Q&A: A Celebration for Someone Alive? For Someone Who Disappeared?
A Celebration for Someone Alive? For Someone Who Disappeared?
Question
I live in a very Torah-oriented area, and there is a man there who is defined as a Chabad emissary.
Not that he needs to persuade anyone to put on tefillin…
But he has a few activities during the year.
He hands out honey cakes 🍯 in the synagogue on the eve of Yom Kippur,
organizes some parade on Lag BaOmer,
and also a gathering attended mainly by children on 19 Kislev,
and he also holds a celebration on 3 Tammuz.
Why a celebration?
1
One of their rebbes was once again released from some prison somewhere.
2
It is the day of “sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon in the Valley of Aijalon.”
3
It is the day their rabbi disappeared from our sight, and therefore he holds a celebration.
I am asking:
1
Is there any date in the year on which one of their rebbes did not enter or leave some prison somewhere? Or at least wasn’t investigated or put on trial?
2
When someone disappears, you go search for him and call the police and volunteers to look for him; you don’t hold a celebration…
Perhaps he too understands that he simply died, full stop, but that is heresy, so he says “disappeared from our sight”…
?
Answer
🙂 Well, this is not a question but a protest. I can only join in.
The Chabad sect is the third sect closest to Judaism. Before it come the Haredim, disciples of Rabbi Shach (who defined Chabad as the sect closest to Judaism, assuming that he himself was Judaism), and Har HaMor.
Discussion on Answer
There are various criteria for sectarianism (some of them were brought in Column 19), and Chabad has many of them, although they are careful to hide some of them. I have no interest in getting into it right now. These are just arguments that never end.
Why does the Rabbi call Chabad a sect? After all, they are intellectually open and also learn from the outside world… so what makes them a sect?