circa 1900: Letter from Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Heresy of “Religious” Zionism

To somejewiknow

Manis Friedman hss no intention of backing down from what he said. He is Chabad and Chabad believes that G-d d has been replaced by the Rebbe and therefore the world is totally Hefkee. Rabbi Efren Goldberg interviewed Manis Friedman recently. Another of his heresies is that Mitzvahs are optional. He explained that G-d has “needs” and when Jews keep Mitzvahs we’re fulfilling Hashem s needs. When Rabbi Goldberg challenged him he refused to back down arguing that since no one knows G-d how can anyone know if He has needs or not.

“I attend a Chabad shul during the week and the Rabbi told me that Gehinnom no longer exists.“

Maybe someone told him when he was a kid “the rebbe will be moshiach when gehennom freezes over

Therefore it no longer exists 😂

To Nope

Yes I hold that Toras Qwerty is bigger than all other Torahs because my Torah is logical and because I speak to a vast array of great Rabbis who agree with what I say. You seem to think that you can quote some Rabbi out of context and think you’ve won the argument. I reject many statements made by Rabbonim as do you. I’m sure you don’t agree with the Raystz who said that all Zionists are Kofrim because that means they have no Cheilek in Olam Habo and you agree with Manis Hamishugah that no Jew can be You’re a Chabad sympathizer so you have the same Din as Friedman the atheist.

To the group

Nope harassed me when I wrote on VIN. His thing was trying to convince me that Alan Dershowitz is a Tinok Shenishba. He quoted the Chazan Ish that every Jew today is a Tinok Shenishba. I told him that the Chazan Ish was talking about Jews with no religious background. He said I’m right and then changed it that Rav Kook would call him a Tinok Shenishba. Now he goes back to the Chazan Ish. Filthy liar. The first letter of Lubavic is an L it’s for liar. All Lubavitchers along with those who defend them are despicable liars.

To non-political

You’re right. Avraham Avinu taught us that we must mock idolatry. Chabad is an idolatrous religion. Don’t you agree Nope? Of course you do. That’s why you switched to our Wonderful site. I’m sure you have a bunch of anti-Rebbe zingers. Can’t wait to hear them.

Yaakov Yosef A wrote: “As I mentioned before, I really don’t care either way. It isn’t my place to judge any Yid, let alone Roshei Yeshivos or Rabbonim of any kind. If Rav Ahron Feldman holds something Rabbi Manis Friedman said is problematic, then let them meet each other and discuss it privately. Why do I need to be involved?”

Rav Ahron Feldman shlita made his comments as a public statement, ltoeles harabim. How could you possibly not care? Rav Ahron Feldman made his public comments so that you, and everyone else, should care.

You seem to not only be saying that Rav Ahron Feldman shlita is wrong, in your view, not you’re calling our Rav Ahron Feldman for making his public statement rather than, as you suggest, he sit down over coffee with Manis Friedman to (quote you) “meet each other and discuss it privately.” Yet Rav Ahron Feldman decided to make a public מחאה.

@ qwerty613

I don’t have anti-Rebbe zingers. Coffee Addict’s joke trades on the asinine belief, held by a number of Lubavicher’s that the previous Lubavicher Rebbe was / is Moshiach. However
1) You will not find in my posts anything disrespectful towards the last Lubavicher Rebbe. Also,
2) It is the policy of the major kashrus organization to rely on Mashichist mashgichim. Even HaRav Aaron Feldman, who holds not to rely on them doesn’t claim it’s because they are avdei A”Z or founders of a new religion.

ujm said – Rav Ahron Feldman shlita made his comments as a public statement, ltoeles harabim. How could you possibly not care?

No one automatically has to be מקבל anything that any given Rov says, ברבים or not, unless he is his Rov/Rebbe. Otherwise, what do you do when two different Rabbonim/Rebbes/Roshei Yeshiva take opposing positions on an issue? But to be מבזה one Rov, because another Rov criticized him, is a very not Kosher thing to do, and כלל ישראל has suffered from this sort of thing for centuries. שנאת חינם doesn’t mean without ANY reason, just that in Hashem’s eyes the reason isn’t good enough… If you and ‘qwerty’ and friends are so sure of yourselves that you are doing a ‘mitzvah’ of ‘rebuking reshaim’ (anonymously and from the comfort of your home, no sweat on your part), then be well and enjoy…

You guys don’t seem to get my point. Yidden are being killed/wounded daily, and you @#$%&! don’t have what to worry about except hocking a chainik about Lubavitch or Zionists or who cares what. Get a life.

