The Rebbe

The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson

By: Samuel Heilman, Menachem Friedman

Narrated by: David Cohen

Length: 12 hrs and 59 mins

Publisher's summary

From the 1950s until his death in 1994, Menachem Mendel Schneerson - revered by his followers worldwide simply as the Rebbe - built the Lubavitcher movement from a relatively small sect within Hasidic Judaism into the powerful force in Jewish life that it is today. Swept away by his expectation that the Messiah was coming, he came to believe that he could deny death and change history.

Samuel Heilman and Menachem Friedman paint an unforgettable portrait of Schneerson, showing how he reinvented himself from an aspiring French-trained electrical engineer into a charismatic leader who believed that he and his Lubavitcher Hasidic emissaries could transform the world. They reveal how his messianic convictions ripened and how he attempted to bring the ancient idea of a day of redemption onto the modern world's agenda. Heilman and Friedman also trace what happened after the Rebbe's death, by which time many of his followers had come to think of him as the Messiah himself.

The Rebbe tracks Schneerson's remarkable life from his birth in Russia, to his student days in Berlin and Paris, to his rise to global renown in New York, where he developed and preached his powerful spiritual message from the group's gothic mansion in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. This compelling book demonstrates how Schneerson's embrace of traditionalism and American-style modernity made him uniquely suited to his messianic mission.

©2010 Princeton University Press (P)2012 Audible, Inc.

Overly simplistic

The basic thesis of the authors is something like this: “The Rebbe, in his youth, was more worldly than his predecessors. He dreamed of becoming an engineer and did everything he could to fulfil that dream. Circumstances, however, were against him and he was forced to abandon that plan. The tragedies of Stalin and holocaust as well as survivor guilt prompted the Rebbe to change track and take on the mantel of Chabad leadership. Due to his own religious sensibilities, the adoration of his followers, and later his own intense personal isolation, the Rebbe fell prey to a delusion that the messianic age was imminent and that he might just be the chosen one. The Rebbe’s passing leaves a gaping hole and there are serious questions about how the Chabad movement will cope in the long term.”

The authors ignore or downplay the very significant contributions the Rebbe made to modern Jewish life - the spearheading of outreach, the revitalisation of Jewish education and institutions, and the spread of Hasidic camaraderie in unprecedented proportions. A better biography is Steinsaltz’s My Rebbe or Chaim Miller’s Turning Judaism Outward.