Ortho: “it says after chezkas moshiach “if he does this and succeeds” meaning at the time of chezkas he has not made everybody frum yet”
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you UNINTENTIONALLY misunderstood the Rambam, but it is nonetheless a misunderstanding.
Here is what the Rambam writes:
אם יעמוד מלך מבית דוד הוגה בתורה ועוסק במצוות כדוד אביו כפי תורה שבכתב ושבעל פה ויכוף כל ישראל לילך בה ולחזק בדקה וילחם מלחמות ה’ הרי זה בחזקת שהוא משיח אם עשה והצליח ונצח כל האומות שסביביו ובנה מקדש במקומו וקבץ נדחי ישראל הרי זה משיח בודאי
Translation: If a king will arise… and he will force all Israel to go in [the way of Torah] and to strengthen its weaknesses [maybe you can come up with a better word], and he will wage the wars of Hashem, then this person has the presumption of being Mashiach. If he did this, was successul and beat all the nations around him, built the Beis Hamkidosh in its place and gathered nidchei Yisrael, then he is certainlly Mashiach.
It says that he has to FIRST force all Israel to keep Torah and Mitzvos before he can be considered chezkas Mashiach. He also has to WAGE wars FIRST, but he doesn’t have to succeed in winning those wars in order to be bechezkas Mashiach! Then if he is successful in those wars and beats all the surrounding nations etc he is certainly Mashiach.
You can’t explain that the “success” mentioned by the Rambam is referring to “he will force”. It is clearly referring to success in waging wars, and this is also clear from the ensuing words.
Furthermore, the Lubavicher rebbe didn’t force ANYONE to keep Torah and Mitzvos. He encouraged and sent people to encourage, but he didn’t force, and the Rambam explicitly says “he will force”.

“Please see Reb Moshe’s Teshuva which explains that weapons are not required for moshiach as many kings have fought wars without any weapons and certainly moshiach doesnt need to.”
No one ruled out the Lubavicher rebbe as bechezkas Mashiach because he did not use weapons. We ruled it out because he did not wage wars, period.

“There is something weird about saying he isnt succeeding because for every frum jew he makes two jews who never heard of chabad intermarried…”
I don’t remember every word that every poster wrote, but regardless of what was said, your argument above is irrelevant. The Lubavicher rebbe did NOT force, and was NOT successful in getting all of Israel to keep Torah and Mitzvos. As long as there are Yidden who do not keep Torah and Mitzvos – and Rachmono litzlan most Yidden fall into this category – NO ONE can be considered bechezkas Mashiach!

“Your king argument is misplaced. This is a much deeper sugya than u realize i think.”
Funny, the Rambam was always the last word in Lubavich on the qualifications and identity of Mashiach, and he actually writes these halachos in Hilchos Melochim. Yet all of a sudden when he says “king” here it is open to interpretation and the sugya is deeper.
Do you realize that this is what I and others have been complaining about all the time? You interpret everything the way it suits you because the original premise – the Lubavicher rebbe is Mashiach – must be true, so anything that says otherwise is altered or ignored.

“The rebbe was zera dovid as again we have his familial records like anyone.”
You’re joking… aren’t you? What familial records? I find it hard to believe that a ksav yichus that someone CLAIMS to be true is good enough to say someone is certainly from zera Dovid.

My posts are never published . Wonder why .

because they are hateful personally and/or attack personally, or use degrading terms towards gedolim. That should have been obvious.

Its terrible. Mamash terrible . If chabad theology of the 2020s would have been presented to any yid , in any type of kehilla , in any place on the globe ,some 60 years ago . The response would be – plain ridicule , a total joke .
Now we are having pages of arguments about those Shtuyot ….
how far have we fallen …
Real yeridat hadorot……

is this the best mentchlichkeit you have to offer?

Yserb, rav breuer going to college was part of his mesorah… what he did wasn’t risky, because he was going with a pure devotion to his rebbe.

edited

As an aside, rav belsky told me that after rav breuer finished school, he never once opened a secular book for the rest of his life.

