Let me quote a bit (apparently it was hard for you to skip the beginning):
Torah and wisdom

From a theoretical standpoint it may be hard to explain how a person can be wise in the wisdom of Torah and at the same time a complete fool. And perhaps this reality even contradicts several “rules.” Nevertheless, many of us certainly know rabbis who do not excel in wisdom. No need to elaborate.

Another distinction among rabbis is according to each rabbi’s expertise in a specific field: one in monetary law, another in prohibitions, one in the laws of rabbinic restrictions, another in the laws of sacred scribal writing, and so on. And obviously an intelligent questioner will prefer to turn to a rabbi who is expert in that field, for even Jewish law is determined according to the rabbi’s type of expertise (see Likutei Sichot, vol. 10, p. 252).

And to whom shall we turn in matters of the public, and in the other matters of the “fifth section” of the Shulchan Arukh, which not every rabbi is capable of dealing with?

And the answer is simple: for that very purpose there were created those select individuals among the rabbis who were blessed also with worldly wisdom. For example, in the time of the Rebbe Rashab, there was the famous Hasid Rabbi Radatz Chen of Chernigov, renowned for his righteousness and genius. The Rebbe valued him enormously and even sent young men to be educated in his company. Yet when the Rebbe wanted to fulfill “salvation comes through many counselors,” he did not turn to Radatz but to the rabbis of our fellowship, Rabbi Madievsky and Rabbi Rafailovich—who excelled in practical wisdom more than in learning and Hasidism, and certainly did not reach even his ankles. And from his holy letters we learn that the Rebbe frequently consulted דווקא with Rabbi Shmuel Guran Aryeh—not at all in the category of rabbinate and learning, but he was wise and truly a close friend.

Or take the genius of Rogatchov, for example, the rabbi of the Hasidim of Dvinsk, who was unmatched in his generation in genius. The Hasidim of Dvinsk surely gloried in him over against Rabbi Meir Simcha HaKohen, the rabbi of the Mitnagdim. But when a Hasidic householder in Dvinsk needed advice in worldly matters, he had no doubt that he should ask Rabbi Meir Simcha. For every question has its proper address. And this despite the fact that there is no doubt that the Rogatchover genius could have found for every matter a parallel and solution from Torah.

And to assemblies dealing with communal affairs they invited Rabbi Meir Simcha and not the Rogatchover; and even if he was invited out of courtesy, he knew his place and did not participate in such gatherings. The same was true of the Chafetz Chaim: with all his genius and righteousness, he was not the central address for questions connected with the workings of the world; he was not active in communal assemblies, and only on rare occasions was he invited, out of respect, to adorn the dais. In contrast, Rabbi Chaim Brisker was also wise in worldly matters.

A High Priest and a Little Child

The high priest (guru, in the vernacular) of the “messianist” sect is the eminent Hasid Rabbi Yoel HaKohen, may he live long. The following lines will touch his personality and honor, but there is no intention here of engaging in slander for its own sake (and therefore I will not deal with investigating and surveying his conduct and his “obedience” to the Rebbe over the last forty years), but rather to examine whether it is fitting for the herd to follow him blindly to final descent into the abyss. And where there is a terrible desecration of God’s name (as was caused also through him), one does not defer to honor.

Let me preface by saying that I am dust beneath the soles of his feet in all that concerns his grasp of Hasidism, and I am too insignificant even to express an opinion on that subject. No one disputes that he was given exceptional understanding to divide every concept into tiny fragments and break it down into minute details, and that honey and milk are under his tongue in the way he presents his explanations so tastefully. With the power of his thumb he can turn any platter upside down with reversing arguments, back and forth.

Anyone who knows him up close knows that he is nothing but a little child (or a big one) in all his details, nuances, and concerns—for better and for worse. Innocent like a child, believing like a child, and far from authority like a child. But also lacking judgment and mature intellect like a child (as explained regarding selling one’s father’s property only from age twenty, and more), and from this come his reversals of opinion from day to day, as well as the extremism typical of a small child who does not grasp that there is room in one’s head even for two opposites (as this matter is explained at length in Hasidic literature), and therefore he is certain that anyone who does not think as he does is simply a heretic. His actions and reactions are generally influenced by caprices and moods—which is also among the characteristics of childish behavior.

