Reply To: The world is in a state of Geula- and don’t misunderstand us!

Neville (post 3):

“As for this tourist attraction story, you never named the rabbi in the story so how are we supposed to compare him to Rav Shteinman?”

I don’t know his name, and in any case, seeing that for whatever reason the story was seen in an extremely negative light, I don’t think I’d be able to release it at this point due to lashon hara (just to clarify not motzei Shem ra.)

” I have heard personal stories about Rav Shteinman making similar comments to people in order to make them feel more comfortable. In fact, I think I’ve even heard Lubavitchers tell stories about the Rebbe speaking of mundane subjects with followers to show that he can relate to them.”

Yeah but this is different. I’ll tell you why. The Rebbe for example once asked this American kid with the clipped on yarmulka etc. what he was into, and he said baseball. So then the Rebbe discussed with him the rules of baseball and applied it to the boys upcoming bar mitzvah (how he needs to be a player now with mitzvos not a fan.)

Here, this was a black hatted Yeshiva bochur who the Rebbe asked about touring for himself. You don’t think he had any common discussion in learning etc they could have connected on? And the bochur didn’t tell him anything about his personal touring interests.

“The only possible take-away you wanted from that story was to imply that the rabbi was inferior to Lubavitchers. Why do you still think we don’t see through these things? Or, at this point, have you just pulled out the stops and decided to be an all-purpose troll account because you’re angry at
us?”

Na neither. My point was two fold. My main point was actually emphasizing what we expect of Rebbes in other kreizin – if the bochur didn’t bat an eyelash, that would show he would think this is normal behaviour for a Rebbe.

I suppose a secondary side point that emerges from the story is that many Torah leaders on different levels of Avodas Hashem use the title of Rebbe. Like I said I don’t think, based on what I’ve read about Rav Shteinman zatzal, that he would be personally interested in touring. This Rebbe did. So I’m not gonna treat him with the and level of respect as my Rebbe just because they use the same title. Fair?