Chabad

• 1. Introduction

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  Chabad, also known as Lubavitch, is a Hasidic dynasty and a global movement within Haredi Judaism. Most Haredi groups keep largely to themselves. Chabad goes looking for Jews of every affiliation, wherever they live.

  In 2018, Marcin Wodziński made the first worldwide estimate of Hasidism for the Historical Atlas of Hasidism, using Chabad community directories. He counted 16,000 to 17,000 households, or 90,000 to 95,000 people. That was 13 percent of all Hasidim, and it made Chabad the second-largest Hasidic community after Satmar. Yet as many as one million Jews take part in Chabad activities every year.

  How does a community of that size reach so many more people than it counts as members? Why does the movement's name read like a map of the human mind? And what became of a dynasty when its seventh leader died?

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• 2. Mind Over Heart

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  The name Chabad is built from three Hebrew words: Chokmah, Binah and Da'at, meaning wisdom, understanding and knowledge. Together they describe how the intellect works, and the Tanya treats them as three interconnected processes. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi first published that book in 1797. It was the first schematic treatment of Hasidic moral philosophy and its metaphysical foundations.

  Shneur Zalman broke with other branches of Hasidism that stressed the idea that God desires the heart. He argued that God desires the mind as well, and he called the mind the gateway to the heart. He went further and ranked intellect above emotion, writing that "understanding is the mother of fear and love for God".

  The Tanya has five sections, and the first carries two names. One is Sefer Shel Beinonim, the "Book of the Intermediates." The other is Likutei Amarim, "Collected Sayings." It examines the inner struggle of a single person. Citing the verse "the matter is very near to you, in your mouth, your heart, to do," it holds that no human is inherently evil. Every individual instead carries two inclinations, one good and one bad.

  The Chagat schools of Hasidism gave Chabad a contrast to push against. In Chagat, emotions were a reaction to physical stimuli such as dancing, singing or beauty. Shneur Zalman taught that the mind must guide the emotions. So Chabad centered on Torah study and prayer rather than esotericism and song. In the Tanya he named his approach moach shalit al halev, "the brain ruling the heart." As a Talmudist, he tried to give Kabbalah and Hasidism a rational footing.

  Chabad writings draw often on the Zohar and on the Kabbalah of Rabbi Isaac Luria. A recurring theme is bringing "heaven down to earth," which means making the Earth a dwelling place for God. The roots of this teaching reach back to the Baal Shem Tov, the founder of Hasidism, and to Dovber ben Avraham, the Maggid of Mezritch. Many Chabad activities today are understood as direct applications of Shneur Zalman's ideas, and followers study the Tanya daily.

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• 3. Seven Rebbes

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  Seven rebbes have led the main Chabad-Lubavitch line, and each is better known by a nickname than by his given name. Shneur Zalman, who lived from 1745 to 1812, is the Old Rebbe. He founded the movement in 1775 in Liozno, then in the Russian Empire, in the wake of the First Partition of Poland. He also wrote the Shulchan Aruch HaRav, a revised version of the code of Jewish law. His successors took surnames such as Schneuri and Schneersohn, later Schneerson, to signal their descent from him.

  Dovber Schneuri, who lived from 1773 to 1827, was Shneur Zalman's son and is the Mitteler Rebbe, or Middle Rabbi. In 1813 he moved the movement to the town of Lyubavichi, which gave Lubavitch its name. He published his own writings and some of his father's, greatly expanding the body of Hasidic thought.

  Menachem Mendel Schneersohn, who lived from 1789 to 1866, was a grandson of Shneur Zalman and a son-in-law of Dovber. He is the Tzemach Tzedek, named for the title of his responsa. His successor was his seventh and youngest son, Shmuel Schneersohn, who lived from 1834 to 1882. Shmuel is the Maharash, an acronym for Moreinu HaRav Shmuel, "our teacher, Rabbi Shmuel."

  Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, who lived from 1860 to 1920, was Shmuel's second son. He waited some time before officially taking the title of rebbe, so as not to offend his elder brother, Zalman Aaron. He founded a yeshiva called Tomchei Temimim, and he is known as the Rashab, an acronym for Rabbi Shalom Ber.

  Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, who lived from 1880 to 1950, was the only son of Shalom Dovber. He is the Rayatz, or the Frierdiker Rebbe, meaning the "Previous Rebbe." He built much of the movement's present organizational structure by founding several of its central organizations.

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• 4. Exile and Survival

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  In 1915, the fifth rebbe, Shalom Dovber Schneersohn, left Lyubavichi after a century there and settled in the city of Rostov-on-Don. The pressure on the movement was already heavy. The Russian government, first under the Czar and later under the Bolsheviks, imprisoned every Chabad rebbe but one. The Bolsheviks also imprisoned, exiled and executed a number of Chabad Hasidim.

  The sixth rebbe, Yosef Yitzchak, ran the movement from Riga and then from Warsaw. He had been exiled from Russia after the Bolshevik government tried to have him executed. When World War II broke out, he fled the Nazis for the United States. Since 1940, the movement's center has been the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn.

  Many Chabad Hasidim spent the war years in the Uzbek cities of Samarkand and Tashkent. There they set up small centers of Hasidic life while looking for ways out of a country that suppressed religion. Chabad had already reached Central Asia through efforts in the 1920s.

  Inside the Soviet Union, a core of dedicated Hasidim loyal to Yosef Yitzchak kept underground yeshivos and mikvehs running. They also provided ritual slaughter and ritual circumcision. Chabad maintained a secret network across the USSR throughout the Soviet era. After the war, and long after the center of the movement had moved to the United States, it kept helping the Refuseniks, local Jews who wanted to learn more about Judaism.

  The persecution ended with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Berel Lazar, a Chabad emissary, became the Chief Rabbi of Russia and keeps warm relations with President Vladimir Putin. Lazar received the Order of Friendship and the Order "For Merit to the Fatherland" from him.

  The past still produced a legal fight in 2013. US federal judge Royce Lamberth ruled for Chabad lawyers who sought contempt sanctions against three Russian organizations. At issue was the Schneersohn Library, 12,000 books that the Bolsheviks had seized and nationalized in 1917-18. Lazar reluctantly accepted Putin's request to move the library to Moscow's Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center as a compromise. The Brooklyn Chabad Library criticized that outcome.

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• 5. Houses and Emissaries

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  The first Chabad house opened on the campus of UCLA, created by Rabbi Shlomo Cunin, and the term itself comes from that center. A key to the new house was given to the Rebbe, who asked whether that meant it was his home. Told yes, he replied, "My hand will be on the door of this house to keep it open twenty-four hours a day for young and old, men and women alike."

  A Chabad house is a kind of Jewish community center that serves both education and observance. Until a community can support its own building, the house is often the emissary's home, with the living room serving as the synagogue. The aim is an atmosphere where someone who knows little about Jewish practice will not feel intimidated by people who know a great deal.

  In 1950, Menachem Mendel Schneerson urged Chabad to begin shlichus, serving as an emissary. Since then, shluchim have moved around the world to encourage non-observant Jews to adopt Jewish observance. Typically a young rabbi and his wife, in their early twenties and with one or two children, move to a new place and raise a large family there. As of 2021 there were over 6,500 shluchim families running over 3,500 institutions in over 110 countries. Chabad's directory lists a presence in 950 cities, including 400 in North America and 200 in Israel. As of 2023, it ran the largest network of synagogues of any Jewish movement.

  The money comes from the neighborhood. Chabad centers receive no funding from Lubavitch headquarters, and each emissary does his own fundraising among local Jews. That money goes toward buying or renovating centers, synagogues and mikvahs.

