Hate for Lubavichers Explained

I have arrived home safely to the US, and I have written much on my Palm pilot since my last post that as soon as I can, I will upload it onto the site.



In spite of various hate letters and comments I have received because of the rage various Jews feel towards their own people, I wanted to state clearly my intent in writing this blog. I am not interested in debating Jewish politics, nor am I interested in discussing how bad certain groups are over certain others. I am a firm believer in Jewish unity, and I saw it at the Shabbos (Sabbath) table in Beijing, China, where there were Lubavich Chassidim, Satmar Chassidim, and Bellz Chassidim (forgive me if I've misspelled any of your groups' names) sitting at the same table eating the same food, discussing concepts of the same Torah.

All Jews from all walks of life have the same G-d, the same Torah, and the same rules. Even if you open up a Torah scroll that has been locked away in some forgotten Ethiopian tribe for thousands of years, you will find that they are still following the same Torah which is exactly the same, letter for letter.

No Jew should dislike another Jew because he has a different approach to his service of G-d. Some Chassidic groups approach G-d in service with singing and dancing, while others approach G-d with fear, self-nullification, and trepidation. Some separate themselves from the world, while others try to embrace it and to raise the level of holiness of the world. After all, for you Chassidic-haters, remember that as a Jew, your obligation, as the Torah clearly states, is to be "priests onto the world." Even non-Jews look to us for our priesthood and they expect us to act morally and to have a close connection to G-d.

When a Jew such as my anonymous poster from one sect of Judaism spits out words of hatred against another sect or group, he has violated Jewish law. This person is a sinner, and is in deep spiritual trouble, both when it comes to divine punishment coming to him for his fragmentation of the Jewish people, and when it comes to his own sad isolation from his own people. Jews are Jews, regardless of whether they wear a black hat or have long payis (curly hair let to grow around the ears); regardless of whether they shave their heads or whether they grow long beards. We all wake up in the morning and are obligated to the same laws, and we are connected spiritually in a literal way as one body. It hurts every Jew when another Jew breeds hatred amongst his fellow man. It causes hatred amongst other Jews, and it causes the goyim (non-Jews) to hate us because we are not sustaining the world spiritually the way we need to. Our actions even affect the non-Jews and their quality of life. When we stop being unified and following the commandments we have been obligated to, the world goes nuts and people get hurt. So stop your fighting and drop your hatred of Lubavichers, and of other Chassidic and non-Chassidic sects that are not like you in their approach to Judaism. You cause more damage than good by your hatred.

Since most of my readers on this site are non-Jews, I also want to clarify the angry posts that you are witnessing by the random Jewish self-haters who come on this site from time to time. What you are seeing specifically is roughly a 200-300 year old fight between those who follow the teachings of the Baal Shem Tov and his teachings of Chassidus versus those who reject Chassidus. The problem was that the Jewish people were turning into angry disciplinarians whose observance over the years turned cold and heartless. Their study of Torah and observance of the mitzvos (commandments) continued to be strong, but their hatred of others and their protectionist measures towards those who were not like them as a reaction to all of the anti-Semitism they experienced over the thousands of years led them to drive many Jews away from the faith.

Judaism as people today well know has a mystical side and a practical side. The real mystical side we see today, often called "Kabbalah", has been lost through disuse because it became dangerous to practice Kabbalah after we lost our holy Temple in Israel and went into exile. This is because our spiritual garments which are maintained on some pseudo-physical level by our performance of the mitzvos (commandments) became incomplete when we stopped having the capacity to fulfill many of the mitzvahs through the loss of our temple (i.e. bringing sacrifices, temple service, etc.). By lacking the ability to have a complete garment, Jews became prone to being influenced by dark angels, demons, and other non-corporeal evil entities who were able to possess, effect, kill, and misdirect our energies to do bad and not good when we tried to practice Kabbalah. For that reason, we stopped its use and over the hundreds of years, we forgot its methods.

Chassidus is not Kabbalah, nor is it the practice of magic or sorcery that so many Jews rightfully fear. By the way, a Jew is not allowed to practice magic or sorcery. This is a biblical prohibition. Rather, Chassidus teaches Torah in a way that the average person is able to understand the spiritual concepts in a tangible way. By learning Chassidus, one becomes refined in his attributes and in his thoughts. He learns that it is a bad idea to do the mitzvos selfishly for one's own reward rather than to serve G-d with a pure heart. He learns the concept of bitul, and other concepts of living that prepare a person to live a moral life.

However, for some reason these Jewish misnagdim, as they are called, have been fighting with the followers of the Baal Shem Tov since the beginning. This is the fight you see today when someone attacks Lubavichers, who are modern-day followers of the Baal Shem Tov and the Alter Rebbe, better known as that Baal Tanya (the one who wrote Tanya, which can be crudely summarized as the handbook for Chassidic thought). They also don't like the fact that Chassidic people follow a head Rabbi (a.k.a. a Rebbe), even though there have been Rebbeim since the beginning of the Jewish people leading them and directing them. Moses was the first Rebbe, as all Jews respectfully call him "Moshe Rabbeinu" (Moses, our Rebbe). Rebbe is an acronym which stands for "Rosh Bnei Yisroel," which means "the head of the Jewish people." Misnagdim don't like this either, while all it means is that as all Jews are part of one spiritual body, some are born with souls who have their source in the equivalent of the arm of the Jewish body, and others are born to the head. Rebbeim are said to have their source in being part of the head of the spiritual body of the Jewish people.

I hope this helps to explain a few of the concepts involved in this fight, and to understand why you'll have these self-hating Jews who populate the web and the blogsphere causing trouble for others through their hateful comments.