Rso,

The Rambam writes he will compel all Israel and wage wars. He then says “if he does this” what is this going on? Wars? Okay, wars. “And he succeeds” what’s this now going on? Wars again? Strange. Maybe u want to say it means “if he waged wars and succeeds in them” but then he could have just said “if he succeeds [in them]” as he already wrote earlier he was doing them. And then he writes “and defeats all the enemies that surround him”. Again a third time about wars?? Ur making the entire thing repetitive. As the Lubavitcher Rebbe has already said, these words include his actions on Jews. And as I already said pirkei geulah say he is involved with Tikkun klal yisroel. Instead of just quoting words, ask yourself why one has to entirely be done and the other only started? Why can’t both be done in order to be chezkas or both be done in order to start vadai?
Now, rambam writes in the first perek of hilchos melachim that one must appoint a king, destroy amalek and build beis hamikdash. He further writes that the first milchama before a king can wage any other is milchemes mitzvah of defeating the nations around eretz yisroel including amalek. The loshon he uses for this amalek war in the first perek is a near replica of the words in the moshiach section “defeat the enemies that surround him” which only appear after “if he does this and succeeds”, this surely isn’t a coincidence. They must be referring to the same thing. Especially as we already said he can’t fight any other wars as a king until he fights these. if he is not coming to include any of the previous things that Moshiach does with these words then he is using three different phrases to refer to the same thing “if he does this and succeeds and defeats all the enemies that surround him”! This is frankly untenable as anyone who knows the Rambam knows he is specific with his words not to mention this is brought in klali harambam that he is specific with his words.

Rso,

No, the sugya is deeper than one thinks because it frankly is deeper than one thinks. To list but one example, the Rambam rules CLEARLY that a king is only able to be a king if a Navi and beis din approve him. The Rambam writes this clearly in his hilchos melachim. And yet he also says bar kochba was a melech and rabbi Akiva thought he was moshiach. How strange! The Rambam pashut says a king and ur gonna tell me bar kochba was a king without fitting how the Rambam says a king is established?! Who is playing games with the word king now? Furthermore bar kochba was also not a reish galusa which the Rambam says take the place of kings in our day. So he isn’t even the next best thing the Rambam mentions which isn’t exactly a king either. But even if u could quote that we have shifted the meaning of king. That itself is an admission that things aren’t what they appear. Of course u only figure this out by asking questions not by reading a Halacha. There is what to get into here, but none of it is just a simple reading of a halacha. Point demonstrated.

Avira,

-Most Soviet Jews immigrated to Israel
– for a frum jew to intermarry deserves Kaddish. For a reform Jew to intermarry while already keeping close to zero mitzvas is rather different. Let’s not pretend those are the same. I myself am the product of intermarriage between my Jewish mother and nonjewish father. I am now a frum jew and have gotten my family to do a few Jewish things they otherwise never would have done. Their net mitzvah count increased as has mine. My story is not unique. This concept that intermarriage means u don’t believe or that u will never do mitzvas again is a rejection of reality. Life is much more complicated and even intermarried Jews(who marry for love at this rate not to reject a Jewish life as a frum person would) in reality can and do increase in their religious observance in plenty of instances. So no, intermarriage says very little about mitzvah observance when in the context of already barely religious Jews. The question is are they MORE involved than before. Obviously if u judge them like u would a frum guy who intermarried then u would expect that if they intermarry then the rest falls too. But pretending the groups are the same is ur biggest problem and shows a lack of familiarity with this side of the aisle.

Other things I heard:

– even in the letters which are published and which I posted, rav hutner did not have a problem with tefillin campaign and openly said he doesn’t want it to stop, he only wanted to correct it and felt the Jews putting on tefillin needed to know the boxes had parchment inside.

– it’s easy to paint things as worse than Lubavitchers say, but u have also not examined how many great things were said about the Lubavitcher rebbe nor are u interested in doing so.

