Shmarya Rosenberg - Biography

Biography

Rosenberg grew up in a Conservative Jewish family in Saint Paul, Minnesota, where his parents operated a beauty supply company. His grandfather's grandfather was the chief aide to the third Lubavitcher rebbe Menachem Mendel Schneersohn. According to legend, the aide had to flee the rebbe's Hasidic court and the town of Lyubavichi after he corrected a citation error in one of Schneersohn's responsa. Purportedly, Rosenberg's mother, Helen Mae Rosenberg née Gleckman, was the daughter of Leon Gleckman, a bootlegger known as the "Al Capone of St. Paul". In a post on his blog Rosenberg stated “My grandfather never stole a penny from a poor person or from an immigrant... never killed anyone or ordered anyone to be killed. He was never charged or even accused of anything like that...”

Rosenberg was active in Jewish student politics at the University of Minnesota and served several years as an executive of the North American World Union of Jewish Students. He first met a Chabad-Lubavitch emissary in the summer of 1983 when he was trying to garner support among local rabbis for Ethiopian Jewry. He became a baal teshuvah and joined the Chabad-Lubavitch movement as an ultra-orthodox Hassidic Jew dedicated to study, community and rigorous observance, abandoning his former ambitions, one of which was to become a songwriter. He also owned a kosher butcher shop in the Twin Cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis and studied to become a rabbi.

After joining the Chabad-Lubavitch movement, Rosenberg sent a letter to Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the Lubavitcher rebbe at the time, requesting Chabad aid in the effort to rescue the Jews of Ethiopia. He never received an answer from Schneerson. In 2004 he became aware of an unsigned draft of a letter written by Schneerson in 1984 which was originally addressed to Rosenberg. That letter was published in K’far Chabad magazine. That letter had never been sent to Rosenberg. Schneerson, in his response to the correspondence Rosenberg had sent him regarding the tragic plight of Ethiopian Jews, instead directed Rosenberg to focus his efforts on helping Jews in his own community. Outraged, Rosenberg posted his letter and Schneerson’s response along with additional supporting documents on the blog he created, FailedMessiah.com. FailedMessiah.com was widely read and resulted in his summary excommunication from his Lubavitch community. Presently he describes himself as a secular Jew, but avoids non-kosher food and observes Sabbath to some extent.

His income is derived from consulting, copywriting, FailedMessiah.com and it's attendant reader donations, merchandise e.g. T-shirt showing a bleeding cow with the caption, “I was slaughtered Glatt kosher and all I got was this horribly painful hook in my throat”, referring to the slaughtering practices of Agriprocessors, once the biggest kosher meat plant in the United States.