Q&A: Is Chabad a Cult?
Is Chabad a Cult?
Question
Hello Honorable Rabbi,
I’ve seen a few times in the responsa that you write that Chabad seems to you to have characteristics of a cult. The fact that I’m inside Chabad and don’t feel that way at all obviously doesn’t mean very much, but I wanted to point out that in Chabad there is no leadership mechanism, certainly not an educational leadership structure. There isn’t some committee or general organization. Every yeshiva, for example, operates completely independently, and anyone can open a yeshiva or a community. So if there is admiration for the Rebbe, for example (which is perhaps what seems cult-like to you), it comes from a completely personal place. There are no educational mechanisms and no community mechanisms, and there isn’t even any organization with even a simple registry of community family names. Add to that the fact that there are many “types” of Chabadniks from all across the Jewish people, each of whom connected to Chabad teaching and to the Rebbe in his own way. So technically it seems to me that the main characteristic of a cult doesn’t exist there.
If, for example, you were to sit in your home and start learning the Rebbe’s teachings and on your own become an ardent Hasid (without even knowing a single Chabad Hasid, and certainly without belonging to any particular community) — would that count as being in a cult??
It seems to me that the most basic characteristic of a cult, or at least one of its basic characteristics, is that at the top there is some kind of communal organization with clear educational motifs imposed from above, and perhaps even mechanisms of leadership and control.
I would be happy to hear your answer, and thank you for everything you do for the Jewish people.
Answer
The definition of a cult is very vague, and therefore I was careful to speak about characteristics of a cult. Blind admiration bordering on paganism, a separatist bubble cut off from everything around it (literature, other views and approaches; education and kashrut and mikveh only of its own, etc.). Strange halakhic methods (the surrounding light in the sukkah). Internal discourse, faxes and blessings to the deceased Rebbe, messiah worship, denial of his death. Strange rituals such as recitations in prayer, etc. At most, you can say that this does not describe all Chabadniks, and certainly not that all the characteristics exist in everyone. But the cult-like characteristics are still very clear.
Discussion on Answer
I think there is a basic and important difference between them: in Chabad they probably really do believe in it, and the cult operates for positive goals: serving God and helping Jews and Judaism. The Hasidic groups you mentioned, my impression is that they are cults whose purpose is only control and power. I also get the impression that the difference between the heads of the cults is great. The Lubavitcher Rebbe was a very impressive personality — wise, educated, and an outstanding Torah scholar. The others, in my impression, not really.
And it also seems that he himself didn’t like the process his Hasidim were going through.
You once mentioned in one of the courses the son of Rabbi Shach, who said that when he came to the Chabad Rebbe and identified himself as Rabbi Shach’s son, he told him: Tell your father that it’s not me, it’s them (the Hasidim).
Rabbi Shach replied: Tell that to them — not to me.
A great story, by the way!
I’m not at all sure that he didn’t like it. Otherwise he really would have told them.
The “not really” that you wrote — in your reply to me — about the other heads of the cults, is the understatement of the millennium (not only the current one, but also the one that ended 25 years ago).
If you’re talking about cult-like characteristics, traits even more severe than these, like the customs of cults, already exist in all the major Hasidic groups, including the two Vizhnitzes, what’s called “Gur real estate,” and more. In recent years, God is present in those places only as an excuse, and the connection to Judaism has become more and more about folklore — not to mention the main folkloric feature, the clothing — unique only to that specific sect, and obligatory as though we were talking about Torah obligations carrying karet. If this trend continues, apparently only remnants of Jewish characteristics will remain in those sects.