To Non-political

You make a valid point which I will address. It is my belief that Chabad is morphing into another religion. No one is obligated to agree with me. All I ask is that I be given the opportunity to express my opinions and to that point I thank the moderators of YWN for running this and other similar threads. To be sure there are many great Rabbis who have the same view as mine.

To always ask

There is no question that the concept of Tinok Shenishba exists. What is subject to debate is how far it can be expanded. According to NOPE every irreligious Jew is automatically a Tinok Shenishba even if he was originally from and walked away from the religion under no duress. Please feel free to ask more questions, Unlike NOPE I will respond with honest answers.

To ujm

I’ll try to explain where Yaakov Yosef A is coming from. He’s not interested in what Rabbi Feldman said. He has a right to that position. What he he no right is to tell others that we can’t accept what a Godol is saying. And that’s what this buffoon is trying to do. He’s also a liar having said that he’s walking away from this thread. Maybe he needs a Refuah Shleimah. Arrogant jerk that he is. If he’s so troubled by the bombings let him go to Yeshiva and get off the internet.

AAQ – An interesting question whether every yid nowadays is a tinok shebnishba. Consider posters here. Regardless of which side of every argument you take, you would agree that half or more of the posters are confused in their learning. Even people who went to Jewish schools are not protected from misunderstanding of core concepts…

You are making a crucial point, which is central to the whole concept of לימוד זכות. The Chazon Ish (among many others, and the basis is in Chazal) basically held that the מידת הדין works in proportion to the degree of clarity a person is expected to have given the sum total of his circumstances IN HASHEM’S EYES (not qwerty’s or ujm’s). So, when we had a בית המקדש, people could be executed for some עבירות, even at age 13. Not now. Certain things are מורידין ולא מעלין, but unless someone is trying to physically kill someone ר״ל (or forcibly do certain other issurim), we don’t do that nowadays. We don’t whip people or put them in חרם anymore. So there are actual Halachic ramifications to the reduced מידת הדין. None of this is meant to condone any non-Kosher behavior of any kind or degree, for ourselves or others, but we certainly don’t need to GO LOOKING for people to be מבזה and criticize. ‘Go looking’ as in out of your own daled amos… I also don’t get why people are so excited to yell “there is punishment!” etc. Of course there is. Are all these chevrah so sure of their own tzidkus that they want to ‘wake up’ the מידת הדין ר״ל? Chazal teaches המוסר דין על חברו הוא נידון תחילה. Who needs that? And to do so NOW, when millions of Yidden are in real danger, is just vulgar and insensitive, and according to the Chafetz Chaim (based on the Zohar) downright dangerous. So who needs these debates?

There you go with your childish “checkmate” again. Well, for your information, Rashi and Rambam are both Rishonim, and have the right to argue with one another. So, who decided that this Rashi is to be understood specifically as the Rambam has it?

And, for your information, Maharal (in his Chiddushei Aggados on that same passage in the Gemara) says that Rashi means exactly what he says. He writes:

שהוא יתברך עלת הכל, ואי אפשר לעלה שלא ישפיע, וכאילו הוא דבר מחויב… ולכך אמר שהקב”ה מתאוה לברכת כהנים, כי מתאוה העלה במה שהוא עלה להשפיע. ויותר מזה ממה שהתינוק רוצה לינק האשה רוצה להניק… ולפיכך נקרא דבר זה צורך גבוה

“He is the Cause of everything, and it is *impossible* (emphasis mine) for a cause to not give forth; it is as though he is *required to do so*… Thus (the Gemara there) says that ‘Hashem desires Birkas Kohanim,” because the Cause, qua Cause, desires to give forth; ‘more than the baby wants to suckle, the woman wants to nurse’… Therefore this is called ‘G-d’s need.'”

Note that the Maharal postdates Rambam, and evidently found it quite unnecessary to say that all of this is only anthropomorphic.

(An even starker example: Sifri, Devarim 33:5, states that “when you (Jewish people) are My witnesses, I am G-d; when you are not My witnesses, I am not G-d.”)

