אדירבמלוכה

I don’t per-se have a problem with Chabad. Not only that, but I admire many things about it. I love both the Rebbe and the Alter Rebbe’s Torah. In terms of ‘Chabad Torah’, I really appreciate the ‘Rational’ Chassidus of Chabad – it’s grounded, rational, enlightening and makes סתרי תורה understandable and accessible. I also appreciate how Chabadniks have a real צפייה לישועה – something many religious factions of Judaism sadly lack – and I also greatly admire the grounded nature and obvious צידקות of the Rebbe. I also am terribly sad with the way that the great Chabad (and, more broadly, Chasidic) Rebbe’s and thinkers (shout out to R’ Steinsaltz) are completely ignored, or perceived negatively, despite them obviously being of immense stature, by the litvishe world of which I am a part.

However, I do also struggle with certain aspects of Chabad. Primarily this is often due to more segregated and close minded aspects I see within it. I feel like this seeps into many partsof Chabad life and I’ve seen it with my (moderate) Chabad friends in numerous different ways:

1) You are expected to marry Chabad – I know a Chabad girl who met a really nice, serious litivishe guy who was even frummer than her in all walks of Yiddishkeit, but her father disdained her marrying ‘out’ and nearly tore her apart trying to prevent the relationship going ahead… How do you expect to ever not be perceived as different by more moderate and broad members of Klal Yisrael when they see that?

2) Men must have a beard – speaking as someone who only knows more moderate (a term I don’t mean disparagingly at all, by the way) Chabadniks who are integrated into Ashkenazic society where I live, despite all their peers and everyone they are around their whole lives and in broader society being clean shaven, they either have a beard or are an extreme dissapointment to their parents. I understand the importance of having a beard and the spiritual significance – I myself have a beard for that reason! And yet, how can you put your child in such a difficult social situation where they will almost immediately be somewhat of an outcast (unfortunately)? At the end of the day there are plenty of poskim who allow shaving, and even if is far from ideal, יש על מה לסמוך, and in todays climate in חוץ לארץ we should not be forcing kids to have a beard, forcing them to choose between social and societal acceptance or their religion! We need to learn to adapt and rely on the poskim להקל even when it’s not ideal, if that’s what the times require! In general, this is something I think Chabad isn’t the best at – it struggles to see outside it’s box of values, and occasionally rely on opinions outside it’s own core faction, when neccessary in order to be a part of society – and especially Jewish society – at large, and be a part of the rest of Jewish society. This is something it needs to learn from the other Chassidus’, which have integrated really really well in general over the past 80 years with the Litvish Chareidi (!) society they used to be so disparate from. I wish to see the day Chabad learns how to integrate better into the rest of society!

3) The perspective on the Rebbe – for now I don’t speak of the real, true messianic Chabadniks. Even other, more moderate, Chabadniks become close-minded when it comes to the Rebbe. The Rebbe was a real Godol, and I get that he will never mean as much for me as he does for a Chabadnik, but just like all other great Jewish leaders he was a person at the end of the day. He can be critiqued, he can make mistakes, you can quote dissenting opinions… And yet, Chabad revere the Rebbe so much that they often don’t seem to bother learning other Torah’s with other view-points. Just like it’s a shame the litivishe world can’t see the value of Chabad, it’s a shame Chabad can’t seem to see the value of other gedolim and rabbonim. Theirs a wealth of revered gedolim that we have in recent Jewish history and I genuinely believe we want to encourage a socoiety where all can be learned and their Torah can be revered – whether it is the The Chazon Ish, Rav Kook, The Rebbe, Chassidus, neo-Chassidus, R’ Ashlag, R’ Soloveitchik, etc., etc., to name a few. Chabad takes a step back with this, as all Torah that is not strictly Chabad, and in particularly the Rebbe and the Alter Rebbe, is virtually null and void and irrelevant. This is a great shame.

4) The slightly-extreme-almost-sabbatical-messianism-a-lot-of-Chabad-has-regarding-the-Rebbe – This topic has been exhausted, so I won’t dwell on it. The only thing I’d add is that the more I’ve seen of Chabad, the more I’ve seen it’s not just a small, fringe, radical part of Chabad, but rather far more pervasive even amongst so called ‘moderate’ / ‘normal’ Chabadniks then I had orginally thought. How far it spreads, I’m not sure… Perhaps the OP can shed more light on this for the rest of us… What percentage of Chabad really believe the Rebbe is Moshiach? What nuances lie there-in (i.e., how many simply view him as a ניצוץ of Moshiach, how many believe he is dead but Moshiach, how many believe he is not even dead, etc., etc…)? Either way, I have personally found that the more I see Chabadniks in their so-called ‘natural habitat’ and the more comfortable they become around you, the more I see the slightly radical and imo unhinged messianic opinions creep to the surface.

Lastly, when not among Chabadniks, the rest of us barely ever speak about Chabad. It is only really when talking with Chabad people. The CR is not representative at all of larger Judaism.