The Radical Claim that Unites All Jews

12/20/24

Jews in the 1700s were increasingly wary and suspicious of new and charismatic leaders emerging in their communities.

Just decades earlier, a Turkish Jewish scholar by the name of Shabtai Tzvi, announced that he was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah.

Reeling from the recent Khmelnytsky massacres that pillaged Ukraine and murdered Jews in the tens of thousands, Jews were desperate to believe Shabtai's claim that the long and difficult Jewish exile was over, and that he was the Messianic King.

But Shabtai was a fraud. And when the Ottoman Sultan accused him of staging a rebellion, Shabtai was offered an ultimatum: die or convert to Islam. He chose the latter. While he was saving his life, it was clear he was not the Messiah.

So when the Chassidic movement was founded by the Baal Shem Tov in the 1700s, many in the institutional Jewish community were suspicious. These critics, numbering among them some of the great Torah scholars of the time, became known as Mitnagdim, or opposers.

Bent on destroying the fledgling movement, they took aim at Chabad, the most developed of the Chassidic groups, and had its founder, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, arrested by the Russians on false charges of treason, pointing to his financial support for the Jews in the Holy Land, then under the Ottoman Empire, rivals of the Russians.

On the 19th day of the Hebrew month of Kislev in 1798, Rabbi Schneur Zalman was released from jail, vindicating the Chassidic movement and allowing Chabad to flourish from the small insular group it was at the time, to the largest Jewish movement in the world, today.

Rabbi Schneur Zalman's magnum opus, the Tanya, is a breakthrough book on Jewish philosophy and theology, using Kabbalah as its base to introduce a new appreciation for the meaning of G-d, the Torah, Mitzvot, and what it means to be Jewish.

His most radical claim was that every Jew is inherently a believer in G-d. He said that there's a Jewish spark within every Jewish person that is impossible to extinguish. It might be covered up and buried, he admitted, but it's present and intact, he argued. And when that spark awakens, it will be as thirsty as a desert wanderer searching for water.

This claim was radical because at the time, and until today, Jews are too often divided and subdivided into groups: Reform, Conservative, Orthodox, Haredi, Chassidic, Agnostic, Atheist, and who knows what else!

For Rabbi Schneur Zalman, these labels would be meaningless. They placed an emphasis on one's practice and synagogue (or lack thereof) while overlooking the most important element we have in common, the Jewish spark he promised we shared. To Rabbi Schneur Zalman, all Jews were one, and all part of the family. And they all deserved to be welcomed equally.

But as great as he was, it was impossible for him to implement his philosophy on a grand scale. Rabbi Schneur Zalman lived in a small town in Russia, where neither he nor his followers had much contact with the broader world where they would be able to implement his vision.

When Chabad moved to America in the 1940s, that all changed, and when the Lubavitcher Rebbe took lead of the movement in 1950, he charged his followers to embody Rabbi Schneur Zalman's ideology, by moving out of their insular Orthodox communities and opening up warm and welcoming "Chabad Houses" where all Jews would be welcomed and feel at home.

Last week I lamented about the lack of tolerance for Haredim by some in the broader Jewish community. I failed to mention that it is sadly also true in the reverse. Too many Charedim don't appreciate or respect Jews with backgrounds different than their own.

Today, likely the only place in the world you'll find Charedi, Orthodox, Conservative, Reform, Agnostic, and Atheist Jews sitting together at a Shabbat Dinner, is at a Chabad House.

This is the direct result of Rabbi Schneur Zalman's philosophy. A world where we look beyond the superficial and try to connect to the essence of who we are. A world in which we are all one.

Today marks the anniversary of Rabbi Schneur Zalman's liberation. He asked that this date not only be celebrated but that people should take the time to be inspired by his message.

It shouldn't be difficult. We need only to reignite a spark.