Sound No. 17 - Sholem Aleichem: Zalman vs. Mendel Schneerson - Lubavitch, the Vehicle of Modernity

Yeshiva for surviving kids, Eragny, France. Headed by a group of rabbis, including Rabbi Zalman Schneerson (with his face turned in contemplation). Circa 1945 - 1947. The kids look noble, it must be the beret.

Reb Zalman, you are fired! Technically, he didn’t have to leave Paris, all he had built and defended heroically during the war. But if it came “officially” from Rayatz, he had to act as chossid, he had to fall on the sword. The movement that he risked his life for came to devastate him. Was it the dark intrigue of the Prince of the Royal court? I don’t know why, but this picture looks like a funeral. Perhaps the Russian no smile thing or the outdoors. The boy is Sholem Ber Gorodetzky.

Sholem Aleichem and I find ourselves, this early Friday afternoon, in New England towns in a neighboring states. It’s a beautiful, sunny, brisk, spring day. I can hear the birds chirping over the podcast.

Our towns are the graveyards of the American Jewish life. With plenty of Chabad “emissaries” who came to officiate at the funerals and make a few bucks off the dead. The vultures circling on the horizon, the scavengers looking for leftovers of the once proud, mighty communities.

We discuss topics no one is interested in. We start with the complicated and tragic relationship between the cousins, Rabbi Schneur Zalman Schneerson and Menachem Mendel Schneerson. In the second part of the podcast, we veer into the current state of Lubavitch, again a subject no one is interested in. There are either people who are caught in the pulsating dreaming of the unrequited love, or people who leave it all behind and never look back. These groups have no in between. So, we are once more on a virtual deserted island. As if the island we are actually surviving on is not deserted enough.

You can rest assured, the life relentlessly goes on!

Chabad, a Trojan Horse of modernity?

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The background:

• Zalman Schneerson - The rescue of Bertha, Malka and Bella Teitelbaum.

• Zalman Schneerson - Chapter 1 - Paris at War.

• A Letter from Zalman Mendelivich Schneerson to Meir Yankelevich Dizengoff.

• Post No. 1 - Boris Markovich Schneerson - Family of the Repker Rov - Introduction.

• Sound No. 10 - Bad Blood of the Chabad Rebbe.

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Molotov, Voroshilov, the NKVD earnest killer of the purges Nikolai Yezhov, pictured to the right of Stalin. When eventually himself purged, also removed from the photograph at the Moscow Canal. Erased from history.

Update:

The Postscript on Zalman Schneerson and Barry Gourary.