@sechel
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Happened to meet an old habad acquaintance on the street , and will quote him here :
In habad now , whenever our rebbi quotes a tanna or amora or a rishon or a posek , it is not as if our rebbi needs the backup of these holy people. It is more like those holy people received back up from our rebbi that they were zoche that he quoted them ….
[yb to sechel]
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….. what one chabad fellow answered you ,does not represent chabads view …..
[sechel to yb]
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Rewind some 40 odd years .
Had a similar type of conversation with a reasonable habad person about the prevalence of habad hasidim attributing messiahship to their rebbi.
I quoted him what I heard from an individual ,serious habad person whom I met on the street.
“Our rebbi is the greatest of not only our generation but of all preceding generations and he really is mashiach .”
Our reasonable habad person told me many documented incidents where their rebbi himself reacted with anger and disapproval upon those type mashiach proclamations and that the above is only the result of the hallucinary imaginations of those crazy yehidim and for sure not representative of the habad movement as a whole and that every movement has its share of crazies.
It was only those so called ‘haters’ of habad who anyway had an agenda against habad ,who chose to represent the crazies as legit habad spokespeople.
I was younger and more naive at that time and swallowed it , accepted it .
This was not one personal story .
This was emblematic.
This type of conversation was going on in many forms and ways , on the pages of newspapers , in informal mikva’ot discussions , in shtiblah and around the shalom zahor tables ….
Many people were taken by this and swallowed it hook, line and sinker.
Va’ani hakatan, betoham.
We all know, now, with the benefit of hindsight , who really represented habad ….
And whether it is naive to be taken by that type of answer….
Once burnt , second time …..