  That openness carried a cost in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, when the local Chabad house was targeted. Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, along with four other Jews, were tortured and murdered by Islamic terrorists. Chabad received condolences from around the world.

  On ordinary days, the movement's presence is far quieter. Followers staff tefillin booths at the Western Wall and at Ben Gurion International Airport, and they hand out Shabbat candles on Fridays. Unmarried rabbinical students spend weeks of the summer in places with no permanent Chabad presence. They make house calls and put up mezuzot, an effort called Merkos Shlichus.

  Schneerson gave this outreach a program of ten mivtzoim, meaning campaigns. His call to every Jew was, "Even if you are not fully committed to a Torah life, do something." The ten were lighting Shabbat and holiday candles by Jewish women, putting on tefillin, affixing a mezuzah, regular Torah study, giving tzedakah, buying Jewish books, keeping kosher, kindness to others, Jewish religious education, and observing the family purity laws. Mitzvah tanks, vehicles that serve as portable outreach centers and "mini-synagogues," help carry these campaigns. They have been common on the streets of New York City since 1974 and now travel wherever Chabad is active.

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• 6. Schools, Camps, and Screens

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  Some 295 Chabad schools in the United States enroll more than 20,750 students, and that figure includes children who are not from Chabad families. Worldwide, Chabad operates more than 1,000 schools, preschools and other educational institutions. For older students there are Tomchei Tmimim for young men and Bais Rivka for young women. Adults can study through the Rohr Jewish Learning Institute and the Jewish Learning Network.

  Chabad Student Centers now operate on over 950 campuses. Professor Alan Dershowitz has said, "Chabad's presence on college campuses today is absolutely crucial," and "we cannot rest until Chabad is on every major college campus in the world."

  Chabad's summer camps reach about 210,000 children across 1,200 sites, and most of those children do not come from Orthodox homes. Of the sites, 500 are in the United States. Most use the name Gan Israel, which Schneerson chose, though the first overnight camp was the girls division, called Camp Emunah. Schneerson also started a children's movement called Tzivos Hashem, literally "Army of God," for those under bar or bat mitzvah age.

  The Chabad Teen Network, known as CTeen, launched in 2010. It now has over 100,000 members in 630 chapters across 44 countries. It is open to all Jewish teens regardless of affiliation and has been called "the fastest growing and most diverse Jewish youth organization in the world." Its annual International Shabbaton gathers thousands of teens in Crown Heights, with a Torah completion ceremony in Times Square. In 2019 it added CTeen U, a college-accredited program run with Yeshiva University.

  Kehot Publication Society, Chabad's main publishing house, has seen Jewish literature translated into 12 languages. Schneerson was the most video-documented Jewish leader in history. In 2023, chabad.org was reportedly the largest faith-based website, with 52 million unique visitors and 102,129 pages covering all facets of Judaism. Rabbi Yosef Y. Kazen started it, and Rabbi D. Zirkind developed it.

  The movement's social media influencers work at a smaller scale. Yossi Farro wrapped tefillin for Lil Dicky, James Franco and other public figures. At first it happened by chance. Then he began seeking out well-known Jews and asking whether they would meet him to wrap tefillin.

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• 7. Splits and Succession

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  Rabbi Aaron HaLevi took the title of rebbe in the 1810s, after the death of Shneur Zalman, and led followers from the town of Strashelye. The recognized successor was Shneur Zalman's oldest son, Dovber Schneuri. A key point of disagreement was the place of spiritual ecstasy in prayer. Aaron supported it. Dovber held that genuine ecstasy can come only from meditative contemplation, called hisbonenus, and he set out his case in a work titled Kuntres Hispa'alus, "Tract on Ecstasy." The Strashelye group had two rebbes, Aaron and his son Haim Rephael, and it disbanded after Haim Rephael died.

