The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson by Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman (review)

George Orwell began his essay on Gandhi by saying that “Saints should always be judged guilty until they are proved innocent, but the tests that have to be applied to them are not, of course, the same in all cases.”¹ In their study of the modern Hasidic leader Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, revered by his followers as a saintly master, Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman execute the first half of Orwell’s maxim with vigor, but they stumble over the second half. Repelled by what they see as a cult of personality, they deconstruct the cult but lose sight of the personality. Their effort displays the limits of a journalistic portrayal of a person of spirit that observes externals but vacates considerations of interiority.

The Rebbe provides a vivid portrait of Rabbi Schneerson’s early days, beginning with his childhood in Russia, noting that he was sent to a relatively modern school, where the curriculum included grammar and poetry, including Bialik.² Later we find the future leader in Berlin, a place that the authors stress was not congenial to Hasidic life; they suggest that the choice of Berlin bespeaks an attraction to Western culture and cosmopolitan life. Countering some claims, the authors point out that Schneerson’s academic achievements in Berlin were modest; although Friedrich Wilhelm University granted him a certificate of attendance, he never advanced beyond the status of auditor.³ Later in Paris, he eventually did receive a degree, not from the Sorbonne, but from a second-tier engineering school. Also, his academic record was hardly distinguished; at one point, he had a class ranking of thirty five out of thirty seven.⁴

Focusing on the location of his residences in Berlin and Paris, the authors deduce that at some point the young Schneerson’s attachment to the Hasidic way of life was tenuous and desultory; they speculate that he and his wife (Moussia, the daughter of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe Yosef Yitzhak Schneerson) likely spent time enjoying the cultural resources and bohemian atmosphere of Paris. Distancing themselves from the Jewish quarter and a small Hasidic synagogue, they lived in a more avant-garde area, not far from Sartre and de Beauvoir, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Picasso and Modigliani. The authors ask leadingly, “Could the Schneersons . . . have remained completely ignorant of this life around them? Did they want to be? Did they never walk the boulevards, stop in the cafés, visit the galleries, or feel the energy around them? Had this couple who stayed out late in Leningrad while they were courting and who may have attended the theatre there become homebodies in interwar Paris?”⁵

The second part of the book describes how Menachem Mendel Schneerson emerged to follow his father-in-law as the seventh Rebbe of Chabad, a process that they see as filled with posturing and intrigue, and the now familiar story of messianic fervor orchestrated by Rabbi Schneerson and the campaign to disseminate Chabad teachings and establish Chabad centers throughout the world, a campaign that has enjoyed astonishing success. But how did an aspiring engineer with a lackluster academic record and an uncertain connection to his Hasidic heritage, a displaced refugee who had barely avoided the Nazi vortex, make his way in a new country with an unfamiliar language and culture, eventually to become the leader of a flourishing worldwide religious movement? The answer according to Heilman and Friedman is self-reinvention and shrewd manipulation: “From being a somewhat mediocre mechanical and electrical engineer he would become an outstanding social and spiritual engineer who would offer his recipe for the redemption of the Jewish people.”⁶ He “outflanked” his brother-in-law for the leadership,⁷ and then “he had to reinvent himself. He would do it by stressing his knowledge of Lubavitcher sources and by using mystification to enhance his charisma and the charisma...