[I can make no claim to be so familiar with Torah literature as to have found the above sources myself. ברוך שמסר עולמו לשומרים: they (and others) can be found in R. Yehoshua Hartman’s notes to Maharal’s Gevuros Hashem, ch. 23.]

—-

About your questions, answer below. I’ll first point out that it’s a sickness to demand that one “agree” with a gadol b’Yisroel who says this or that, as though the validity of their opinion depends on whether I “agree” with it. It’s time you learned the gaping difference between sports or politics or whatever, and Torah, where our lodestone is emunas chachamim and anivus and shiflus before those who have molded their thought processes according to Torah.

1. The Rayatz:

You probably mean the Rashab, as the letter quoted at the beginning of this thread is from him. Well, he *doesn’t* say that religious Zionists are kofrim. There’s exactly one place in the letter where he speaks of kefirah,* and that is in the following paragraph:

“Their entire desire and aim is to cast off the yoke of the Torah and the Mitzvot and to hold fast only to nationalism (le’umiyut), and this will be their Judaism. This was stated not long ago by one of their special leaders in a public article, blaspheming and reviling all of Judaism…”

So you tell me. Were R. Reines or R. Kook, etc., “blaspheming and reviling,” ch”v? It’s quite obvious that that paragraph is referring to the secular Zionists, of the ilk of Herzl and Nordau and so forth. Only later on does he talk about the religious Zionists, stating that they’re wrong in supporting the secular Zionists in their nationalistic aims. Now, if you can find another letter from the Rashab or the Rayatz or the Ramam calling religious Zionists “kofrim,” then we can talk.

* I could be pedantic, and point out that even there the Rashab doesn’t use “kefirah” or any form of the word; he calls their ideas שרש פורה ראש ולענה, “a root that produces gall and wormwood.” That phrase in its original context (Devarim 29:17) does indeed refer to heretical ideas, so the “automated translation” in the OP isn’t absolutely wrong, but it does point up that your arguments would be stronger if you could read the sources in the original rather than relying on translations.

2. R. Avigdor Miller:

He draws an analogy between television and ספרים החיצונים (external/heretical literature), of which Chazal indeed say that one who reads them has no share in Olam Haba (Sanhedrin 90a and 100b). To my daas baal habayis this seems a fair and in fact obvious inference, so your beef would really be with Chazal. One might ask whether any Torah authority disagrees with R. Miller on this (unlike with religious Zionism, where of course there’s an endless amount of controversy); if you can find such, then we have a basis to talk. “I don’t like what he says” is not such a basis.

(Worth noting: there are Rishonim such as Rabbeinu Bechayei (end of Acharei Mos) and the Recanati (Ki Sisa) who say that the phrase “he has no portion in Olam Haba” doesn’t mean that he’s excluded entirely, just that they’ve lost their own individual portion, and are like a poor person, having to be supported by charity from “the hidden treasures of tzedakah.” Perhaps we can take R. Miller’s statement in the same vein; in the Olam Haemes or at the time of techiyas hameisim, if I have the opportunity, I can ask.)

Yaakov Yosef A: Is all your above criticism of those who call out Manis Friedman also directed at Rav Ahron Feldman shlita, for very publicly calling out and making a מחאה against Manis Friedman?

@ Qwerty

I also read Dr. Bergers book. It’s a good book. More people should read it.

YYA > So, when we had a בית המקדש, people could be executed for some עבירות, even at age 13. Not now.

I agree w/ your general sentiment. I think things were similar back then. Gemora discusses all kind of reasons people can be off the hook for a korban – did not know this or that, were onus because they were mislead …

> Of course there is. Are all these chevrah so sure of their own tzidkus that they want to ‘wake up’ the מידת הדין ר״ל?

I think Hashem hardened their hearts for us to see how ridiculous such positions are when they are taken to the extreme – and so that we grow in our rachmonus and achdus.

To ujm

Shlomo Hamelech said that there’s no hope for a fool who’s right in his own eyes. This is Yaakov Yosef A. He has this idiotic line that Rabbi Feldman and I have to contact a Kofer who rejects the fundamental of Schar Veonesh and ask him to explain his view. There’s nothing to explain he’s a Chabad Kofer.