“When a Lubavitcher says “I did this with the Rebbe’s kochos” and people jump and him and scream “avoda zorah” – I think it comes from ignorance and suspicion of Yidden who are different.
It is the same as someone saying “I made a great deal for 10,000 dollars yesterday” – no one says that the businessman doesn’t believe in Hashem ch”v, rather they understand that he means that he made a KELI for Hashem’s brochos of $10,000”
Then they should say it was in their rebbe’s zchus, like literally every other chasidus does.
People aren’t “ignorant” for listening to english or yiddish words and saying that people mean what they say. When someone says that a rebbe’s kochos brought him salvation, that IS avodah zara. It’s not ignorance, and it’s not because chabad people are “different.” That’s a defense mechanism that chabad teaches people to resort to when their views are challenged or criticized. Satmar, Breslov, and many others are “different” from the majority of klal yisroel, but not in ways that make people think that they are ovdei avodah zara.
I’m not reading anything into the words that lubavitchers use; i’m using my chush ha’shmiah and hearing the words. I’m hearing shlomo cunin say that his deceased rebbe “runs the world,” I’m hearing children asked “what did you do for the rebbe today,” I’m hearing people say that their rebbe protects them(not his zchus, as in zchuso yagen aleinu), I’m hearing people ask their rebbe for bakashos, “rebbe save me,” etc..
And then sometimes I hear apologetics and explanations that make it less avodah zara-dik; if chabad meant nothing different than other chasidim, who go to rebbes, give kvitilach, pour their hearts out, and go to kvarim, then why don’t they say what they mean and talk like everyone else?
Some chabadniks think that their rebbe had indepedent power, which is shituf – a worse form of avodah zara, however, are those who say that the rebbe helping you is the same as god helping you, because he is basically god wrapped in a body, as their rebbe told them in likutei sichos. That youre alloweds to daven at a kever because youre “really” davening to god, r”l.
Then there are people like you who say that a tzadik has no independent power at all, and only channels brochos from Hashem, an idea that nobody has a real problem with.
So why don’t people like you:
1. change the way chabad talks, to reflect what you actually think
2. stop teaching kids to do things “for the rebbe”
3. completely and unequivocally denounce, and put into cherem, anyone who says that the rebbe was god, calls him boreinu like the tzfas-niks, or part of god or the essence of god wrapped in a body. Thrown out to the point where you say that they’re practicing a different religion.
But no, you’re probably going to talk about achdus and how we have enough rifts as it is. Which is what chabad teaches its students to say when talking to “snags.”
No, there can and needs to be another rift if the other side is idolatrous.
Would chabad not want to make a rift if some of its adherents started worshipping yushke, while keeping the mitzvos?