The Neocon,The Messiah, and Cory Booker
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THE NEOCON, THE MESSIAH, AN D CORY BOOKER NSFW6_B-Side_v3ge.indd 3 8/29/13 9:07 AM “ The difference between a Jewish and a non-Jewish person stems from the common expression: ‘Let us differentiate’ …between totally different species.” —The Chabad-Lubavitcher Rebbe BY YASHA in its ranks. In the early 1990s, my grandparents, and nurture them Chabad’s passive-aggressive racism in a way that allowed those seeds to LEVINE helped trigger a three-day race riot in #ourish and blossom into the kind of Brooklyn. Earlier this year, a prominent work to which I have dedicated my life. Cory Booker, the Democratic Chabad rabbi mocked victims of “Right now, I am on the streets of candidate for New Jersey Senator, childhood sexual abuse who went Newark, battling what I think is one has been endorsed by the New York public, comparing their sexual abuse to of the most important battles in the Times as the next progressive hope…a “diarrhea” which is “embarrassing but city, in this nation, to try to make the younger, more populist version of Barack it’s nobody’s business.” spirit of God alive and well. As one Obama, a guy who’s not afraid to get Booker’s relationship with the sect of my rabbi friends told me—to try to down and dirty. !e Times’ op-ed goes back to the early ’90s, when he truly bring about, through e$ort and wizards described Booker as a “deeply became an active member of Chabad sweat, or whatever necessary—the unconventional politician,” known for out"ts at Oxford and Yale. !e Messianic Era.” “once rushing into a burning house connections he forged through Chabad Yes, you read that right. Cory before the "re department arrived— have provided him with a wealthy and Booker, progressive star and likely saving a woman and traumatizing his powerful right-wing donor network future Senator of New Jersey, is security detail,” and they predicted that that helped seed his political career. But “humbled” and “empowered” by he “will be able to use his political star the relationship was more than a simple Chabad, and helping “make the spirit status to "ght for the neglected, the political alliance: Booker became of God alive and well … to truly bring powerless, people who are working and mesmerized with Chabad’s teachings about … the Messianic Era.” people who need to work in New Jersey and began studying with Chabad What the hell is going on? Why is and nationally.” rabbis. He now reads Hebrew, recites Booker throwing in with a far-right Unconventional indeed. But there’s portions of the Torah from memory, apocalyptic Jewish cult? And what does one unconventional side to Booker’s helps Chabad fundraise and—most it say about his politics? To understand progressivism that has received much disturbingly—genuinely shares the why Booker’s relationship with Chabad less recognition. His political career sect’s messianic worldview. As Booker is so disturbing, you "rst have to was launched with the help of the told a room full of wealthy Chabadnik understand what Chabad is all about. Chabad-Lubavitchers, a rabidly right- funders in Morristown, New Jersey, wing Hasidic cult that considers its back in 2000, when he was a just a !e Chabad-Lubavitcher is a dead Rebbe a messiah and that pushes lowly Newark council member: Hasidic Orthodox sect that originated a regressive right-wing worldview “…the reason why I say that I am in the late-18th century in a village that would horrify Booker’s prog humbled to stand before you is that I on what is now the border between supporters: deep- rooted racism, violent am truly empowered by the Lubavitch Russia and Belarus. One of many Islamophobia, medieval positions movement, and speci"cally by a competing Hasidic right-wing biblical on everything from abortion to number of Lubavitcher rabbis I have nonconformist sects, it di$erentiated homosexuality and women’s rights, and come to know over the last few years. itself by stressing the study of mystical a nasty tendency to normalize sexual !ey helped me take seeds that were Jewish texts. !e sect expanded, abuse and protect serial sexual predators planted by my elders, my parents and battled other Jewish sects, opposed “ …this is what I believe the Rebbe had in mind. That you have to, in every single way, reach out and love the world, to be a light of goodness and love and a light of God’s light, because this country of ours needs it, because this world of ours needs it.” —Cory Booker 4 NSFW6_B-Side_v3ge.indd 4 8/29/13 9:07 AM Napoleon, sucked up to the Czar, Judaism would scare away most secular to be associated more and more with produced various religious texts and Jews, these outreach e$orts presented evangelical Christians, right-wingers, commentaries, and generally did a softer, more