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PDF FormatThe same passage from the Mishneh Torah also serves as the source of Chabad’s famous “Mitzvah Campaigns,” in which Lubavitchers are sent to cities around the world with the aim of convincing as many Jews as possible to perform various rituals and commandments, or mitzvot. During the early decades of his leadership, the Rebbe focused on promoting the mitzvot associated with Jewish holidays: Lubavitcher missionaries conduct mass Passover seders—mostly for Israeli tourists—in far-flung places like Thailand and Nepal, and on Sukkot, the Rebbe would send his followers out with instructions to encourage Jews to engage in the ritual of netilat lulav (“shaking the palm branch”). Then, in the late 1960s, he decided that his efforts had not accomplished enough. He decreed that Chabad should begin promoting the observance of the daily commandments as well, and initiate various educational projects. Soon, his emissaries had set up camp in public spaces, inviting Jewish passersby to don tefillin, to light candles on the Sabbath, and to study Torah.46 This approach was unique, to say the least, among other Orthodox Jewish sects, and not surprisingly it was harshly denounced by them.47 Nonetheless, these campaigns must be credited with ushering in a wave of chazara bitshuva (“returning” to the religious lifestyle) among secular Jews—which, in turn, swelled the ranks of Chabad itself.48 Undoubtedly, the Rebbe’s motives in launching such a grand venture were pure. Nevertheless, these efforts were clearly accompanied by the willingness—and the desire—to act as a messiah would.
Maimonides’s messianic criteria, however, also required the Rebbe to fight the “wars of the Lord.” Traditional Judaism generally concurs that Maimonides assumed the messiah would be a political sovereign, and was thus referring to “wars” in the literal sense of the word. Yet Chabad reinterpreted this concept, claiming it was fulfilled by the Rebbe’s missionary activities. It is clear, then, why the Rebbe took care to use explicitly military terminology to describe Chabad’s massive projects: His emissaries were sent on “campaigns,” for example, and their vehicles were called “mitzvah tanks.” This rhetoric was most pronounced when the activities involved children. For instance, the Rebbe established a youth movement in 1980 called Tzivos Hashem, “The Armies of God,” in which youth were taught to act as disciplined soldiers “armed” with the mitzvot.49 His followers believed that the purpose of this “mighty army” of pre-adolescents was to defeat “the yetzer hara [the evil inclination] and to eradicate it entirely from this world. This army was to subdue entirely the devil that stalls the coming of the messiah and the redemption of Israel.”50 At movement gatherings, Lubavitcher children chanted, “Who are we? The armies of God! / What is our goal? To fight! / Who? What? The yetzer hara! / What will we draw near? The redemption!”
The Rebbe’s use of military metaphor helped to consolidate his followers’ belief that he was at the front lines of the “wars of the Lord,” thus fulfilling one of Maimonides’s most important messianic requirements.51 Yet the Mishneh Torah insisted not merely that the messiah would wage war, but also that he would win: To fulfill his divine destiny, Maimonides states, the savior must “subdue” the surrounding nations. This demand was the impetus for yet another, even more grandiose endeavor: “The Seven Noahide Laws Campaign,” launched in 1983.52
The goal of this effort was to encourage non-Jews to follow the Seven Noahide Laws described in the book of Genesis, forbidding idolatry, blasphemy, incest, adultery, theft, murder, and the eating of meat taken from a living animal; these laws also require the establishment of a just legal system.53 In the past, the Rebbe explained, the Jews were unable to urge their neighbors to follow the Noahide Laws for fear of reprisal. Now, however, such persuasion not only was possible, but might actually elevate the world’s opinion of the Jewish people.54 Indeed, the Rebbe viewed the fact that Jewish missionary work was no longer dangerous as a messianic sign. He believed that non-Jews’ observance of the Noahide Laws would affirm their recognition of God’s kingship, just as it would attest to the divine mission of God’s messenger, the messiah. Such a feat would thus constitute a “complete victory” over these nations, hastening, if not actually bringing about, the redemption.55
Perhaps Chabad’s greatest accomplishment in this context was the enactment, in 1978, of “Education and Sharing Day” by the United States Congress in honor of the Rebbe’s birthday. This truly remarkable achievement demonstrated the full extent of the Rebbe’s influence. What’s more, the bill cited the Seven Noahide Laws as a model for the ethical principles of civilized society. Unsurprisingly, the Lubavitchers interpreted this gesture as the realization of Maimonides’s requirement that the messiah “prepare the whole world to serve the Lord with one accord.”56
