Question of an ignorant, closed-minded Lubavitcher

i love how people give opinions about the what is ok about gedolim and what they did thats not ok, so basically these people think they know better than the gadol.
my opinion is i have my rebbe, and i accept him 100%.

The tznius issue isn’t about anger, it’s about dismantling chabad supremacism. Chabad aren’t better than other groups, and have their share of communal problems.

I think it’s obvious that when you mix a large amount of  baalei teshuva and gerim in s community, and stop everyone from learning full time at age 21, you’re going to automatically have kedushah problems. They’re lacking the safeguards of other chasidishe groups who send most to work at 19(however some do stay in kolel, and chabad has yet to see the importance this has in maintaining a community)

edited!

Ehrlichkeit,
my advice (matching my other biases here) would be to engage your son in some worldly productive activity part-time. This should benefit his learning and, hopefully, direct him away from bad influence.

As it is, he has too much time to consider various directions, and the fancier the better. If he were to feel some responsibility for, say, paying his rent, then he will, hopefully, better concentrate his mind in his learning. Many chachamim of Rabbi Yehuda generation did that and were successful.

Ujm, i mentioned this in passing but it needs to be explained in detail; chabad does not have the safeguards that other chasidusen have.

First, all chasidishe groups have kollelim. Most learn for a year after marriage and a good 20% learn for several years before going to work…could be it’s much more, but that’s the impression i get and can see from the sheer amount of kollelim. That sets the tone for a community, and the satmar rov saw that from rav aharon. He wasn’t ashamed to learn from others.

Another important safeguard is that they keep outsiders out. They protect their people; they spend the whole day with other yidden, speak Yiddish, and don’t read anything goyishe. Lubavitch is much more open to outside media(once they leave the yeshivos), their gerim and baalei teshuva bring their pasts with them to a degree, because they bring them into their community and mosdos very early and in large numbers. משא”כ litvishe and other groups, which value more the safety of the community and keep out the bad influences.

When baalei teshuva aren’t ready to dress tznius fully, but go around crown heights that way and identify fully with chabad, send their kids to chabad, etc…do you think that doesn’t affect native chabad women? If she could do it…. there’s a tremendous yatzer hora and seeing others sin makes it more possible for them to follow suit.

To Seichel 83
“My opinion is I have my Rebbe and I accept him 100%.” So in other words, you have no opinion of your own. That would explain why Lubavichers can’t come to a consensus on some rather basic questions for example is the Rebbe alive or dead? Obviously, reading the Igros doesn’t provide all the answers.

Neville, i was being generous. I am not saying it’s their success in kiruv, but rather the lack thereof which allows for people not fully frum to be integrated into the community.

Other groups have BTs and gerim, but they shtel tzu, they join the community, embrace it entirely, and give up their former lives. MO gerim and BTs have the same issues as chabad.

I was not knocking, chas veshalom, baaleo teshuva or gerim; they make up some of the finest parts of klal yisroel.

To Neville Chaim Berlin

You stated that the BT movement came out of the Yeshiva world. Would you be so kind as to elucidate? I was in a Young Israel some years back that was headed by a Chabad Rabbi. He said the following, “The Rebbe invented Kiruv. When he started all the Rosh Yeshivos attacked him saying it was Bitul Torah. But when they saw he was successful they tried to copy him.”

To Menachem Shmei

You stated at the outset of this thread that you want to engage in an honest, open dialogue with anti-Lubavichers. If that’s so, please clarify what you meant when you said that Israeli Lubavichers, as compared to their American counterparts, are extremists.

Qwert, sounds like he had an axe to grind. Even if that version of history is true (which it isn’t; the chazon ish sent talmidim to tel aviv and kibutzim in the 40s), saying that gedolim copied the Lubavitcher rebbe is like saying that the satmar rov was first against kolelim because it was not the mesorah and then copied rav aharon…he didn’t “copy” him, he understood that what rav aharon was doing was necessary.

So if the litvishe recognized after the Lubavitcher rebbe that it was necessary, that’s not something to criticize, nor does it mean that the Lubavitcher rebbe was superior to them; sometimes innovation doesn’t have to be top-down.

But the way kiruv is done outside chabad is far more effective. It isn’t about tefilin and sefiros or getting one mitzvah here and there, and then pushing chasidus when there’s some level of interest in yiddishkeit.

It’s about bringing them back to yiddishkeit! Shabbos, kashrus, yomim tovim, learning, everything! And that’s why people who do kiruv with the blatt gemara in eretz yisroel, like arachim, etc…have more lasting success than the guitar chevra or others. the others might draw larger crowds and will jump to say that every Mitzvah is important and you can’t judge success by long lasting results….to this, the answer is that you most definitely can judge success by long term results and still acknowledge the smaller success as not worthless.

It’s like the stock market. Chabad says that one person’s good investment is huge, while the rest of the world looks at at the portfolio.

For every step a chabad kiruv client takes, do you not think that yhey progressively take steps back? How much treif do they eat after one kosher meal? The chofetz chaim said there’s merit in limiting how much treif someone eats, even a little bit – so yes, it’s something, but is something comparable to a kiruv movement which results in everything?

So i don’t believe the litvishe “copied” chabad; chabad inflates little successes while the litvishe build entire families.

Thanks for the clarification Avira. Most of what I know about Chabad is experiential. I live in an area where many Chabad rabbis function and so I study(spy on) them. I appreciate someone like yourself who likely has more factual knowledge on the subject. I think these two approaches complement each other quite nicely. BTW, Seichel 83 and Menachem Shmei are still on the clock, but I doubt they’ll answer my questions. I know how to checkmate Lubavichers. I do it all the time in my neighborhood. Surprisingly, I get along quite well with them, except for one who’s particularly militant against mainstream Orthodoxy.

