In his second lecture on R. Shlomo Yosef Zevin for Torah in Motion, historian Marc B. Shapiro says: You cannot be a Lubavitcher and be a Zionist. Lubavitch was always opposed to Zionism. Practically, you can support the state.
When you read the correspondence between R. Zevin and R. Menachem Schneerson, it reads like correspondence between equals. R. Schneerson never pulls rank.
There was a whole era before WWII of Hasidim who were beardless. Even though they went to a rebbe, they still sent their kids to university. They still were Zionists.
Today it is rare to have a beardless Hasid or a Hasid who doesn’t hold by everything his rebbe says.
