Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah

Glinter (editor of Have I Got a Story for You), a senior editor at the Yiddish Book Center, delivers a discerning biography of the longtime head of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Born in 1902 in what is now southern Ukraine, Schneerson (1902–1994) was ordained as a rabbi in 1924 and traveled across Europe to pursue a secular education before settling in New York City. In 1950, Schneerson succeeded his father-in-law as head of the Chabad movement, transforming the small Hasidic group into a “worldwide empire” by directing outreach efforts toward less observant Jews; opening Hasidic girls’ schools to stem the tide of women leaving Orthodox Judaism; and deploying Hasidic “emissaries” to encourage Jews to perform ritual commandments, like lighting Sabbath candles, in public. Glinter gives equal due to the hypocrisies that crowd the rabbi’s legacy, including his support for “illberal dictators” such as Augusto Pinochet, who might indirectly aid his outreach mission, exemplifying, according to the author, “a kind of theocratic opportunism rather than a support of the democratic values he claimed to celebrate.” Glinter also explores the divisive campaign to have Schneerson proclaimed as the Messiah that began in the 1980s and continues today. That effort was the extension of a decades-long trend of obscuring his reality as a person, argues Glinter—a reality that the author scrupulously captures, warts-and-all. It’s a valuable complement to Joseph Telushkin’s Rebbe. (Oct.)