It’s very sad that Chabad feels the need to try and spread their beliefs to other groups of Jews.
Look at the fights that happened between Chabad and Satmar in the 80s, which ended up with some Satmar chassidim pinning down a Chabad Rabbi and cutting off his beard. Why? Because he’d been hired to tutor a Satmar kid, and instead of teaching him the subjects he was being paid to, he started teaching him about Chabad, and why Chabad was preferable to Satmar. He was warned, and continued doing it, so he was attacked.
IMO, as long as you keep basic halacha, and don’t violate the ikkarim, you’re fine, no matter what derech you follow.

the tutor story requires clarification: why not simply fire the tutor?

To Menachem Shmei. I asked you to clarify what you meant by Israeli Lubavichers are extremists. You answered that you were clear enough in earlier posts. Obviously, I must lack reading comprehension skills because I didn’t find your explanation. Menachem painted himself into a corner by criticizing a segment of Chabad and now he doesn’t know how to fight his way out. As for seichel 83, don’t either bother trying to answer my question because you have the writing, spelling, and logical skills of a four-year-old. It’s so sad. Menachem Shmei said he wanted to have an honest, open discussion with non-Lubavichers. Now we understand what he means by honest and open.

qwerty, I’ve found Menachem’s explanation about the Israelis quite clear. I don’t see anything else he could add to what he already explained.

“I’ve found Menachem’s explanation about the Israelis quite clear. I don’t see anything else he could add to what he already explained.”

He could explain why it’s suddenly considered crazy to go around screaming that the Rebbe is moshiach when he himself admits to holding that belief as well. Why is it considered a chiyuv in Chabad to go out of one’s way to conceal what might be the most integral belief in their philosophy, to the point that anyone who publicizes it is considered “crazy?”

Dear Neville,

Sechel is saying that not every individual’s mindset reflects on the teachings of the group.

If you want to know the teachings, then study them.

I think that Chabad is very good at being Chabad, and I find them very useful when I’m out in the sticks. One can walk into any Chabad gathering and instantly be invited to have a good time. They don’t shun outsiders. Unless they keep asking annoying, whiny questions. Which sums up these threads. If we would be stupid enough to have a round table debate of a dozen different groups, Chabad would easily land in the top five.

Let me clarify what I meant when I wrote that the Litvish Yeshivish rabbis regarded kiruv as bittul Tora. (By the way, they still do for those well into full-time learning.) Yes, the Chazon Ish encouraged activities like Arachim. One needs to realise that the problem then in Israel was that thousands of observant Oriental Jews were immigrating, and the secular Zionists were hell-bent on getting them to abandon Jewish practice and belief. It was a matter of pikuach nefesh. Also, if the Israel were to become almost completely secular that would impact terribly on the continuance of Tora in our land. As for Telshe and Novarodok, I do not know, but I do know that the general attitude then among observant Jews was that learning a trade was more important than going to Yeshiva. I suspect that those bachurim were persuading them to go to Yeshiva.

“This is the true story.”
Yet there is seemingly no record of it. I’m not saying you’re in the wrong, but I’ve looked into this before and can’t find a reliable account.

“Menachem, that was not the story as I heard it from Korf’s son…”
The mere fact that this is being passed around like a Chassidishe Maaseh rather than having official police records is in itself fishy. This thread is actually the first time I’ve seen people defend either side. Usually Lubavitchers admit that other frum communities are off-limits for proselytizing, and the other side usually admits the reaction was disproportionate.

“I don’t know why you think that random Chabadtzkers owe us some official declarations.”
They can’t complain about us accusing them of having controversial beliefs then also refuse to deny those beliefs.

“If you know what crazy is then you understand the reference.”
We consider all meshichists to be crazy, so we’re trying to understand why Menachem draws the line at a seemingly arbitrary point. It’s a totally legitimate question, and he still hasn’t clarified. It’s essentially the same as Avram’s question of why should they need to conceal the belief. Also unanswered.

To the entire group.

Pardon my impertinence, but at the end of the day who cares what really happened in that story? Let it be that the Lubavichers involved were totally in the right and they were accosted by vicious Satmar hooligans. So what does that have to do with this thread which is aiming to determine if Chabad promotes a theology that’s alien to Torah true Judaism? In fact, Lubavichers love to change the discussion from Meshichism to any other subject, especially one in which they look like the good guys and Satmar the crazies.

“Hafotzas hamaayonos (spreading chassidic teachings) was always a key element in Chabad.”

The story in question involves another chassidishe community. This has nothing to do with “spreading chassidic teachings.” This is about spreading Chabad. The accusation of proselytizing is accurate, but the reaction was obviously unjust. Nonetheless, surely you can understand why people would take issue.

“Why would any Lubavitcher deny this?”

Probably in the course of when they’re pretending to respect other communities and deny the fact that their goal is to make everyone Lubavitch. I do genuinely appreciate the fact that you aren’t trying to conceal it like most seem to do.

I think I’m going to step away from this thread. People seem to say the quiet parts out loud on these forums now (just like the YU threads where MO posters were opening condoning homosexuality). The Chabad side immediately and clearly made their stance, so there’s nothing left to discuss. I assume when qwerty says he can “checkmate” Lubavitchers, he means ask questions that will force them to admit to being meshichists, but they’ve already done that about a thousand posts ago, so he’s late to the game.

Menachem, you seem like a perfectly fine guy. Sincerely sorry if I said anything over the line.