In short: extra understanding like a woman, the power of speech and of intrigue like a woman, light-mindedness like a child and like a woman, faith like a child and like a woman (see Likutei Sichot vol. 31 p. 97)—and all of it in complete measure, for better and for worse alike.

But the sages are called “the eyes of the congregation” specifically by virtue of wisdom (Iggeret HaKodesh 14), and that is precisely what we do not find in him. Neither wisdom nor the power of sound judgment necessary for distinction and discernment.

His followers like to illustrate his abstraction and his power of deep analysis with the well-known story that he leaves his house with a trash bag in hand to throw it out on the way, and he walks five blocks to 770 and arrives there with the bag still in his hand… or that people meet him standing puzzled in the street, unable to remember where he was headed.

All this is charming and pleasant, and akin to the virtue of “the philosophers among the ancient nations” (as explained in Torah Or 19c). But which of us would take advice from Rabbi Yoel on financial matters, for example, or on purchasing an apartment, setting up a business, medical advice—or anything else in the world in which we live? It may be that with the power of his thumb and his arguments he can find some talk of the Rebbe or saying of the sages to fit every situation and every problem, but anyone with ordinary common sense knows that no sane person would rely on him and endanger even some of his money or health. So how is it possible to place confidence in and rely on his understanding when it comes to the worldwide enterprise of Chabad Hasidism, in matters touching both its very existence and its character?

The idlers of the study hall can be delightful types, God-fearing to the utmost, enormously learned and sharp, wise and discerning, and possessed of every good quality among the forty-eight ways by which Torah is acquired.

But all that is very well for everything connected with the four cubits of the study hall. The moment we are dealing with worldly matters, different qualities are required of them, and “idleness” is not one of them. And this outlook is not drawn from Enlightenment literature but—distinguishing between the two—from the Torah teaching of our Elder Rebbe. For thus we read in his letter (Igrot Kodesh p. 148) concerning the sending of money to the Land of Israel by a man “who is among the idle sitters of the study hall, who does not know how to take care on such a difficult journey, through different lands with changing customs, and this requires very, very great caution and immense cleverness,” and therefore “it is necessary to entrust it specifically to a reliable man from among worldly people, merchants who know how to keep excellent and extreme watch.”

And if you give an idler money to transport, he will learn from the travels of Benjamin of Tudela and Rabbi Petachia of Regensburg the route and manner of travel from Europe to the Land of Israel and the changing customs from country to country, etc., and he will hide his money pouch in the ground at nightfall. And when he rises in the morning and the money is gone, he will claim—with justice—that he acted according to the Talmudic law that money has no safeguarding except in the ground. And if you try to argue with him, you will be a heretic disputing an explicit Talmudic ruling, and the Torah is eternal, and this Torah shall not be exchanged, and so on.

And this letter of the Elder Rebbe returns us to that same rule that each person has his own domain: the idler should not express his opinion about the ways of the world, and the merchant (who is not a Torah scholar) should not meddle in Talmudic dialectics.

And I have found no definition more fitting for Rabbi Yoel than “an idler among the sitters of the study hall,” and this is a person’s praise—that he has not left the four cubits of 770 for decades, and he is like an eternal yeshiva student, but no more than that. Not a “Guide for the Perplexed” (as he was titled by the Kfar Chabad newspaper), not a leader, and not one from whom one gains counsel and wisdom.

Indeed, I hadn’t seen it. Powerful stuff.
I’ll just say that I once met Rabbi Yoel Kahan, when I hosted him at our yeshiva in Yeruham. The students embarrassed him with questions about messianism and about the Rebbe’s death, and he tried to dodge them (“the righteous, even in their death, are called alive”) without much success.

