Sue Fishkoff: The Rebbe’s Army

Inside the World of Chabad-LubavitchThis book dispersed a number of myths about Chabad for me. It provided lots of information on the infrastructure, people, ideology, history and theology of the movement in a comprehensible format. It was also a human personal encounter of an outsider woman gaining entrance into a world she and I thought of too closed and foreign. For these reasons I need to thank the author. However I learned of a few facts that are missing form the book. Like why didn’t the rebbe ever visited Israel? (Didn’t want to give full legitimacy to the secular state as opposed to the Messianic Israel that is still to come. But he was not against the state itself, he just didn’t want to support tit in such an overt way.) Or how come he could emigrate to the US when only a few thousand Europeans were accepted annually. (His scientific skills were useful for developing bombs.) These omissions made me wonder what else is missing. I have no way of knowing. Just as Buber’s Hasidic tales is painting a lovable, positive only picture without any undersides, this book is also focusing on the positive. It acknowledged some schisms and talks about them, but mostly sides with the Lubavitchers. Not a problem, but my impression of balance is gone.

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