Orthodoxrabbi,

“And yet he also says bar kochba was a melech and rabbi Akiva thought he was moshiach. How strange! The Rambam pashut says a king and ur gonna tell me bar kochba was a king without fitting how the Rambam says a king is established?!”

He minted his own currency, something which kings do

Coffee,

Logically there is a distinction between kings doing something and that making u enough to be a king. Maybe it’s a necessary condition for a king to print his own currency(it’s not anywhere in any halachic Sefer I bet) but that doesn’t mean it’s a sufficient condition to make one a king. If I print my own currency am I a king? Ur only reinforcing the question, why was he able to do kingly things if he didn’t fit the Rambam’s definition of a king? U can make up a new definition of a king but it isn’t the halachic one and it’s not what Rambam says in his book. Ur again redefining and in doing so admitting that there are different definitions of kings. So which ones are up for grabs and which ones aren’t? Which ones did the Rambam mean by his word? Ur not answering any of this

Chabad people are wonderful . and I mean it . The can do attitude . The genuineness. The Chesed . The acceptance . The non judgement. The Simcha. The kiruv. The Mesirat Nefesh.
Does that mean we should turn deaf and blind when it comes to their theology ?
They are our brothers . We should help them when in need , no less than any other yid.
Does that mean that we are going to have to accept as truth anything they happen to be claiming as the yiddishe theology, just because they are brothers ?
And if we don’t , does that mean we are lacking in mentshlichkeit ?
In my opinion at least , if you spearhead a movement , clearly in theology at odds with the rest of klal yisrael [no other part of klal yisrael champions mashiach from the dead like them] ,and at odds with what they themselves were proclaiming for years , its only fair to expect , anticipate and therefore accept , that you are opening yourself up to genuine and open examination of your shitot , their roots ,their essence and their consequences . That should all be part of the game .
And that as grownups, they should be able to hear any legit taanot and formulate to-the -point responses head on ,without hiding behind the screen of lack of mentshlichkeit or change of topic or other tactics .
Or not ?

Ortho
“the Rambam rules CLEARLY that a king is only able to be a king if a Navi and beis din approve him”

The lashon of the Rambam is אין מעמידין מלך בתחילה אלא על פי בית דין של שבעים זקנים ועל פי נביא, and I think (I’m not 100% sure of this, but I think that’s the way it’s mashma in the gemoro although I can’t now find where) that the word בתחילה means a new line of kings. But that these rules may not apply to a descendant of Dovid.

If I am indeed wrong – and I may be – why does the Rambam write בתחילה?

>>>Re, rav hutner; I’d trust what his talmidim say over online people…

Great. You still refuse to check the written correspondence – a mouseclick away. You would rather trust word of mouth as long as it’s hateful. And then you wonder why people call it “chinam”…
Go ahead, bury your head in the sand.

The argument of Torah decline during L Rebbe’s lifetime is not so pashut. Whatever are numbers of general Jewish population in the world, we can argue that post-WW2 time is when we saw the end of the decline that was occurring before. Just read Chofetz Chaim’s letters in Poland in 1910s-30s where he repeatedly calls on Yidden to stop sending children to anti-religious schools and have at least one kosher cheder in each city; to make sure that the person not only keeps shabbos himself but his children do; that many communities will not be able to hold by the government requirement of having one sanitary mikva per town …. And that was Poland. In US, R Nosson Sherman said tht during his parents time, the Rav would tell his elderly students to continue coming to the class because there might be none after them … (I recall R Sherman saying “class that his father was teaching” but wiki says that his father was storeowner, I may be misremembering).

It would be silly to argue which group is most responsible for the tremendous revival of Torah in the world last 50-70 years, nut Lubavitch was undoubtfully part of it, even as some of them might exaggerate their role.

Rso, correct; I never meant to imply that the Lubavitcher rebbe was the cause of mass secularization of most jews, or the loss of Russian jewry, just, as you said, it shows clearly that he’s not moshiach.

