Battle over rebbe’s legacy
More Lubavitch bashing in the public media
Followers are split in a bitter dispute that’s made its way into the courts
Eleven years ago, the Rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneerson – the charismatic Lubavitch leader known simply as “the Rebbe” – was buried in Old Montefiore Cemetery in Queens.
Many expected that to be the end of a movement that had regarded him as the Jewish Messiah.
But on the anniversary of the rebbe’s death, the group that heralds him as the long-prophesied Messiah has not faded away. In fact, within the Lubavitch community, the split between messianists and non-messianists has become increasingly acrimonious: Acts of vandalism and pushing matches between messianists and police and private security have occurred repeatedly outside the downstairs synagogue at 770 Eastern Pkwy. in Crown Heights, the red-brick building that is the symbolic heart of the movement.
The most recent incident occurred a week ago Tuesday, when a commemorative plaque on the building’s front wall that referred to the rebbe in the past tense, as “blessed memory,” was ripped out, leaving an ugly hole.
In an even rarer development in the insular Lubavitch community, the dispute has spilled into the secular courts with the criminal prosecution of those charged with vandalizing the plaque, and with litigation in State Supreme Court in Brooklyn over who controls the synagogue considered a holy site by Lubavitchers.