But you warmly adopted several of his explanations, and even worked them into your books…
Since I’ve apparently hit your taste, here’s the continuation:
“Mitnagdic piety”

One of the ways of Hasidism is not to deviate from the path of Jewish law right or left, to be careful to the utmost limit even with a slight detail of rabbinic law, to subordinate one’s intellect to the law and to God’s will, which does not change—in short: one has to be pious. On the other hand, everyone knows that the Hasidim did not think much of “piousness,” and “a pious Mitnaged” was a term of disparagement. What is the meaning of this?

Clearly, the difference between Hasidic piety and Mitnagdic piety is expressed in the flexibility and shrewdness of the Hasid, as opposed to the Mitnaged who behaves with square dullness and goes with his head into the wall—feeling that he is doing exactly what he was commanded to do, without Hasidic cleverness.

Therefore it would never occur to the Mitnaged to delay the time of prayer any more than it would occur to him to eat matzah on Sukkot. He will get up and immediately stand to pray upon rising from sleep, God forbid he should study before prayer so that it be adjacent to his bed, and he will not forgo communal prayer even if to do so he must give up Ezra’s immersion. And if he is among those meticulous ones who rise early for sunrise prayer, then his prayer will be in the utmost halakhic perfection when he stands for the Amidah with a watch in hand to determine exactly when to begin.

Then the Hasidim come and turn the platter upside down: they study and immerse before prayer—even if because of that they are later forced to pray alone; they eat before prayer even if the light “fast” would not harm their health; and in the end they even delay their prayer past the time set by the sages and the Shulchan Arukh and by the will and wisdom of the Holy One, blessed be He, which do not change!

And why all this? In order to fulfill the will of the Holy One, blessed be He! True, every step of the Mitnaged is counted and measured and directed according to the words of the Talmud and the halakhic decisors and the very words of the Creator Himself, may He be blessed; but the Hasidim aspire to fulfill the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, and not His words. In legal language: fulfilling the spirit of the law is preferable to fulfilling its letter. The Hasidim are convinced that God’s inner will is that prayer should be in the manner of “and I poured out my soul” and the like, and to get there they are prepared even to violate explicit laws—to study, to extend the preparations, to eat—so long as it be a true prayer, even if not on time and even if the letter of the law prefers mechanical and precise prayer over prayer that does not meet the clear criteria of Jewish law.

This is one example among many in which the Hasid judges with his intellect that he must deviate from established Jewish law in order to fulfill the will of his Creator. That same Hasid will also give more charity than is permitted according to the letter of the law; he will be willing to violate a rabbinic Sabbath restriction in order to gain a commandment (as was known of Rabbi Zev Vilenkis—one of the Elder Rebbe’s Hasidim—who traveled by horse and wagon after the sanctification of the first night of Rosh Hashanah in order to reach an inhabited place and hear the sound of the shofar); and on the other hand he may neglect Torah study and a commandment so that he not be seen engaged in them and thereby honored (or because he wants people to disparage him), and he may even violate a Torah prohibition for the sake of God’s honor—like all those transgressions for their own sake mentioned by the sages, and like that one from among our fellowship who on the Sabbath picked up from the ground a page of a prayer book and carried it many cubits in a public domain on a Torah level, so that God’s holy name should not lie in disgrace.

Intellect—a graven image in the Sanctuary?!

In all the above we have seen that the Hasid places intellectual considerations as an equal counterweight to halakhic considerations: God’s will is spelled out in His Torah and its laws in such-and-such a way, and then the Hasid comes and claims that in his opinion God’s will is exactly the opposite… and seemingly there is no greater “graven image in the Sanctuary” than this!

The Mitnaged has no problems of this sort, nor does one who studies Hasidism not in order to practice it. But one who was educated to weigh all his deeds and actions so that they be directed toward God’s will has certainly learned from personal experience that these contradictions and perplexities stand at every step and turn of his path.

And these things are explicit in the discourses of our Elder Rebbe (Inyanim, pp. 397–402), from which we see that the Hasid constantly walks on a thin rope: on his right the abyss of foolishness, and on his left the abyss of wickedness. And so too in our case: one can act according to the rules of Jewish law without deviating right or left—and then perhaps be a fool; and if you deviate from them—you may be wicked.

