I am sure this new Joseph Telushkin book is a fun read but I don’t trust its scholarship.
“One of the greatest religious biographies ever written. Generations from now, Rebbe will be read by people of every faith.” (Dennis Prager, national talk show host and New York Times bestselling author of Still the Best Hope)
Dennis Prager was given the opportunity to have a private audience with the Rebbe in the 1970s but he skipped it. Dennis was a hyper-rationalist at the time and was not particularly interested in meeting a holy man.
Why has Chabad blossomed since the Rebbe’s death?
The Rebbe called America a “nation of kindness.”
On his radio show June 10, 2014, Dennis Prager said: “If you want to be inspired, there’s an inspiring biography of a rabbi just published. It is number one among Christian leadership books on Amazon. Who today doesn’t read about books about people of different faith?”
Well, followers of the Rebbe and Orthodox Jews in general rarely read biographies of people of different faiths. I doubt the Rebbe read biographies of people of different faiths.
Do you prefer the truth or do you prefer to feel good? In almost all circumstances that I can think of, I prefer to know the truth.
I notice the book has glowing reviews from “Ronn Torossian is CEO of 5WPR, a top 25 US PR Firm, Author of best-selling book “For Immediate Release” – and a proud Jewish admirer of Chabad and the Rebbe.”
The New York Times reported in 2008:
Last month, a New York public relations firm representing Agriprocessors, 5W Public Relations, posted fake blog comments under Rabbi Allen’s name on FailedMessiah.com, a Web site that is fiercely critical of the Rubashkins, and on the Web site of JTA, the Jewish news agency. Shmarya Rosenberg, who runs FailedMessiah.com, traced the fraudulent comments on his site to a 5W address. JTA reported that one false posting in Rabbi Allen’s name came from an address belonging to a 5W executive, Juda Engelmayer.
The postings seemed intended to discredit Rabbi Allen by making him appear to use crude, arrogant language. In a statement, 5W confirmed that the postings came from its offices but said that they had been made by an intern without approval.
To his credit, Rabbi Telushkin does not shy away from a range of opinions voiced by the Rebbe that sound dissonant and worse to our contemporary ears. Rabbi Schneerson’s literal interpretation of the Bible led him to reject Darwin and the theory of evolution. His similarly literal reading of the Talmud also led him to maintain that the sun revolves around the earth. Further troubling, especially given Rabbi Schneerson’s own erudition and education (not to mention the large number of Chabad houses on campuses across the country), was his general opposition to his followers’ attending college or receiving university degrees. The reason: exposure to and immersion in secular life during the impressionable years of adolescence and young adulthood could lure the observant away from traditional belief and practice.
Mark Oppenheimer writes for the Forward:
Neither “Rebbe,” by best-selling “Jewish Literacy” author Joseph Telushkin, nor “My Rebbe,” by the Talmud translator Adin Steinsaltz, is a traditional, chronological biography. Both authors divide their book into thematic chapters, approaching this mountain of a man first from one face, then from another. Both authors devote a chapter or a substantial section to the Rebbe’s famous “dollars,” the face-to-face meetings where he would dispense blessings to anyone who came, along with dollar bills intended for charity. Both authors discuss the Rebbe’s theological anti-Zionism, which he married to an intense love for the people who — disagreeing with him — had settled and lived in Israel. After considering the claims of those who believed the Rebbe to be the actual Messiah, both authors dismiss the notion, and exonerate the Rebbe from encouraging such speculation.
These are hagiographies. One can finish both Telushkin’s book, which is long, anecdote-rich and written in a comfy, American idiom, and Steinsaltz’s, which is shorter and stilted, without encountering a single flaw in the Rebbe. Steinsaltz is himself a Lubavitcher, while Telushkin does not identify as one. But it doesn’t take a Hindu to revere Gandhi.
“This is an admiring biography,” Telushkin writes, “but one that I hope has been written with open eyes.” I think that Telushkin did his best, but what can one say about a subject who, after accepting the job that he would hold for the last 40 years of his life, had no personal confidants except his wife (and she none besides him, at least none that have spoken up); never traveled outside his home state; and in millions of written and spoken words rarely spoke of himself or his own feelings? Although the Rebbe made his hawkish beliefs on Israeli defense policy known, he otherwise stayed out of politics, especially in the United States. He stayed in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, met with admirers, offered them blessings and cryptic bits of advice on personal matters that they brought to him, gave out dollars, and told his emissaries to go out and spread Judaism.
If the Rebbe had any personality outside his persona, either nobody saw it, or those who saw it don’t tell. Beholding the discretion of those around the Rebbe, one can only wonder that every pope should be so lucky.
So there’s really not much to say, if the goal is to bring us closer to the Rebbe. Telushkin, who seems to have read everything by or about every member of Chabad, and who has many personal friendships to draw on as well, offers a rounded portrait of life in the shadow, or the sunlight, of the Rebbe. We meet dozens of followers and hear their stories, get a feel for the texture of their devotion, for why they loved him.
The Rebbe insisted that girls as well as boys be featured on the cover of his Chabad youth magazine. The Rebbe hatched the idea of putting Hannukah menorahs on public lands, to announce a Jewish presence alongside the Christmas tree. And then there were the miracles attributed to the Rebbe, like the couples who conceived a child after asking, in desperation, for his blessing.
The Rebbe believed that every Jew, even one who had helped Stalin to murder other Jews, could be saved. “When you go back the next time,” the Rebbe said to a Jewish dignitary who was to have an audience with Lazar Kaganovich, “you should tell him he should still do teshuvah,” referring to repentance. “[H]e still has a chance.”
That belief that all Jews contain a spark of the divine undergirded his belief in kiruv, or outreach, at a time when most Orthodox Jews believed that less observant Jews were something like possible contaminants. Today, other Orthodox groups do outreach work, and even leaders of the Reform movement point, perhaps with a gulp, to the Chabad model.
Did we need 500 pages of this? Not when 300 would have done. But even at its present length, Telushkin’s book is a winning portrait — of the lover, not the beloved. If I had written this book, I would have been more scathing about many of the Rebbe’s teachings: how he discouraged his followers from going to secular university, for example, or his ruthless realpolitik with regard to the Palestinians. But seeing Telushkin’s ardent efforts to put the Rebbe in the best possible light, even when he has to overthrow his own better judgment, paradoxically makes me even more intrigued.
