new york | The messianist controversy that has been tearing apart the Crown Heights Lubavitch community for more than a decade is now before New York state’s Supreme Court.
The case pits the leadership of the international Chabad-Lubavitch movement against a handful of young messianists and the trustees of Congregation Lubavitch Inc., the group that controls the movement’s main synagogue at 770 Eastern Parkway in Brooklyn, N.Y.
The case ostensibly turns on the wording of a commemorative plaque on the outside wall of the shul.
But what really is at stake is who controls the synagogue where the late Chabad rabbi, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, used to pray. It is the shul where he would hold his farbrengens — mass celebrations where he would discourse to thousands of his disciples, men and women who hung on his every word.
For the better part of the decade since Schneerson’s death in 1994, the 770 synagogue has been considered a stronghold of the messianists, a vocal minority of Lubavitchers who, against the wishes of the Chabad leadership, publicly declare that Schneerson is the Messiah.
In the synagogue’s main sanctuary, a banner proclaiming Schneerson the Messiah is strung across a side wall. Many prominent Lubavitchers, including much of the movement’s leadership, don’t go inside at all.
The case before the court represents the most decisive action yet by Chabad’s leadership against this messianist faction.
Plaintiffs in the case are Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch and Agudas Chassidei Chabad, two of the three central bodies of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.
Pitted against them are three Lubavitch yeshiva students and Congregation Lubavitch Inc., a nonprofit formed after Schneerson’s death that lays claim to control of the synagogue.
The small plaque affixed to the wall outside the shul’s main entrance commemorates Schneerson’s laying of the building’s cornerstone.
When it was first put up in 1995, the plaque referred to Schneerson in Hebrew as “of blessed memory,” the traditional Jewish term for a deceased person. It was defaced almost immediately and the phrase was scratched out by, it was widely presumed, messianists, who oppose any suggestion that the rebbe is dead.
The defaced plaque remained up until Nov. 4, 2004, when some young Lubavitchers, including the three named defendants in the current case, removed it in the middle of the night and tried to replace it with a plaque that referred to Schneerson as the Moshiach (Messiah).
They were caught in the act and arrested, and their new plaque was removed under police guard.
The conflict escalated: Merkos hired installers to replace the original, non-messianist plaque, they were met by groups who pushed and shoved them, the police got involved and Merkos got a temporary restraining order against the three young men. Then Congregation Lubavitch Inc. tried to have the restraining order voided on the grounds that its gabbais (synagogue trustees) were the only ones who should control the plaque, the synagogue and the surrounding buildings.
The restraining order stood, barricades went up, guards were posted and Merkos’ plaque was finally affixed — and then vandalized by a blowtorch.