A person may argue—on the basis of Torah!—better that I be called a fool all my days than that I be wicked before Heaven even for one hour; but we see that the danger of foolishness is equal to the danger of wickedness!

And so the eminent Hasid Rabbi Shmuel Levitin used to say in the name of the Elder Rebbe that foolishness is a Torah prohibition; and what practical difference does that make, Rabbi Shmuel of Dili added? That in a case of doubt one must be stringent and distance oneself from foolishness just as in all Torah-level doubts.

We can learn from a fine rule drilled into drivers on the roads: when driving, one must be “smart,” not “right.” You may be right and end, God forbid, in disaster; if you want to stay alive, be smart!

And there is an actual story: the holy Rabbi Hillel of Paritch once gathered with Hasidim for a farbrengen, and as usual those present collected money among themselves to buy drink. When the collection was finished, one of the Hasidim said that it would be better to give this money to charity, and Rabbi Hillel said: Right, let them give it to charity. Afterward they again collected money for drink, and again that same Hasid claimed that it would be preferable to give this money to charity, and this time too Rabbi Hillel agreed that he was right. But before they began collecting a third time for drink, Rabbi Hillel said to them: throw this fool out…

So we see that one can be right and foolish in the same breath.

The wise are the eyes of the congregation

Again we return to what we said above: guidance for the many and leadership of the public must be entrusted to those whose eye of wisdom is open, not to a sharp he-goat whose eyes of wisdom are blind.

What help are the quotations and midrashim when these sharp people twist them for their needs and wave them like the cloth-signals of Alexandria, to which everyone is supposed to answer “amen”? Are we lacking in midrashim? Is there any midrash for which there are not dozens of midrashim saying the complete opposite? Are there no midrashim and world-events proving that the beginning of redemption came with the fall of the Nazis and the establishment of the State of Israel? Back then too the messianists could have proved their opinion by the method of “one plus one equals two,” as is customary today!

We have already learned from our Rebbe’s introduction to the Tanya that the answers to all questions are indeed found in Torah, but one whose mind is confused and whose eyes are weary and blind will not be able to find the truth in Torah; he sees and does not know what he sees. Therefore what is needed is specifically a wise man who can determine what was said to an individual and what to the public (even though Torah usually speaks in terms of the majority and a person should not exclude himself from the general rule), what is primary and what secondary (even though one should not sit weighing the portions of Torah, and the verse “and Timna was a concubine” is no less than the verse “Hear O Israel”), and what is temporary and what for all generations (even though Torah is eternal).

And for that it is not enough that one knows how to find everything in Torah; one must also be wise in worldly matters, as follows.

Torah and the world

Everyone knows that Torah is eternal, in every place and at every time. And yet we find that the reality of the world also constitutes a substantive consideration that must be taken into account.

The Torah determines that sailors are mostly pious (Kiddushin 82a, in the Mishnah), and the matter has good reason, as Rashi explains there: because they go out to places of danger and are always in trembling, etc. And the Torah is eternal. Yet we find in the holy letters of the Rebbe that a questioner asked him about enlistment in the navy, and the Rebbe answered that we see that the moral state of seafarers is at the very lowest level, more than all the other soldiers.

And the claimant will argue that this is, God forbid, an error against an explicit Mishnah, and what do we care what our fleshly eyes see? The Torah is eternal and stronger than the world. To him you too should say: you are right, but you are not wise!

The Torah promises unconditionally, “And I will command My blessing for you in the sixth year,” etc.; and therefore the observers of the Sabbatical year, those “mighty in strength who do His word,” should not take into account the concern “what shall we eat?” Yet we find the Rebbe Rashab participating in a fundraising campaign on behalf of Sabbatical-year observers (Igrot Kodesh p. 542).

And the claimant will argue from explicit verses: why donate money to someone who gathered a double crop in the sixth year? And the Torah is eternal, etc. To him too you should say: you are right, but you are not wise!

Likewise in the education of girls: one can go with one’s head into the wall and prevent girls from studying in an educational framework at all, and from Torah study in particular, as our righteous foremothers practiced for thousands of years. But the wise, the eyes of the congregation, looked not only at Torah but also at the world, and understood that if we want our daughters’ actions to reach the level of our foremothers’ actions, we must change the old educational patterns sanctified through generations and adapt them to the needs of the generation and the world.