As further proof of their leader’s global influence, Lubavitchers also gave the Rebbe—who had been particularly active in the public struggle on behalf of Soviet Jewry—credit for the collapse of the ussr and the subsequent waves of mass Jewish emigration. They saw this turn of events as the fulfillment of Maimonides’s stipulation that the messiah must gather “the dispersed of Israel”—although, it should be noted, the Rebbe did not encourage the newly freed Jews to make aliya to Israel. Rather, he demanded only their release from the vise of atheistic communism, which had forced them either to abandon their Jewish identity or to conceal it. The Rebbe even criticized the Israeli government for portraying the struggle for Soviet Jewry as a Zionist issue, thus (he argued) delaying their release. By contrast, he had no problem with the Soviet Jews’ emigration to America, often referring to the United States as a “benevolent kingship.”57
Maimonides’s claim that the messiah must rebuild the “sanctuary on its site” would seem to be an insurmountable obstacle for those determined to believe in the Rebbe’s messianic status. The reason is obvious: He did not rebuild the Temple. Yet Chabad once again brought its creative interpretive powers to bear on the Mishneh Torah, the results of which were published in a 1991 pamphlet titled “The Lesser Sanctuary Is the House of Our Rabbi in Babylon.”58 Here the Rebbe was quoted as saying that ever since the shechina removed itself from the Jewish people, it has resided in the home of each generation’s leader, which constitutes the “primary lesser sanctuary that God provides for Israel during the exile in place of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”59 In other words, the divine presence resides at 770 Eastern Parkway, Menachem Mendel Schneerson’s home. According to the Rebbe, the divine presence there “is more exalted than the divine presence in other synagogues and houses of study,” because it is a “very special (unique and singular) place that is a substitute for the Temple in Jerusalem… which holds the essence of the divine emanation and presence.”60 He goes on to explain that at the time of the redemption, “the divine presence will return to Jerusalem and will not remain where Israel was in exile… because the ‘lesser sanctuary’ will be uprooted from this place and relocated to the Land of Israel, to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.”61 The Rebbe then turns to the Mishneh Torah, saying,
Perhaps it is right to say that there is an implicit meaning in Maimonides’s statement (in the Laws of the King Messiah), “He rebuilds the sanctuary on its site,” which seems to ask: What is the purpose of stating here that the sanctuary will be rebuilt on its site…? Why doesn’t he expressly name the site, [saying] “and he will rebuild the sanctuary in Jerusalem”? Since “on its site” also implies the site of the king messiah during the exile… this implies that while he is in exile (where he sits in waiting and anticipation to redeem Israel as well as the divine indwelling [shechina] from exile), the king messiah builds a lesser sanctuary, which is in the form and likeness of the Temple in Jerusalem.62
Put simply, the home of the “leader of his generation” is the dwelling place of the divine presence, and the lesser sanctuary “rebuilt” by the messiah in exile. As if this were not clear enough, the Rebbe restates, “Our rebbe, the leader of the generation, is also the messiah (the redeemer of Israel) of the generation, like Moses,” and “‘the house of our Rebbe in Babylon’ of this generation is the house [synagogue and beit midrash, or house of study] of his honor and holiness, my teacher and father-in-law the Rebbe, the leader of our generation.”63 And finally, for the benefit of anyone who might still harbor doubts as to which house—or which leader—he is referring, the Rebbe explains, “the house’s number is 770.”64 As David Berger shows in his book The Rebbe, this explanation was more than satisfactory for the Lubavitchers. Berger cites a letter sent by Chabad activist Rabbi Shmuel Butman, chairman of the International Campaign to Bring the Messiah, to Jewish Action, the official journal of the Orthodox Union in the United States, stating, “Maimonides’s requirement that the messiah build the Temple in its place really means, at least in the initial stage, ‘in his place’ and was consequently met by the renovation of 770 Eastern Parkway (the headquarters of the Lubavitch movement).”65
Outside observers may be somewhat astonished by the liberties the Rebbe and his followers took with their interpretation of the Mishneh Torah. From the perspective of the Lubavitchers, however, there were no doubts whatsoever: Maimonides’s conditions for identifying the redeemer had been met. The messiah was alive and living in New York.
