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I reply to me Sechel Hayashar wrote: “because you seem to have a vile agenda to bashmutz Lubavitch here”.
What goes around comes around! I suppose I deserve that because that line about someone wanting to bashmutz Lubavitch was one of our standard lines when I was still brainwashed. Anything anyone said that could be taken as denigrating about Lubavitch, true or not true, must have been powered by an agenda to “bashmutz Lubavitch”.
I remember at a farbrengen in 770 a whole lot of us had gotten really upset at a stranger – I think he was a relative of a baal Simcha – who asked how come we don’t care about zman tefilloh. Did that fellow get it over the head for “bashmutzen Lubavitch”!
And the time we were asked by a Litvishe maggid shiur in an Israeli yeshivah whether we learn Chofetz Chaim because it will help us curb our loshon horo. What a bashmutzer of Lubavitch!
Listen SH, you claim to be young still. I realize that there is probably nothing i can say that will get you to leave all the meshugaassen, but at least grow up a little and realize that just because some criticism hurts it doesn’t mean it can be ignored because of bashmutzen Lubavitch.
Moshiachat wrote: The Rebbe said in the footnote, being a devoted chosid, that we specifically say “Yosef is his name” based on the Previous Rebbes first name.
Did you intentionally omit that in the same footnote (perhaps it was one or two later) he wrote that Menachem is his name?
Being formerly on the inside I can tell you the answer we were given to the plural of “roshei alfei Yisroel” implying that there is more than one top leader in each generation. I would give it to you straight away but I’ll give you a few seconds to see if you can come up with it yourselves first.
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OK. Times up. Here is the official Chabad explanation: The Alter Rebbe [he’s the one who wrote Tanya] was an onov and even though he knew that it was only him [and in future generations only the Chabad rebbe of the that generation] who was the head and mo’ach of all the Yidden, he wrote it in plural to deflect some of the kovod.I’m sure you all guessed that was the explanation, right?
Someone mentioned pictures of the Lubavitcher Rebbe and it brought back another painful awakening.
When I was a believer absolutely everything was right when it had to do with the Rebbe. If someone would have proven to me that the Rebbe cheated in the NY Marathon I would have said it was not only ok but it was what had to be done to bring Moshicah. But once I woke to the hypocrisy and I saw that the entire system was without solid base I noticed more and more major, and I mean major, problems.
Even now I have pictures of a few great tzadikim on my wall, but that’s the extent of it. Pictures on the wall for me to see and hopefully to get inspired when I seee them. Before Gimmetl Tammuz however I had pictures everywhere: in my wallet, in my car, in my tefillin bag. It was obsession. But that’s the way we all were and I was no different to anyone else.
There is however a Rebbe-picture-minhog which I later realized is absolutely wrong and close to a”z. They put a picture of the Rebbe inside the pillow under the babys head at his bris. If the baby could at least see the picture (although I don’t believe kids that age can actually see images) I could condone it. But since no one at the bris can see the picture the only explanation can be that a picture somehow on it’s own has kedushoh c”v.
Isn’t that at the very least similar c”v to the a”z of dor Enoish as described by the Rambam?
I remember reading years later in a LItvishe magazine (it was an anti-Chabad article so it may not be true) that Rav Yaakov Landa the former Rav of Bnei Brak was once at a bris and he saw them doing this so he started shouting “Avoido Zoroh! Avoido Zoroh!” and he had to be taken out of the shul because they couldn’t proceed with the bris.
For those who may not know this, Rav Yaakov Landa was not only a Lubavitcher but he was the Rav the Rasha”b used to pasken his sheilos.
I wrote earlier that after the second stroke the fact that it happened on the exact same date as the first stroke was proof that Moshiach was coming. And I said I’d get back to it later. I forgot at the time but here it is.
To a Lubavitcher anything at all that could be suspected of being supernatural was proof of anything you wanted. So since we all believe in Hashgochoh Protis, the fact that the dates of the strokes were the same proved whatever we wanted it to, and that was that the geuloh shleimoh was about to happen.
Do you follow that logic? Don’t worry, neither do I… now. But in the warped state of mind I had at the time I did. And in the warped state of mind nearly everyone who still belongs in Lubavitch currently has, nothing makes more sense than that. Anyhow, nothing there makes sense anyways so why is this any worse?
There was one topic I wasn’t goint to bring up but something that CS wrote really bothered me. Even then I wasn’t going to pursue it until someone mentioned the lack of tznius in Crown Heights.
Here is what she wrote in reply to one of the cynics: I find it disturbing that one of the examples you brought as mesiras nefesh is not being a loving husband because Hashem comes first?! I believe Hashem gave the mitzvah if oina. Care to explain?
Is there any other frum group in the world where a woman would write that, to a man no less?
Lack of tznius was one of the minor (at the time I believed it was minor, and I was very wrong there too!) things that began to irk me after Gimmel Tammuz, and it has gotten so much worse. Not just clohting -wise but the mixing of men nd women. Anybody chats with anybody for no necessary reason, and for some reason Kingston Avenue (I have been back many times and I still visit a few times a year) the chats between young men and non-relative young women on the street always take longer than those between men and men or between women and women.
And please, don’t tell me tznius is fine there because everyone who keeps up with the news knows that it is not.
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.
This is very hard for me because it’s something that was so close to my heart, and my separation still hurts, but I feel I have to tell it from the inside.
Unlike nearly all others who left, I left Chabad a while after Gimmel Tammuz and not only did I stay frum I remained a chareidi and joined a more mainstream Chassidic group that doesn’t feed me lies.
So what I’m writing is from firsthand knowledge, not hearsay, and I myself believed most or all of it for years.
How much garbage is a person capable of believing before he finally realizes that it is garbage? An almost an unlimited amount, it seems.
You contributors who are not and have never been part of Chabad don’t understand how effective the brainwashing is.
For most outsiders their only encounters with Chabad chassidim is in the way of Chabad houses or shluchim who are trying to get someone to put on tefillin etc, but for those born into in and on the inside it is much more insidious.
And in virtually all cases it is not out of bad intentions. It is because Chabad people DO really care, but their caring is based on personal ego (and that is of course true with nearly all of mine and your interacdtions as well) and false views which are often antithetical to the Torah (I would rather not term it apikorsus).
Chabad is a huge movement, and it is very charismatic and fun to be part of. But when the veneer is stipped away there is very little there. Less than other chassidica and non-chassidic groups have.
Even now it hurts me to say it, so I have to have a break. But if anyone is interested for me to elaborate just let me know and I will force myself.