rejection 511
aim is not to segregate Jews from the modern world (as sought by other
haredim ), but to reshape that world to incorporate strict observance of
the Torah. On university campuses, where since the 1970s Lubavitch
has had a particularly high profile, traditional Jewish learning may be
packaged as classes, seminars and conferences to avoid any impression
that the haredi lifestyle requires opting out of modernity, although the
Lubavitch rabbi himself will retain the conspicuously hasidic dress of
kaftan and girdle.
The prime motivation for the Lubavitch mission has been messianic,
as expressed with great clarity by the Rebbe himself on the death of his
predecessor in 1950. In the last years of his long life, the Rebbe encour-
aged his followers with increasing urgency to expect ‘Moshiach now’.
In an atmosphere of intense anticipation, many of these follow-
ers expressed their conviction that the Rebbe himself was the Messiah.
The outbreak of the first Gulf War provided further evidence (from an
American perspective at least) of the worldwide convulsions expected
to precede the last days. In 1993, the Rebbe suffered a debilitating
stroke, and some of his followers unearthed medieval texts which
declared that the Messiah had to suffer, so his tongue would cleave to
his mouth, as in Ezekiel 3:26: ‘I will make your tongue cling to the roof
of your mouth, so that you shall be speechless.’ When the Rebbe passed
away in 1994, an ideological split took place in the movement between
those who continue to have faith in the Rebbe as the Messiah and who
therefore deny that he has died or claim he will return, and those who
have reconciled themselves to the apparent evidence that the world was
not yet ready for the Messiah to manifest himself, and that further effort
in spreading the Torah is required before he will be revealed.^18
Lubavitch are unique among the hasidim in their positive enthusiasm
for reaching out to other Jews, and in their interest (inherited from the
Rebbe) in the spiritual progress also of gentiles. Most other haredim
have found it easier to maintain their separatist lifestyle by settling in
enclaves in which they can provide mutual support to each other and
maintain their practical institutions, from synagogues, schools, yeshivot
and ritual baths to shops with kosher provisions, although the renais-
sance of Lithuanian-style yeshivah learning in the United States owes
much to outreach to non-haredim by rabbis like Aharon Kotler, founder
in 1942 of the huge Lakewood yeshivah in New Jersey. For many of
these communities, an eruv (literally, ‘blending’), a legal device to create
a notional boundary within which it is permitted for objects to be car-
ried on the Sabbath as if within a private domain, is a highly significant