Explaining the Inexplicable

Abstract

This chapter provides some tentative explanations for Chabad messianism. One of these explanations is the ideal of unity and the avoidance of communal strife. Every practising Jew has heard countless sermons about the imperative to love one's neighbour, particularly one's Jewish neighbour. While rhetoric about this value cuts across all Orthodox—and Jewish—lines, it is especially compelling for Modern Orthodox Jews who maintain cordial, even formal relations with other denominations and pride themselves on embracing an ideal of tolerance. No Orthodox Jew believes that everyone committed to the Jewish community has the right to serve as an Orthodox rabbi because of the value of unity. The appeal to this principle is relevant only after one has concluded that Lubavitch messianism is essentially within the boundaries of Orthodoxy. Since this is precisely what is at issue, the argument begs the question. The chapter then considers the explanations concerning orthopraxy, the balkanization of Orthodoxy, and Orthodox interdependence.