The New Chabad Militancy

Whereas traditional Chabad had avoided much of the fundamentalist militancy of other groups, recent outbreaks of violent righteous indignation in Chabad-ianity are disturbing. Official Chabad quickly tries to disassociate itself from these incidents as the work of unstable individuals. But one cannot ignore the increasing number of these "accidents" and the complete inability of any authority to stop them or even denounce them unequivocally.

Sadly, this trend seems to have begun (in America anyway) with the vicious attack on Chana Shneerson Gurary, 20 years ago. The person who ran upstairs and committed the attack was declared (by the Chabad Psychiatry Association?) to be unstable and the incident was quickly sanitized, spun and the perp was whisked out of the country. The crime of the victim: She sided with her son and against the Rebbe in a family dispute over her father's book collection.

Lately, at the annual convention of shluchim, a band of one or two dozen "unstable" zealots threw benches at the participants. The victims' crime: They do not openly believe or promote Chabadianity.

Just this week, an "unstable bachur" ran an elderly magid shiur out of the room, to the amusement of his fellow "unstable" students. In fact, there does not seem to be anyone stable in the room.

Today, 770 has become a divided house. Downstairs, is the nut house, a ward for yellow fever, enforced by a small army of the unstable, and unchecked. Upstairs the yeshiva continues to function like a rudderless ship. Monuments, museums, and plaques adorn the area around the HQ of the once vibrant movement. The hopeful look to history to provide comfort where the present cannot. But one thing is certain, the instability ruse is grwoing mighty thin.