Rso,

“Avira wrote that there was a great decline in the acceptance of Torah and Mitzvos during the L rebbe’s lifetime. It seems to me that some may have understood that to mean that the L rebbe was the cause, but that is not – at least not the way I understand it – what Avira is saying.”

I should maybe also clarify what im saying, because i didnt mean to imply that avira was saying this. What i wanted to do was point out for the room two things which were being mixed together. 1. The direct results of his actions 2. Things in the world irrespective of what he has done. There is a navka mina i think between the two. If you judge moshiach by number 1, then it doesnt matter what numbers are going up at the moment if he has not yet reached those people. We can only judge him for whether his affects have worked on the people he has reached. By and large i consider it obvious that those whom have been subjected to repeated lubavitch efforts have born fruit in the way of increased torah observance or complete baalei teshuva. if however you take number two as ur starting point then the rebbe must also be blamed for the actions of jews who have had little to no dealings with chabad since the REALITY has changed even if he has yet to reach them. At the present moment I’m not convinced we should be going for the second. However, Avira was talking as though we should. But i thought it would be helpful to point out that there is a difference between the two and they make all the difference.

“If I am indeed wrong – and I may be – why does the Rambam write בתחילה”

I agree with you. Zera dovid is different as its passed down. But Bar Kochba wasnt a full flegged king as king david was either(sefer torah by his side always etc etc and all the halachos mentioned in hilchos melachim). Nor was he a reish galusa which rambam says takes the place of a melech in our days(but again itself isnt a full fledged king). My point wasnt to say there are no answers to these questions but only to explain that not everything is necessarily as it seems from just reading the literal words. Id argue this applies to much of what is written there. Another example is if we take “force all the jews” if we take it as it sounds he is mamash forcing them from the outset to do torah. But what happens with cities, states, and countries worth of tinokim shenishbu? The rambam himself writes that it is proper to speak with them peacefully and draw them to torah with love. So whats moshiach meant to do? Unless you say AT FIRST he does with love and then he forces if needed, or convincing someone to do it with love even if they dont exactly want to is considered “force” either way something has to give. Add to this a further quesiton that the ways of torah are noam and shalom, we even give the goyim around our nations a chance at peace before we slaughter them, and here we force jews whether they just found out they are jewish or not? These arent questions that come from not reading rambam, they come from reading more rambam and more gemaras and more mefarshim. This is a standard way of learning. People make chiddushim and bring up questions on rishonim all the time. The one time we cant is rambam on this sugya? The amount of chiddushim on if the beis hamikdash will come from shamayim or not for example is well known. This isnt a reasonable claim imo.

“There is no repetition at all in the Rambam”
I said this to a poster who said that “if he does this and succeeds and defeats the enemies that surround him” only goes on wars and does not include his actions on jews. Your response is to agree with me that some of these words are a reference to his actions on jews. The difference between you and I though is that i think these are in order and not summaries. so “if he does this and succeeds” means at chezkas he has not made everyone frum but he has intention to and is taking steps in that direction. Where he sees a problem he attempts to fix it. The reason why its phrased that way is because u can separate fighting and winning. There is no great way of separating the act of compelling/forcing with having been compelled/forced. In fact u only ever say someone is “forcing me” if he is at the same time succeeding in forcing you in actuality. But as i already pointed out from pirkei geulah the intention is as i said that he is involved. Likewise rav keduri z”l says:
אנו כבר נמצאים בתקופה הראשונה של משיח בן דוד. בתקופה זו עסוק המשיח בקירוב רחוקים אל עולם התורה. הרב הסביר כי “התהוותה התאחדות של שני המשיחים” (משיח בן יוסף ומשיח בן דוד) ושניהם הינם שתי דרגות בהתגלות המנהיג המשיחי

“שני שלבים בולטים וברורים בהתגלותו: הראשון, הוא מתחיל בפעולות המבססות וקובעות את מעמדו כ”בחזקת משיח”

“One other obvious point that hasn’t yet been stated explicitly. As far as I know, and I’m not a total ignoramus in these matters, the Lubavicher rebbe didn’t force EVEN ONE PERSON or tell anyone to FORCE someone to keep Torah and Mitzvos. So how is he bechezkas Mashiach?”

