Shmuel Butman, descendant of the founder of the Chabad faith, and a prominent Chabad-Lubavitch leader for many years, died last month, thirty years after the death of his second cousin, the last Rebbe of the sect, whom he promoted as Messiah for many years. Butman was very well connected in the contemporary group, as the leader's close relative, and brother in law of leading Lubavitch teacher Reb Yoel Kahn, among other ties.
In the wake of his passing it was interesting to see some of the coverage and discussion that ensued. The establishment of Chabad Inc. (directed by senior Chabad leader, and spinmeister in chief Yudel Krinsky) which toils mightily to hide, play down, and obfuscate the messianism of the movement and its enduring pervasive belief that their late leader is the Messiah even today, crafted an obituary which totally omitted Butman's and the sect's messianism for its website. That astonishing, gaping, blatant, giant act of revisionism, led even a major Modern Orthodox promoter of Chabad to call them out for their massive manipulation.
On the other hand, the New York Times had a fairly good obituary of him, which, rightfully and accurately prominently covered Butman's messianic activism (a video of which we featured here a while back). An important and very relevant comment at the end of the piece by Professor Samuel Heilman about Butman and Chabad-Lubavitch messianism, aroused the ire of some Chabad tweeters, as Heilman failed to kowtow to the sect and go along with their PR spin, as they would have liked.
Modern Chabad-Lubavitch is giving us better understanding of Messianic movements of the past, like the Sabbateans, who continued to follow their leader for many years after his death. So too, Chabad-Lubavitch persists in its belief that their last Rebbe is the messiah, more than thirty years after his passing. Fittingly, even on Butman's very recently installed tombstone (as seen at his Chabadpedia page), his late cousin, the Rebbe of Chabad-Lubavitch is referred to as מה"מ, a Hebrew abbreviation for מלך המשיח (King Messiah).
May Hashem give us the wisdom, discernment, and courage to resist the temptation of spurious, false messiahs, and their promoters, and in the merit of that, send us our true redeemer soon.
When I argue on line with Chabad it's not about whether the Rebbe is Moshiach it's whether or not he's god clothed in human form. The Lubavitchers are pathological liars. They'll call you crazy for saying the Rebbe is god and in the next post they'll "prove" he's god. (edited)
ReplyDeleteI just listened to Zev Brenner's interview with Alan Dershowitz. Dershowitz told him that he dropped the religion when he was 29 because he didn't want to burden his kids with religion. Zev tried to get Dershowitz to say that he really is somewhat religious because he said that he has close ties to Chabad. Dershowitz ignored him. Zev wants to believe that one who's associated with Chabad must be religious. He doesn't understand that the reason Dershowitz likes Chabad is because Chabad doesn't care that he rejected the religion.
ReplyDeleteI saw some of that online. Dershowitz even explained how he turns down Habad attempts to get him to put on tefillin with them. Yet Chabad still has him teaching a course at their place. Lubavitch serves as a fig leaf, a hechsher, for OTD former Orthodox like Dershowitz, Dennis Prager, and Joe Telushkin (leader of a non=Orthodox Temple in California, who Chabad paid a pretty penny to put together a book promoting its late leader).
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