I don’t think I have to prove my credentials as being someone who is strongly against Lubavich philosophy and beliefs. Many many posts of mine in other threads will prove that. But having said that, I don’t understand a lot of the attacks that some of you are making against the Lubavichers here. In fact, I’m surprised at the mods who have let a lot of this stuff pass when in the past posts that were much less incendiary (ok, I admit I had to look up how to spell it) were censored or deleted.
At any rate, in regards to Rashi on Taanis 5b and Rashi on Chumash, I just don’t see how they contradict. In both places Rashi says that Yaakov Avinu did not die. In Chumash he does not elaborate, while in the gemoro he explains that people thought he had died, but that in reality he hadn’t.
Note that this is impossible for us to understand, as he was buried, so what does it mean that he is alive? Furthermore, I believe that embalming involved the removal of a number of inner organs, so how can someone be alive in that manner? Nonetheless, that is what, according to Rashi, the gemoro is saying, and just because we can’t understand it it doesn’t allow us to reject it. So the conclusion for a maamin, and I hope we all fit into that category, is that because Chazal say it, and only because Chazal say it do we accept it.
Now when it comes to the Lubavicher rebbe, on the other hand, Chazal do not make that statement, and we therefore have no right to make it on our own. If it would be something that is explainable it would be a halbe tzora to say it, but since it is unexplainable, saying it is plainly and simply ridiculous.
The gemoro says that there were trees of gold planted by Shlomo Hamelech that actually miraculously produced golden fruit. Can I therefore say that I believe that in my back yard there are plastic trees that produce plastic fruit? After all, if Chazal can say it so can I, right? No! Wrong! I can’t say it because it’s miraculous and I can’t decide on my own that I can apply it elsewhere. The same is true of saying the LR did not die, and attempting to cite the gemoro as proof.