This gets into the issue of our day with tinukim shenishbu and darkei noam which i mentioned before. It seems rather obvious to me that sending 11 thousand emissaries across the world searching for jews and getting them to do mitzvos even when they prefer not to and are trying to get out of it falls well within the range of forcing. Sometimes they come to u and ask u for it instead, but if all jews WANTED to become frum that, in ur mind would constitute a failure of forcing jews? No guys he made everyone frum without forcing them, cant be moshiach(?)! That cant be pshat. As the rebbe says the ways of torah are peaceful and at first one must approach tinokim shenishbu with love. If you find ur efforts arent working then you increase the intensity. Moshiach likewise with waging wars and being hogeh btorah doesnt have time to go door to door and spend the proper time forcing people to do anything. He obviously has shulchim and shulchim of shluchim. Its recorded that the rebbe once told a rav from australia R Chaim Gutnick, that if shluchim would tell jews they need to do mitzvos, this would already bring about force in the simplest since.

“I think it’s quite sad that someone as lucid and intelligent as you, has been so influenced by Lubavich propaganda that you don’t see the obvious inconsistencies in the claims that you (I assume) have been told over and over and have therefore taken on board.”

I appreciate the compliment as far as it goes. But to correct you, just because two people have arrived at the same destination does not mean one followed the other. I have many disagreements with fellow lubavitchers on a variety of issues. But I have a Rebbe, and he has teachings. Im convinced he is brilliant and has a profound system of torah thought many nodes connected to each other in various ways. We see quotes and pshatim and decide whats more likely to say or less, a gaon sees how if one says like rashi on this or this pasuk this is a result of a deeper narrative about torah in that section of topics which fits well with that statement from rashi and this narrative on that section of torah fits well with a meta narrative about all the sections, but if you go like ramban on that verse then it doesnt work for that narrative or metanarrative etc. And yet all we see is “eh idk i think that word sounds more like this”. Its funny actually. If only we knew the binyan being built by taking that one line that way we would have less issue if it isnt exactly what i thought it meant or that it could have various meanings(obviously there are limits). Two things here are relevant but it would help to compare this argument to other things that have been said by holy people 1. The uri vtumim says that when a sefer is written with ruach hakodesh the authors intent isnt the only relevant factor. 2. The baal shem tov says all the sefarim until a certain part of the achronim era were written with ruach hakodesh and shiva panim btorah applies to them. In that case there are at least 70 ways to interpret rambam. 3. The kutzker rebbe said that when rambam wrote the whole idea of demons is nonsense this is because he believed in demons but didnt want them to harm anyone so he paskined against their existence. Now if I SAID that u would call me a fool, but a holy person wrote that. Point being there is quiet a lot of wiggle room for all kinds of strange nonintuitive pshatim. I dont think what im saying is nearly as nonintutive as the kutzker. There are other things people say about rambam paskining certain ways because he saw things later with ruach hakodesh etc. Again, im not even going there, but people do.

@Always_ask_questions,

“Does Rambam or Abarbanel suggest that people spend their lives wagering on who is the preferred Moschiach candidate and base their lives on that?”

There is an idea of looking around in your generation for someone fit to be moshiach. Various seforim bring that this was a custom throughout the ages(especially chassidic ones). The sefer sdei chemed brings this custom. Likewise infinite books exist of people doing this. There are two added points tho. 1. There is something further where aside for being worthy of it should the time come, u also have done a certain amount of things which give u a chazaka that u are moshiach, at that point its likely important to spend time discussing this because that likely entails obligations to the one with the chazaka in terms of belief or action. 3. There are lubavitch specific hashkafas based on the rebbes words which are playing a role here. I think the convo will be more constructive if we separate issues and get agreement on if its allowable as an orthodox person for u to believe in moshiach min hameisim of any variety and be considered not being stupid. I sent a couple sources earlier along these lines but people have been more interested in talking about the rebbe.

