TheYeshiva.net - Rabbi YY Jacobson

Is Chabad Today a Breakaway From the Past? Has Chassidus Lost Its Way?

The Debate Between the Baal HaTanya and his Collegues on the Destiny of Chassidus

39 min

Five generations of Chabad Rebbes.

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Class Summary:

Has Chassidus Lost Its Way? Have Chassidim Lost Perspective of what Chassidus Came to Accomplish? Is Chabad Today a Break Away From the Past? The Debate Between the Baal HaTanya and his Colleagues -- and Its Results Today.

This discussion was presented during Rabbi YY Jacobson's morning Chassidus class, on 6 Av, 5776, August 10, 2016, at Ohr Chaim Shul, in Monsey, NY. It came as a response to a question by one of the students who wondered why many of the fundamental ideas of the Baal Shem Tov and Chassidus were not (at least from his experience) being taught, practiced and implemented in Chassidic communities today.

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Anonymous -4 years ago
Question for Rabbi YY
This idea is super interesting and extremely comforting when we try so hard to be consistent in our avodah and learning, but nevertheless we can barely feel the passion.

Is it possible that some Lubavitcher chassidim have veered from the tradtional ChaBaD mahalach, with the obsession, etc. with the figure of RaMaSH, both during his lifetime and after he passed away? This veering is not an official evolution in the court's philosophy, becuase the Rebbe clearly opposed cult to his persoanlity, but in any case...
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NA
Ned Alfred -6 years ago
Untrue
Did the Alter Rebbe in fact send shluchim to Berlin and Paris to spread Hassidus? Not that I’m aware of.The Tzemach Tzedek spent his life fighting haskalah - not trying to bring the maskilim into the homes of his hassidim.Sorry,but the “shlichus “is a chiddush of dor shevii,and it has taken a huge toll in the. Chasidishkeit and erlichkeit of the Lubavitcher movement.
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- MZ
  Mendel Zilbereberg -6 years ago
  While I do not know the complete history of chabad in porevious generations, except that at a time when ritual observance and Jewish continuity was under attack by seriously unfriendly host countries, Chabad had an underground unparalledled network of covert shluchim that attempted to address these issues.
  
  When Chabad reached the shores of America, the previous Rebbe was one of the few religious chassidic leaders to understand, synthesize and adjust to the fact that the United States was not the oppressive environment of Europe and that the current threat of decreasing ritual observance and intermarriage had to be addressed in a different way based on the different hohst environment. As such, he sent emissaries to a number of host cities. Shortly thereafter, after the Rebbe assumed the mantle of leadership, he ran with the idea and expanded it, and it was established in a way that it could survive and flourish - as it has since his passing.
  
  With regard to your last sentence, I will be generous and assusme that your ignorance drives your opinion specifically, I mean your ignorance of what chassidus is and of the frumkeit of shluchim and their families when compared with the virtual trainwreck of frumkeit in the other chassidic segments.
  
