A prominent Chabad figure has been accused by participants in an ultra-Orthodox online forum of adopting Christian symbols to describe a Jewish event, following an article he wrote in an official Chabad publication.
Chabad Spokesman Dismisses Christianity Allegations
A prominent Chabad figure has been accused by participants in an ultra-Orthodox online forum of adopting Christian symbols to describe a Jewish event, following an article he wrote in an official Chabad publication.
Chabad spokesman Rabbi Menachem Brod sparked a lively debate in the Haredi forum “Stop, Thinking Here,” when he referred to bread and wine as allegories for flesh and blood.
The article, in last week’s Talk of the Week, the Chabad Youth Organization’s weekly newspaper, dealt with the Hasidic “Messiah Feast,” eaten on the last day of Passover. The feast was originally introduced by the founder of Hasidic Judaism, Rabbi Yisroel Ben Eliezer, also known as Baal Shem Tov, to express the yearning and anticipation for the messiah. The feast includes matza, and the Chabad custom is also to drink four glasses of wine at the meal, as is done in the Passover seder.
Brod concluded his essay by writing, “Let us then draw strength from the faith in the coming of redemption and the anticipation of it. We will eat on the seventh of Passover the ‘Messiah Feast,’ intended to infuse the faith in the messiah’s coming into our blood and flesh, like a meal that becomes our blood and flesh. And may we celebrate the last Passover holiday with the messiah in the Third Temple.”
The idea of bread (or in this case matza) and wine becoming flesh and blood is typically thought of as Christian, and they are symbols used often in Christian ceremonies. In addition, bread and wine are central symbols from the Last Supper, the final meal J shared with his apostles prior to his crucifixion, according to the New Testament.
Frequent use is made in symbols of wine and bread in Christian masses and ceremonies.
Thus some readers saw Brod’s article as a nod to the Christian world of references. One, who calls himself Ben Zion Cahana, wrote, “If we’re dealing with ignorance and accidentally similar phrasing, so be it. But if [the author] was aware and ignored this similarity, then it’s complete idiocy.” Later he retracted the word “ignorance.”
Brod and other Chabad figures vehemently rejected the allegations, saying the claims might be proof of the critics’ own tendencies. Brod told Haaretz these comments expressed “wild associations that say more about the forum’s participants, who are apparently immersed in Christian ideology. I, happily, don’t have such associations.”
Brod added that the idea that spiritual values enter our body by means of food is “an authentic Jewish idea, reflected in eating the sacrificial animals’ flesh in the Temple era, eating the Sabbath and holiday meals, etc.”
“The Lubavitcher rebbe explained many times that by eating this [Messiah] meal the faith in the messiah’s coming becomes part of our entity, as the matza and wine become part of our body,” Brod said. “This is why I’ve written about this idea in Talk of the Week about 25 times already. There is not one iota of similarity between that and the Christian ideas. It’s simply ignorance coupled with wild imagination and I don’t intend to change Judaism because someone has distorted thoughts.”
Brod is not part of Chabad’s messianic branch, which believes the last Lubavitcher rebbe, the late Menachem Mendel Schneerson, never actually died and is in fact the messiah.
Yanky
What a slow news day for haaretz…
Al Yisbayesh Mipnei Hamaligim
This just goes to show that some will find fault with anything we do. It is crucial to know when we are right or wrong and not to make decisions based on a few critics.
shlomo as always with bad English
if people pray to red chair w/o any doubt, so why wine and bread is problem? Lubavitcher christians simple should leave a closet
MEndel
Clear and open sicha of the Rebbe.
Milhouse
This just shows that hisnagdus comes directly from amhoratzus. Just as 20 and 30 years ago there were people who believed that the concept of Moshiach is a Xian one, and that it’s somehow “not Jewish” to believe in it, now we have some incredible am ho’oretz who is unfamiliar with the phrase “na`aseh dam uvosor kivsoro”, and even with the biological fact that the food we eat becomes flesh and blood (where else does he think our flesh and blood comes from?), and reaches for links to Xianity. It shows what he has on the brain.
Pinchos Woolstone
In retrospect Rabbi Brod may have used different phraseology to avoid any misunderstanding of his views.
There is no messianic branch in Chabad, all Orthodox Jews Believe in the Rmbam’s 13 Principles of Faith.
CHT
This is an ignorance to Hasidim and their custom from the the time of establishment. Baal Shem Tov is unquestionable Jewish titanic authority and soul redeamer among all the Jews, not only Hasidim. No one should care about any resemblance to Christianity as much as to care about Christian faith.
I will give you one other example. A litvish person said to me that chabad mimic Christians by publicizing menorah during Christmas/New Year times. I tell him, man Pirsomo the Niso of Chanuka is in Shulchan aruch for absolutely all Jewish people and who should care what Christian do during this times.
Arlington C.
What’s all the fuss about? Everyone knows the matzah and wine eaten on Seudas HaMoshiach filters into our bloodstream and our very sinews…. it becamses ONE with US… You guys are acting like it’s a Trilogy thing. Fuya… For Shame… Let Brod keep talkin’ dude. He’s one of us.
Milhouse
Pinchos, why should he have used different words? There was nothing at all wrong with the words he used.
slow news day
#1 is so right… must be the slowest news day. No words, take a great article and crucify it lol. no words… #2 are people that paranoid?
David Ben Chayah
the idiot on failed messiah also promoted this idea by way of his own well known profound ignorance. I am guessing ha’aretz lifted it from there as other papers sometimes do when they have a slow news day. If you’re looking for hate gossip against haredi jews even if founded in total ignorance that’s where to go.
Rebecca
Many frum from birth Jews know nothing of Xian symbols and references.
excellenet!
love the stupidity, just shows how many ppl are truly ignorant in their own supposed religious lives…..pathetic attack….
T-oma
What does Moses Cordovero teach ?
Jacob
Wait a second. He wrote “ We will eat on the seventh of Passover the ‘Messiah Feast,’ intended to infuse the faith in the MESSIAH’S coming into our blood and flesh, like a meal that becomes our blood and flesh.” Is he merely saying that the matzah and wine comes into our flesh and affects us spiritually or is he saying the the MESSIAH actually comes into our flesh?
Explain to me how that is different than Christianity’s Doctrine of transubstantiation?
Yehoshua Friedman
Christianity came from Judaism. There are similarities which are inevitable. That doesn’t mean that any time a Jew says something that overlaps something Christian it’s possul. We have to stop being paranoid. It is possible to criticize Chabad legitimately, but to press the Christian panic button everytime someone says something that Christians also say, is crazy. The next step would be to get a scissors and cut Yeshaiyah Ch. 53 out of your Tanach and every gemara and midrash that quotes it from your other sfarim. That is worse than the censors. Hmm, that IS the censors.
JJ
Christians pee in toilets and I pee in toilets so therefore I must be Christian
Christians eat bread and drink wine and I once ate bread, and yeah I also once drank wine, so I’m definitely christian.
Sounds like I’m a blogger, not a Journalist for a major newspaper. Shame on you Haaretz.