This counting mitzvos is insane both ways.

Every minute a chabadnik asks a goy “excuse me are you Jewish”, he is fulfilling a mitzva of ahavas yisroel and is pikuach nefesh, which is on a totally different level, of course. That would be 480 pikuach nefesh in one 8-hour “work” day.

At the same time, you say birkas haTorah once a day, so it is one mitzva per day. Now, if you have a hidush, or taought someone else, or went out and practiced what you lernt, you might get to a bigger count, but not everyone does that every day.

Avira, ok then. To address your other point. I had several cases where I could compare different derech, when I had a chance to send same person to a yeshivish and to a chabad Rav (including someone I knew online). In one case, the litvishe Rav could not deal with the guy, and even complained to me how disturbing that person was, while the chabadnik had good time with him, and the person enjoyed the interaction. So, Rav Shmuel might be absolutely correct telling his students not to tackle cases that are over their heads, while chabadnikim could work with them.

If we are to take into consideration what happens after a messianic candidate dies, then the claim is unfalsifiable. It can literally be said of anyone who claims to be a dead messiah. It got worse when he was around, got better when he passed away, but that only falls in line with him being moshiach? When the torah, yeshiva worlds growth had zero to do with him? When the sefardim BTs likewise have nothing to do with him? He laid the groundwork for the mitzvah vans and tefillin putter-oners who contribute very little if anything to frumkeit overall, snd we’re talking about klal yisroel, not one jew doing something which you think strengthens his non existent connection to something he doesn’t even know about.

The rambam doesn’t say moshiach will strengthen a connection of ofherwise frei jews to yiddishkeit, it says he will force or bring them back to Torah – the Torah as a whole, not crumbs here and there. And that didn’t happen in the Lubavitcher rebbes time, nor is it happening now; 85% of Jewry is still not frum, the BT movement severely slowed down except among sefardim, and the main reaskn the numbers of frum jews are growing is because of having babies, not BTs and gerim…the latter basically nake up for rhe OTDs, which while we’re on that subject, shouldn’t no one go OTD in the messianic era?

learn kuntres Shmoi Shel Moshiach. The Kuntres provides an in-depth analysis, into the topic of Moshiach from the maisim, as discussed by Chazal.

Can someone explain to me why loving every jew unconditionally, and believing that we’re all pretty much equal, and what makes you better than the frei, etc..

Why does that stop at marriage? Why would gaza’anim never dream of marrying non-gaza’anim, regardless of how great in Torah and yiras shomayim they may be?

AAQ:
Your wording still makes no sense. Why don’t you just say “ask a random person” thus leaving it open ended whether or not they’re Jewish. Why are you insisting on them davka approaching goyim? You surely realize the purpose is to find Jews, not to annoy goyim.

I’m not arguing that they’re doing a bad thing, but the ikker is not to talk to goyim. That’s just an inevitable side-effect.

I almost didn’t comment the first time as I assumed it was just a typo, but now that you’ve doubled-down it’s sounding dangerously close to suggesting that finding secular Jews is secondary to advertising to non-Jews in your mind.

Rso is totally right . One can only have an open, honest and objective discussion about the merits of chabad theology, only after we got rid of any arguments of blaming the other of sinat chinam , hate etc etc .
One can , ‘not hate’ ,and still Criticise vociferously . Croticism is NOT sinat chinam !
It is just that – Criticism .
This is ,and should ideally be ,an unlimited , no holds barred discussion .
Otherwise we will never reach the truth.

yankel berel: “Rso is totally right”

I agree with that statement totally! The only problem with it is that I’m not the one who said what you are discussing in that post.

Ortho: “It seems rather obvious to me that sending 11 thousand emissaries across the world searching for jews and getting them to do mitzvos even when they prefer not to and are trying to get out of it falls well within the range of forcing.”