  Finally, I applaud your choice of name for yourself as "untrue".
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T
Terry -7 years ago
Is Chabad today a breakaway
In very secular terms. the sign of a great leader is one who empowers those who are following him...that seems to be the core essence of Chabad..how blessed we are.
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א
אדם -7 years ago
Please refer to Kumzits Farbrengen by Rabbi Jacobson from 10 Shvat 5776 towards the end, the story about the potatoes. You see in the old days the chossid that davened with fire screaming his heart out was one way and the chossid who took hours to inspire himself through limud hachasiddus was another. One was milchig and one was fleishig. But today in a generation where having in mind the simple meaning of the words of davening is no longer a given, it's all potatoes. Now please don't take this wrongly to mean it's all nothing, on the contrary everything helps and everything works. Nothing is mutually exclusive anymore, learn some chassidus inspire yourself to the best of your ability and then scream your heart out! we so need any life any chiyus grab it any way you can, just try to make sure it's real and it's you.
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EG
Esther Gurary -8 years ago
Aharon, I'm afraid you are wrong. Chabad chassidim and shluchim are one hundred percent "required to full of shas and poskim." It's a total misconception to think otherwise.
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AS
Aharon Subar -8 years ago
Very interesting shiur, and I think it would warrant a shiur on it's own and not an appendage of the morning shiur.
So I took from this discussion that, if we look at the original message of the Baal Shem Tov and the Magid of Mezeritch and Rav Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev, who embodied a message of universal love to all Jews, that Lubavitch of today most closely resembles that message. That was one of your points, correct?
The other point, however, that you mentioned, is one I have a question about. You said that the Baal HaTanya did not want to be a Rebbe as others were with chassidim flocking to him but he wanted to create 'self-made' men who would excel in intellectual study. I saw this brought out in the book 'The Debate in Minsk' where he made all these severe rules preventing people from visiting him unrestricted. And how he demanded a high level of study.
May I ask why it is that we don't seem to see that same level of academic excellence in the face of Lubavitch today. Yechidim excluded, most Lubavitch Shalichim that I know don't give the appearance of being talmidei chachamim. It seems that to be a Lubavitch Shalich requires a bold and daring enthusiasm to carry out the previous Rebbe's mission to go places where no-one else will go, and that can get one very far, but being full of shas and poskim does not appear to be a requirement. I strongly state that there ARE INDIVIDUALS, Rabbi Jacobson and others included among them, who clearly are talmidei chachamim, but in general I find that that is the exception rather than the rule. Am I wrong?
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WS
White Smlie -8 years ago
Judaism arose several thousand years ago in the Middle East, descending apparently from the local polytheistic traditions of thirteen (not twelve) tribes of an ethnic group known as the Hebrews (traditionally, the ancient nations of Israel, Judah, Edom, Moab, and Ammon); these people may have had their origins in itinerant tribes known in Egyptian as "Habiru" in the ancient Middle East. The precise origin is lost to history, but is described with unknown accuracy in Biblical mythology (dealt with in depth at Wikipedia[wp]). According to the Book of Judith, Holofernes, when he inquired of the lineage of the Israelites, was told they were of Chaldean descent: Judith 5:6: This people are descended of the Chaldeans.[5] "Jewish" is a relatively modern term applied to the descendants of the Israelites or Hebrews, specifically those whose ancestry primarily traces to Judah, occupying the central regions of the areas now known as the state of Israel and the West Bank; the word "Jewish" itself is a specifically English spelling deriving from an earlier form of the French juif. Depending on sources, historical/archaeological records of the Jews appear approximately twelve hundred years before the Common Era with the disappearance of pig bones from area trash heaps.
The Jewish kingdoms in Canaan were often at war with neighboring kingdoms, leading to several periods of Exile and Return. After the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem by the Romans, the modern Diaspora took place, scattering the Jewish population throughout the world, but especially into Europe (the Ashkenazi[wp]), Mesopotamia, and North Africa[wp].
Judaism has gone through a great many developments since its early origins among Hebrew-speaking Canaanites during the Bronze Age, from being a (possibly polytheistic) form of the traditional Middle Eastern temple-state traditionally based around Jerusalem to a Monolatry,[6] to the modern variants of Rabbinical Judaism with no temple at all. From its early origins, Judaism began to take its modern shape with the earliest codification of the Torah (the Jewish law) in the reign of King Josiah of Judah (known to Biblical scholars as the Deuteronomic Reform), though it retained its priestly trappings until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Roman Empire c.70 CE. Modern Judaism derives from the legal codes of the Pharisees, a scholarly branch of the faith that was one of three major factions in first-century Judaism (the other significant ones were the Saducees, a faction that preferred emphasis on priestly functions, and Essenes, largely a monastic and ascetic tradition represented in the Bible by John the Baptist). The Pharisees were the ones whose philosophies survived the collapse of the Jewish state and the purge of the other branches; marginalized earlier was the Hellenistic tradition that attempted to combine the widening influence of the Greeks with Jewish tradition that resulted in the creation of the Septuagint, the Greek-language version of the Tanakh still used by the Eastern Orthodox Christian churches
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- AL
  Ari Lederman -8 years ago
  If you are just coming to a Jewish website to talk about this you have no life. Please let us be we don't care what you have to say
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  - WS
    White Smlie -8 years ago
    Not just coming.... do you have a Rov or teacher to help you with Divrei Yimei Yisroel Jewish History
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