  The 1860s brought a larger break. After the death of the third rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, Shmuel Schneersohn was recognized as heir to the Lubavitch line. Several of his brothers formed groups of their own in Kopys, Nezhin, Lyady and Ovruch. These became the Kapust, Niezhin, Liadi and Avrutch dynasties. Niezhin and Avrutch had one rebbe each, Liadi had three and Kapust had four. All of them eventually disbanded, which leaves Chabad-Lubavitch as the only surviving line.

  Two smaller offshoots followed. The Malachim formed as a quasi-Hasidic group around Rabbi Chaim Avraham Dov Ber Levine haCohen, who lived from 1859 or 1860 to 1938 and was known as "The Malach," literally "the angel." The group claims to recognize the teachings of only the first four Chabad rebbes. It still keeps a yeshiva and a minyan in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

  Tensions with another Hasidic community flared in the 1980s, when Satmar Hasidim carried out several assaults on Chabad Hasidim.

  Schneerson died in June 1994 without naming a successor. An attempt by Shaul Shimon Deutsch to found a breakaway movement as the "Liozna Rebbe" failed to win popular support. The larger controversy is Chabad messianism. A few years before Schneerson's death, some followers began to say he was the Messiah, and those who hold the view are called meshichists. Their typical statement of belief is the chant yechi adoneinu, "long live our master." Since 1994, some believe he will be resurrected and revealed as the messiah, while others say he never died. Non-Chabad Jewish leaders have mostly met the belief with public concern or opposition.

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• 8. Communities and Culture

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  Kfar Chabad in Israel had a population of 6,489 in 2024, and all of its residents are believed to be Chabad adherents. Other estimates put it near 7,000. Crown Heights, in Brooklyn, is estimated to hold between 12,000 and 16,000 people from the movement. Between 25 and 35 percent of Chabad Hasidim there speak Yiddish, well below the share in other Hasidic groups. Researchers connect that to the arrival of Jews who were not Hasidic before.

  In Montreal, close to 25 percent of Chabad households include a Sephardi parent, which reflects how many Sephardic adherents the movement has drawn in recent decades. In France, the Chabad community is estimated at 10,000 to 15,000 people. Most are descendants of immigrants from Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia who arrived in the 1960s.

  Orthodox Judaism has two familiar labels, Haredi and modern Orthodox, and sociologists say Chabad fits neither. Many of its supporters and affiliates are not Orthodox at all, and some scholars call them non-Orthodox Hasidim.

  On Passover, Chabad homes limit contact between matzah and water, a custom called gebrokts. On the last day of the holiday, matzah is deliberately allowed to touch water. On Chanukah, Chabad Hasidim place the menorah against the doorpost rather than on the windowsill. The founder also wrote a distinct liturgy for daily and festival prayers, based mainly on the Arizal. He instituted the use of stainless steel knives for slaughter, now accepted in every sect of Judaism.

  The calendar includes Days of Liberation, called Yom Geulah, which mark the release of the rebbes from prison. The best known is Yud Tes Kislev, the liberation of Shneur Zalman, also called the "New Year of Hasidism." Chai Elul is Shneur Zalman's birthday and Yud Aleph Nissan is Schneerson's. Gimmel Tammuz is the yartzeit of Schneerson, and Chof Beis Shvat marks that of his wife, Chaya Mushka Schneerson.

  Artists and writers outside the movement have borrowed from it too. Chaim Potok's novel My Name is Asher Lev follows a Hasidic teen torn between art and community norms, and its "Ladover" community is a thinly veiled Lubavitcher Crown Heights. The reggae artist Matisyahu has included Chabad niggunim in his songs. The artist Yitzchok Moully created what he calls "Chasidic Pop Art." From the late 2000s into the 2010s, The Jewish Daily Forward noted a small number of Crown Heights Chabad members adopting hipster culture.

  In 2022, an Israeli theatrical company staged a Chabad-themed musical called HaChabadnikim. It follows two young men from Kfar Chabad who go to live in Tel Aviv, and it runs for 140 minutes.

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