With all due respect, what seems rather obvious to you is most definitely NOT pshat in the word יכוף used by the Rambam. Are you suggesting that that was the only word the Rambam could thing of when he wanted to say “encourage” or “influence”. What’s wrong with the words יפציר, ישכנע or ישפיע?

The entire point of Lubavich’s claim that their rebbe is bechezkas Mashiach boils down to one TERRIBLE point. They want him to be Mashiach so they will distort and (mis)interpret any and all facts and statements of Rishonim and Chazal to allow for this premise. The argument I, and I believe others, have with Lubavich is not whether their rebbe was/is bechezkas Mashiach. It is the chutzpah they have – and this borders on apikorsus – to bend everything to fit with their desires.

This is not the way of Torah-Yidden who look at texts and mesorah and then decide the outcome. If anything, it is the way of the Reform and Conservative movements.

Chabd is a movement which was , re theology – in GREAT FLUX .There is NO INDICATION WHATSOEVER regarding a Rav , Rebbe or R’Ys Shitah re Chabad , when it comes to their theology because of 2 reasons :
1] It obviously has no bearing at all for anything which happened AFTER the letter was written , because lo harei chabad before, ke harei chabad after.
2] Any letter or correspondence is is only valid re THE KNOWLEDGE THE LETTER WRITER HAD of chabad theology at the time of writing .
The above seems obvious ,fairminded to me and should be equally so to any honest participant in this thread .
THIS IS A VERY IMPORTANT CAVEAT to any quoting of Rabbanim or Rebbes re their theology.

Rso,

“ The question is itself the answer”. The point here wasn’t that there isn’t an answer as I said before. The point was that u can’t always take a Halacha at face value, sometimes iyun shows u the thing has a different meaning than you thought. It says bar kochba was king for 3 years what did that look like? He didn’t do all the laws of kings. He wasn’t a reish galusa either. So what’s the definition we are working with? If you don’t know the definition then this leads us to number 2:

2. “ The Lubavicher, on the other hand, does not, and did not, fit ANY of the criteria.” If you don’t know what king means here in rambam then how do u know he doesn’t fit it? As I’ve already said numerous times. We know and can trace the rebbes lineage to the alter rebbe. The rebbe rashab already said all the chabad rebbes were from zera dovid. We know the alter rebbe traces to the maharal and we know the maharal goes to dovid. You can keep denying this but we have the family history supporting this. I have documentation tracing me to vilna in the 1700’s and u think someone with the background the rebbe had wouldn’t have more support for his lineage?? Ur response is just to pretend nobody has any documentation of anybody? If so then nobody can ever be moshiach because they can never prove it.

3. “ They want him to be Mashiach so they will distort and (mis)interpret any and all facts and statements of Rishonim and Chazal to allow for this premise.” Besuros tovos! I can make you feel better then. Lubavitch is not interpreting the Rambam in a way to make their rebbe moshiach in terms of the criteria. The yachuf does not start with physical force but Noam and shalom is something the LUBAVITCHER REBBE SAID. That Moshiach needs shluchim is something the LUBAVITCHER REBBE SAID, that shluchim telling people they need to keep mitzvos and this would bring about yachuf in its simplest since is something again the REBBE SAID. That many milchamos of Moshiach are now being fought with peacefully is again something the REBBE said. This has very little to do with our chiddushim. The only chiddush we need to make is on its continuation(as obviously he is not here to give an account of continuation). The rebbe was the one who explained what the criteria are and how they work. So this whole story u have concocted just isn’t the case. We say what we say because our gadol said it. It’s easy to take a bias about a group and make up baloney and try to psychoanalyze and explain away why we are saying the thing we are saying so that u need not deal with them more seriously but the fact is u are UNDERemphasizing how much we rely on and use what the rebbe said for the cases we make. As David Berger said in his 2014 tablet article there are statements from the Lubavitcher rebbe which a skeptic wouldn’t dream would exist that do. Obviously if u want to understand a movement u need to understand the their rebbe first. Delve into what he said and did and then study the groups response to those things. Not the other way around and not without looking at what he said and his arguments for what he said.