My Chabad Friends: Provide the Thirsty Reader with Some Clean Water.

I often wonder how those close to great historical figures react when reading the inevitable plethora of biographies authored by unqualified experts? When the first biographer of Mohandas Gandhi, authored their work did those close to Gandhi wince? Did they smile and whisper to themselves “they will never understand” or did they author frustrated rebuttals of the misguided agenda-driven biographers? Perhaps they wrote reviews claiming that the authors lacked a basic understanding of the subjects scholarship? Whatever the reaction the memory of almost every historical figure exists in a perpetual state of controversy. Washington the great defender of American freedom and a slave owner. JFK enactor of civil rights, and the married lover of many women. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, the missionaries missionary, the scholars scholar, the rabbis rabbi, a student of Kantian philosophy, engineering, and awarded, posthumously, the Congressional Gold Medal. The Messiah?

As one would expect the only comprehensive biographies of the Rebbe are extremely controversial.
Of course there are many innocuous books, but they are usually written by devotees who are enveloped in their masters majesty. Like clockwork they remind the reader of the Rebbe’s prodigious memory, his miracle working, and his humanity (there is a myriad of such biographies). These books invariably begin with the hackneyed upbringing of the Rebbe, the fact that he was a prodigy etc. and then skip to the Rebbe’s meeting and eventual marriage with the Previous Rebbe’s, (his predecessor) daughter. After that expect another quantum leap to the Rebbe’s arrival in America in 1941, interspersed with some stories of the Rebbe’s lifestyle in Berlin and France. Don’t get me wrong this is all good and accurate. Still it leaves the curious reader hungry for more. What shaped the Rebbe? How did he attain his extraordinary proficiency in every stream of secular knowledge? What did the Rebbe specifically study in Berlin, and Paris, why? What was the Rebbe’s relationship at that time with his wife, family, and larger Jewish community? Did the Rebbe have a correspondence with his professors? For whatever reason, perhaps because I was so awed by the Rebbe I knew and still know, I never verbalized these questions.

But then.

I remember a friend at Brooklyn college pulling out a plain blue hard cover book -I was ecstatic. Finally a scholarly work that explored the Rebbe before he accepted the mantel of Rebbe in 1951. Unfortunately it was written by a known malcontent. This disaffected former student of ChaBaD, subtly educated me, the reader, about the ostensibly less spiritual origins of the Rebbe (Larger than Life [out of print], Deutsch 1995 part, II 1997).

Then two professors (scholars?) Samuel Heilman (CUNY) and Menachem Freidman of (Bar Ilan, Israel) teamed up and authored a “human biography”: The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Shneerson (Princeton University Press, 2010). When I heard about it I was as excited as when I discovered Deutsch’s book. But instead of immediately reading it I decided to first pre-color my judgment of the book by discussing it with “a close acquaintance of the Rebbe”, who I in turn have the privilege of being very close too. I do not think it's fair to share his name, but suffice it to say he offered a different perspective, the insider perspective. Not to digress, he also shared with me that he knew Deutsch. Let’s just say that if I previously read Deutsch with a grain of salt now I read him with a myriad of spices.

But I admit that was, for me, a juicy digression.

Either way their conclusion, my acquaintance argued, is deeply flawed because the biography is rife with erroneous translations of the Rebbe’s writing, of which there is over 300,000 pages. The authors, in turn could not have a clear unobstructed conception of the Rebbe’s philosophical and theological thinking, and they did not consult with individuals that did. Their thesis not only guided the thrust of their writing (which is normal, every writer has an agenda) but also caused them to disregard almost every piece of evidence that contradicted their hypothesis. Their thesis itself -that the Rebbe failed in his secular pursuits and only then decided that he would stand at the helm of ChaBaD as it initiated and implemented the biggest revival in Judaism since Ezra and Nehemiah- was deeply flawed if only because it ignores or misconstrues the Rebbes personality, writings, and fails at connecting the dots vis-a-vis ChaBaD’s extraordinary success.

Now my point:

However justified the insider criticism is simply not loud enough to discredit the book nor does it suppress the widespread desire to understand the Rebbe. In my opinion, every historical figure has been subjected to apocryphal analysis and agenda driven biographical studies. In those cases as in this case, the insiders and scholars authored criticisms in the relevant media, and most readers disregarded or were unaware of those criticisms. Most readers can’t be blamed for accepting what they read nor will the insider criticism of a given biography quench the thirst for information, on the contrary controversy stimulates interest.

My suggestion is another biography be authored by an insider who is able to explore and discuss the totality of the Rebbe’s life even those parts that may be construed as secular or even negative (I understand the eminent Rabbinic scholar, Adin Steinsaltz, began but never finished) . It is never an easy task for a devotee to author, or assist in authoring, anything that may challenge the well crafted image of the object of their devotion. Still it is better than armchair criticism. Indeed if the insider really cares about the image of the Rebbe than it is imperative that they provide the thirsty reader with some clean water.