288 Book Reviews Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman

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288 book reviews

Samuel C. Heilman and Menachem M. Friedman, The Rebbe: The Life and Afterlife of Menachem Mendel Schneerson, (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010), 343 pp.; ISBN: 978-0- 691-13888-6

The present book by Friedman (Department of Sociology & Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University), and Heilman (Department of Sociology at Queens College, New York) continues a fruitful coop- eration between the two scholars. This interest began in the 1990s and reached an early first product within the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Fundamentalism Project under M. Marty and R.S. Appledy, reflected in their edited volume Accounting for Fundamentalisms (Chicago: University Press, 1994). They continued research on Jewish Orthodoxy and Haredim currents, with a special focus on the Lubavitcher Hasidim, and in 2007 their wives urged them to put together a new book, which resulted in this spiritual and sociological biography of the Rebbe and exploration of the beliefs of his followers. In recent years, there has been an increasing interest in the Lubavitcher Community. Questions have been raised about their Messianic expectations accompanied by worldwide mission proj- ects. This concern attracted the interest of other Jewish denomina- tions as well as the scholarly world. The Rebbe focuses on the last leader of ChaBaD, Menachem Mendel Schneersohn who has been identified as the Messiah. So far, however, there has been little discussion about the circumstances bound up with the biography of the person Schneersohn (e.g. Avrum M. Ehrlich: Leadership in the HaBaD Movement. A Critical Evaluation of HaBaD Leadership, History, and Succession [Northvale, N.J.: J. Aronson, 2004]; Yitzhak Kraus, The Seventh: Messianism in the Last Generation of Chabad [Tel Aviv: Yediot Ahronot and Chemed Books, 2007; (Hebrew)]). The book by Heilman and Friedman seeks to examine the sequences of Messianic events by analyzing the background of the leader in a kind of “biography of circumstances.” It addresses the following questions: (1) how long will the religious group remain on its mission without arriving at redemption? (2) are followers satisfied with what seems to be an endless wait? and (3) what was the figure and person of the Rebbe, and how did he manage to spur such an emergence of Messianic activity?

This study is divided into eight chapters. Chapters 1 (“Farbrengen: The Gathering of the Emissaries”) and 8 (“On a Mission from the Rebbe in his Afterlife”) frame the central theme of the book, seek- ing to answer the above mentioned first two questions. They outline the central phenomenon now present in Crown Heights, concen- trating on the description of ChaBaD emissaries (shluchim) as the cornerstone of the worldwide mission system of the Lubavitchers. The bulk of the book (chapters 2–7, pp. 29–247) approaches the seventh leader of the ChaBaD Hasidim by detailed research into the ‘misty’ days before Schneersohn’s assumption of office in 1951 (pp. 65–150). The authors place emphasis on arranging his biography within the events of his time. Schneerson’s connection to the ChaBaD court seems to have been his “destiny.” The chaos of war, losing close relatives and his being childless are analyzed as the factors underlying Schneerson’s identification with religious virtues, and later chapters explore Schneersohn’s embedded position in the Lubavitch-community. The second part of the biography (pp. 151–246) concentrates on his Messianic expectations and the worldwide mission call which was started by Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s predecessor, Yosef Yitzchak, his father-in-law (who died in 1950). The missionary activities achieved public attention in the 1980s by using up-to-date technology for their distribution. The authors systematically retrace the background of the specific ChaBaD formations of Messianism. Looking at institutions such as emissaries or shlukhim, and the key messianic hope of ultimate redemption. The design of the research questionnaires was based on the central thesis that ChaBaD participates in the events and spirit around them. Phenomena such as counterculture, fundamen- talist traits, the rise of “New Age” spirituality (174) and gender (176) are discussed, and their influence on the Messianic expectations as well as on the modern secular society which ChaBaD has to deal with is described (in the book, the term “modernity” refers to public symbolic acts). One question that needs to be asked, however, is why the Messianic expectations succeeded in inspiring those we may think of as being “modern.” Friedman and Heilman explain the campaigns of ChaBaD in the context of the events around the group. Parallels are built between the various wars for the State of Israel and political world affairs which play a role in the Messianic interpretations of ChaBaD. Difficulties arise, however, when the