And even in matters of Hasidic piety we find an expression of the Rebbe, when a certain Rebbe told him that according to the custom of his fathers they do not study Hasidism regularly, in line with the words of the Beit Aharon that preparation for prayer is through studying a page of Talmud and the Rosh, etc., and the Rebbe answered him that the pressure of the times and the change in illnesses (that is, the reality of the world) compels changing the old remedies, etc. (BeTzel HaChokhmah p. 23).

And see in the talk of Sabbath Parashat Bereshit 5728 concerning what is written in books of Hasidism about tefillin and immersion in a mikveh without proper intention. If we were to follow those books in practical law as they explicitly state, we would be sinning against the truth. And the discourse requires exposition.

So we have before us actual practice by our holy rebbes confirming that the world has a reality, and one who ignores it and acts only according to the books is both a fool and a wicked person.

And one who insists on clinging to his Hasidism and claiming that he whistles at the world and only the holy books are his guides—let us believe him only if, for example, he never asks doctors for advice and suffices himself with “rabbinic rulings” in which the rabbis will rule health for him and his household, as is written in the Jerusalem Talmud on the verse “God fulfills on my behalf,” that the ruling of the rabbis is the master over the world.

The upshot of what has been said here is that even explicit proofs from the Written Torah, the Oral Torah, and books of Hasidism do not have the power to determine the order of the world if they are not heard from the mouth of a wise man who knows the world and grapples with its reality. This is like what is explained in Hasidic literature about the necessity of contemplation also in the lower-level unity, for if one holds only to the pure truth of the higher-level unity—that there is no reality besides God, etc.—then when he opens his eyes after prayer and sees a “world,” he will fall from a great height to a deep pit. But if he also contemplates the lower-level unity, a contemplation that affirms the reality of the world, only that it must be nullified to divinity, then he can go securely on his way in the darkness of the world and illuminate it with the light of Torah.

Hasidism and the world

In Chabad’s world there now resound perplexities and doubts: an apparently theoretical question about the distinction between authentic Hasidism and counterfeit Hasidism, and a practical question about how the gap and confrontation that has arisen between Hasidism and the world can be bridged.

As for methods of operating in relation to the world, it is obvious that these matters need to be discussed by people whose expertise and occupation over the years has been faithful service to communal needs. They are the ones who bear responsibility, and they are the ones who need to steer the activity.

Someone whose only strength is in his mouth, in his sermons and his midrashim, should honorably sit in the study hall and not voice opinions on matters that have implications for communal affairs and for the world. And empty and reckless people whose method is “our lips are with us; who is lord over us?”—they are not the ones to build the house of God, and they should not interfere in matters that bear fateful responsibility for Chabad Hasidism and for the souls of the Hasidim today and for generations.

Hasidism and responsibility

In worldly matters we see that it is easy for a person to be an idealist so long as no responsibility rests on his shoulders. In the world of speech it is easy and pleasant to be “a man of the whole Land of Israel,” just as others enjoy being “beautiful souls” seeking peace. But when the talkers—from the right and from the left—arrive in government, they immediately straighten out according to the pressure of reality, for in the world of action reality is stronger than speech.

And so too in the world of Torah: it is easy to sit in a kollel and be stringent in observing the Sabbatical year—a stringency expressed in being careful to buy food products from a certain certification. But when that same person serves as rabbi in an agricultural moshav, and his people ask him, “What shall we eat in the seventh year?”—he will not be able to answer them with the Torah’s words, “And I will command My blessing.” The farmer cannot support his household with verses, and the rabbi who bears responsibility will have to find him advice suited to the practical world.

And so too in the world of Hasidism. In our day, the measure of a person’s Hasidism is judged not by his essence and not even by his deeds, but solely by the height and intensity of his declarations and screams (for example, one who claims that the Rebbe is on the level of Atik thereby proves he is more of a Hasid than one who studies in Hasidic literature that the Rebbe is “only” on the level of Arikh, and so on), and the farther the declaration departs from reason, the more “Hasidic” its flavor.

