Chabad-Lubavitch Related Controversies - Menachem Mendel Schneerson - Other Haredi Critiques

Other Haredi Critiques

The claim has been made (based on a pseudonymous character called 'Saul') that Rabbi Yitzchok Hutner was opposed both to what he perceived as a "personality cult" built up around the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and to the public projection of both the Rebbe and the Lubavitch movement, by the movement, through public media—print and broadcast journalism, books, film, and the like. Significant evidence of Hutners deep respect for the Rebbe's scholarship exists in his published correspondence with the rebbe, and he occasionally sought his blessings. Hutner corresponded with the Rebbe over the course of several decades, often seeking his guidance and input on a wide variety of halachic, kabbalistic, and chassidic subjects and texts. While most of their correspondence centers on academic matters, Hutner also maintained regular contact with Schneerson via a number of Rabbis serving as messengers between the two. When a keynote speaker at the Agudat Israel convention in 1968 sharply criticized Chabad and their Rebbe (particularly the recently launched tefillin campaign), Hutner wrote a letter distancing himself from the convention, stating that he had neither been in attendance nor would he, and begging forgiveness for any pain his earlier letters (discussing halachic issues regarding the tefillin campaign) may have caused, stating that "my letter is absolutely personal...and should it have caused any pain, I hereby beg forgiveness from the bottom of my heart." He then signed his letter with the words "With a deep yearning to be blessed - Yitzchak ben Chana."

In an interview with Mishapacha Magazine, Yisroel Belsky accused Chabad of having "become a personal cult centered on the previous Lubavitcher Rebbe", and said, "there's no room in Yiddeshkeit for a personality cult in which an individual is deified and glorified. Whether he was great or wasn't is immaterial. There have been many great people in Judaism. The personality cult of glorifying an individual person, giving him unique titles, elevating the shape of the building he was active in, etc., has no place in Yiddeshkeit." Chabad Rabbi Elimelech Silberberg responded, in a letter to the magazine, "I can categorically state that none of the Chabad Yeshivas in any way, God forbid, 'deifies' the Rebbe. Rabbi Belsky's statement is totally libelous and falls in the category of falsehood and slander. The issue of the role of a tzaddik has always been a point of contention between Chasidim and non-chasidim. A perusal of the works of such Chasidic luminaries as the Meor Ainayim, the Noam Elimelech, and the Tiferes Shlomo, to name just a few, underscores the central role that a Rebbe occupies in the life of a Chasid. Ultimately we have come to respect these differences of opinions between the two communities. For Rabbi Belsky to reiterate this opposition to what he considers to be an improper Chasid-Rebbe relationship only fuels the fires of baseless hatred."