tolerant and mainstream Zionists and neocons. what all Hasidic sects did at the time. version of the faith. Chabad’s By the ’90s, just about every !ings started to go bad in the 20th emissaries/missionaries became prominent Chabad rabbi believed that century. Chabad nearly went extinct, amazingly good at putting a modern, the Rebbe was the messiah. Menachem "rst losing power to modernism and inclusive face on Chabad, and began Friedman, a Chabad scholar and secularization, then getting booted out to aggressively steal marketshare from professor at Bar-Ilan University, wrote of the Soviet Union and "nally being Reform and Conservative Judaism. in 1993, “Today, virtually all Chabad decimated by the Nazis in WWII. Professor Marvin Schick, an expert on hasidim recognize the Rebbe as the Joseph Isaac Schneersohn—then-head Jewish education, described Chabad as messiah and no longer hesitate to of Chabad and the great-great-great- the “Walmart of Jewish life, a mega- express their views in public.” It was a great-grandson of the guy who started phenomenon that keeps growing at a view that took Chabad out of the orbit the whole thing—escaped to Crown remarkable rate by entering new and of traditional Orthodox Judaism and Heights in Brooklyn, where he began underserved areas, and by exploiting made it a heretical sect—sort of like preaching that the end times were near. the vulnerability of existing service Jews for Jesus. Joseph Isaac’s son-in-law Menachem providers. Growth provides the impetus But then, in 1994, the Rebbe died. Mendel Schneerson—MMS, for and resources for additional growth.” Apocalypse did not come, and most short—took over the family racket and But as it strengthened its prominent Chabadnik rabbis began became “the Rebbe.” Rebbe took this mainstream credentials with the Jewish to publicly deny they ever believed the messianism to a whole new level in that public, internally Chabadniks were Rebbe was the messiah. But after his he saw himself as a messiah. !e world hyper-radicalizing and becoming more death, Chabad’s messianic outreach and was about to end, so it was imperative and more messianic. conversion activities only accelerated. to prepare, which meant bringing !e Rebbe saw the collapse of the Over the next two decades, the secular Jews from America and around Soviet Union as a sign that apocalypse number of missionary Chabad families the world into the Chabad fold. !e was at hand, that the old enemy of quadrupled. Something like 4,000 of group began cobbling together a wide Chabad had "nally been destroyed. them are now spread out in 1,000 cities network of outreach centers, installing It also meant that millions of secular around the world. Chabad rabbis near college campuses Russian Jews were now available and Chabad increased its presence most and in remote communities, and ripe for conversion. For weird reasons, notably in the former Soviet Union. making rabbis accessible and available Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait and the I "rst learned about Chabad not for funerals, weddings and other Jewish Gulf War were also seen as a sure long after my family immigrated to rituals. Because Chabad’s regressive sign of the end days. Chabad began San Francisco from the Soviet Union 5 NSFW6_B-Side_v3ge.indd 5 8/29/13 9:07 AM in 1990. Like most secular Bay Area favorite oligarch-turned-political- with blood on their hands. He was Jews, all I ever really knew about the prisoner Mikhail Khordorkovsky. targeting Jewish community leaders! Chabad-Lubavitchers was surface stu$: Back in the 1990s, in the Yeltsin He was coming after the Jews! they lit a huge menorah every year era, a group of Jewish oligarchs led by !at was how the Western press in Union Square, prowled the streets Soviet-theater-director-turned-post- played Putin’s "ght with the oligarchs, during Jewish holidays in out"tted Soviet-media-baron Vladimir Gusinsky beginning with his arrest of Gusinsky RVs—“mitzvah tanks”—blasting set up an umbrella organization to in 2000. “Gusinsky arrest raises fears Jewish techno music, and ran Shabbat represent Russian Jews. Named the for Russia’s Jews,” blared a Telegraph dinners for UC Berkeley students, Russian Jewish Congress, it was created headline in 2000. where I was told they pour plenty of for one major purpose: to give Gusinsky “!e harassment of Vladimir wine and get everyone drunk. Oh and his fellow oligarchs a much-needed Gusinsky, the Jewish media magnate and a Chabad rabbi in San Francisco cloak of respectability. And it worked. charged with embezzlement, is being managed to con a couple of my Soviet linked to attempts by the Russian émigré buddies in San Francisco into government to exacerbate a split among getting circumcised when they were the country’s Jews and curb their already in their late teens.