Very simple: R. Miller’s statement that such a person “has no cheilek in Olam Haba, no question about it,” ***in its totality,*** is his halachic opinion, to which he’s entitled. That should hardly be surprising to anyone who’s studied Torah for any amount of time. We find Torah giants throughout all the generations – in the Gemara, among the Geonim and Rishonim and Acharonim – making such categorical statements, but it’s not “checkmate” when we do find a question or a differing opinion. That is simply how Torah study works so long as we live in a world where machlokes lesheim shamayim (to say nothing of the other kinds!) proliferates. We daven three times a day השיבה שופטינו כבראשונה, that Hashem give us back the Great Sanhedrin that will indeed be the venue of last resort, where they can say “no question about it” and that’s in fact how it’ll be.
Your two questions – I think the second one answers not only itself, but also your first one. Were I a Lubavitcher, then indeed I might find it necessary to tangle with Yankel Berel and ujm and so forth, but in that case I’d also have the “inside information” about the details of Chabad teachings to be able to do so. Well, I’m not, and I don’t. In fact I wouldn’t have come to this forum at all, if you hadn’t practically invited me by misrepresenting what I said on VIN (having previously informed me, in one of those discussions, that you hang out here too). Our previous interactions on VIN were mostly about Chabad and about R. Miller, just as they’ve been here, simply because you seem a bit obsessed with the two of them to the point of crude namecalling; it doesn’t take a Lubavitcher (or a follower of R. Miller) to see that. That’s one part of what I see as your “vendetta.”
(And by the way, kavod chachamim is important to me, and something that I tend to speak up about. If back on VIN you had been hurling those same epithets at R. Yoel of Satmar or at (יבלח”ט) R. Aryeh Malkiel Kotler, then I’d have said something then too, and then you’d be claiming that I must be a closet Satmarer or BMGer.)
The other part of the “vendetta” is that you’ve decided to make it personal about me both there and here, likewise with the crude namecalling and ad hominems. Now, granted, I ought to have been the bigger person about those and ignored them, and it’s a weakness of mine to not do so.
So the solution is very simple. You don’t want me following you around? Drop your compulsion to drag me (with or without mention of my screenname) into your arguments with others. Drop your compulsion to call Jews “kofrim” and other such invective because they understand a Gemara differently than you do. In fact, at least for a while, drop your compulsion to sit in judgment at all on any Jews (cf. Rambam’s advice about going to the opposite extreme for a while, to eventually settle on the “golden mean”). Then, bli neder, you’ll see the back of me.
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AAQ: I certainly hope so. As I said above, it’s hard for me to resist answering back in kind when being a target of insults based on obvious misquotations of what I said, but I hope that we’re at the end of that now. (There is indeed much to learn in that regard from R. Moshe: he was an ish ha’emes to the Nth degree, and that went hand in hand with his kindness, as indeed they must.)
What is the name of the sefer, by the way? I see where R. Mintz has published “Ask the Rabbi”; is that what you’re referring to? I’ll have to look it up. I also fondly remember stories by Hanoch Teller about R. Moshe and his incredible middos tovos, and indeed I’d love to hear more, particularly from those who knew him personally.