And therefore we have reached a situation in which anyone who wants to be one of the “Hasidic” crowd must declare that the Rebbe, may he live long, has absolutely no connection whatsoever to illness, God forbid; that one must not make a prayer for healing on his behalf and include him among the rest of your people Israel who need a complete recovery; and that the entire team of doctors surrounding the Rebbe is nothing but the product of the scheming of members of the secretariat, and so forth. Thus they go on drifting into words of foolishness that appear as piety; and, as said, “our lips are with us; who is lord over us?”

And so long as these foolish Hasidim remain with their nonsense within the walls of the study hall, fine—after all, it is damage that is not evident. But any perceptive person can easily understand where we would have ended up had they been given access and the right to interfere in the management of the Rebbe’s medical treatment. The heads of the “messianists” would easily have found the talks and midrashim suited to the situation (for there is no thing that has no place in Torah), would have dressed the Rebbe in royal garments and a royal turban (planned by the “Crown Committee”), and would thus have led him through the city streets to the delight of their hearts and the satisfaction of the members of the “worldwide combined staffs for bringing the messiah,” happy that they had merited media coverage the like of which even Rabbi Shach did not have in Yad Eliyahu.

And this is only one example of what can happen when one does not know how to place a boundary between the world of homiletics and the world of action, and when one places the steering wheel of leadership in the hands of study-hall idlers—even though these very idlers, with Rabbi Yoel at their head, know perfectly well that even the plain meaning of Scripture in God’s Torah does not obligate the world of Jewish law and action, all the more so the fine points of midrashim and the twisting of the plain meaning of the talks.

And Hasidic history provided us with the figure of the eminent Hasid Rabbi Chaim Avraham Bichovsky, a Torah scholar with enormous knowledge in the expanses of the revealed and hidden Torah, in homiletics and Hasidism—as his printed writings and those still in manuscript testify. This Rabbi Chaim Avraham sat all his life in the tent of Torah, supported at the table of his father-in-law and brothers-in-law. Thus he sat and studied all the books of the Written and Oral Torah, recording his novellae and notes. And when he came to the Midrash on Song of Songs and learned there about the buildings they used to build in Rome that fell several times until they mixed into them water from the Euphrates River—Rabbi Chaim Avraham recorded for practical law: “Therefore, one who builds in the Land of Israel must mix in water from the Euphrates River” (Writings of Rabbi Chaim Avraham Bichovsky, p. 159). And when matters reached the practical level, and an association arose that wanted to go up to the Land of Israel and settle there, Rabbi Chaim Avraham wrote in the first clause of the association’s “regulations”: “To take water from the Euphrates River for the buildings” (ibid., p. 165). For the Torah is a Torah of life, and the words of the sages of course endure forever at all times and in all places.

And when Rabbi Chaim Avraham arrived in Jerusalem, may it be rebuilt and established, at the end of his days, apparently only then did he realize that it is not so simple to bring by camel water from the Euphrates River over a distance of about a thousand kilometers, and perhaps he also noticed that the houses of Jerusalem stand “miraculously” even when they used for their building only water from the Shiloah stream, or perhaps even ordinary cistern water and rainwater.

In my humble opinion, these facts themselves testify that Rabbi Chaim Avraham was not called “wise”—even though he drove his stakes deep into Torah. And we learned this also from the exchange between him and the Rebbe Rashab of blessed memory during the well-known dispute, when the Rebbe wished him that he should become wiser, and he in turn wished the Rebbe that he should become more pious (see Shemuot VeSippurim of Rabbi Raphael HaKohen, vol. 1), which apparently proves that he justified his method on the basis of revealed Torah or Hasidic literature, and therefore spoke ill of the Rebbe on the matter of piety. Whereas the Rebbe, for his part, regarded him as lacking wisdom. Enough said.

In any case, we have seen from Rabbi Chaim Avraham’s writings that one can apparently be right and at the same time “not wise.”

Not several—just one. So what? Accept the truth from whoever says it.