Chabad-Lubavitch

Chabad was established in the eighteenth century in what is now Belarus by Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi, a disciple of Dov Baer, the Maggid of Mezhirich, and Menahem Mendel of Vitebsk.[4] After Menahem Mendel emigrated to the Land of Israel in 1777, Shneur Zalman became leader of the Hasidim of Belorussia and began formulating Chabad's specific doctrine.[4] Known within the movement as the Alter Rebbe, or Elder Rebbe, he is identified as the first Chabad Rebbe and the author of the Tanya, its foundational philosophical text.[5]

The movement combined Lurianic Kabbalah, the Hasidism of the Baal Shem Tov, and the innovations of the Maggid of Mezhirich.[4] Its name expresses the triad of chochmah (wisdom), binah (understanding), and da'at (knowledge), associated with intellectual faculties and the three higher sefirot, or divine emanations, in Kabbalistic thought.[2] Chabad teaching also holds that matter contains spiritual energy and that individuals are charged with releasing divine sparks within their spheres of life.[6]

Chabad has been characterized as “Rational Hasidism,” seeking intelligent rather than blind faith and presenting the tzaddik primarily as a teacher who guides conscious religious understanding.[7] Its intellectual orientation nevertheless coexists with mystical contemplation, spiritual ascent, ecstasy, and meditation.[2] The Tanya expresses its ideal of rational self-mastery through Moach shalit al halev—“The mind is sovereign over the heart.”[1]

Shneur Zalman's theology teaches that divine vitality underlies every object, act, and thought. Physical reality is treated as both a manifestation of divine essence and a garment or vessel for it, a position described as acosmism.[4] The Tanya states: “For just as He was alone one and unique before the six days of creation, so He is now after the creation. This is because everything is absolutely as nothing and naught in relation to His being and essence.”[4]

The movement was initially based in Liozna and Liadi. After Shneur Zalman's death, leadership passed to his son Dovber Schneuri, who moved the Chabad seat to Lyubavichi, the Russian town that gave the movement its second name. Chabad remained centered there for about a century before its fifth leader, Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, moved the center to Rostov-on-Don in 1915.[1]

The sixth Rebbe, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn (1880–1950), was arrested and imprisoned by Soviet authorities. He later left Russia, living in Latvia and Poland before arriving in the United States in 1940 while fleeing the Nazis.[1] Brooklyn became Chabad-Lubavitch's worldwide headquarters, and 770 Eastern Parkway—known as “770”—became its organizational and spiritual center.[1][8]

Under Soviet rule, Chabad conducted clandestine activities to maintain Jewish practice and education. After World War II, it participated in rescue work, assisted Jews in displaced-persons camps, and worked among North African Jewish communities. Two major postwar centers emerged: the United States and Kefar Chabad in Israel.[4]

The movement's successive modern leaders included Sholom Dovber Schneersohn, the fifth Rebbe; Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth; and Menachem Mendel Schneerson, the sixth Rebbe's son-in-law and the seventh Rebbe.[9] The modern network of educational and social-service institutions traces its formal development to the early 1940s, when Yosef Yitzchak appointed Schneerson to lead newly established organizational arms.[10]

Shneur Zalman's principal Chabad work is the Tanya, also known as Likkutei Amarim, first published at Slavuta in 1796.[4] It is a five-part, systematic guide to avodah—service to God—that combines intellectual reflection with spiritual practice.[11]

Chabad philosophy emphasizes understanding the Creator, the purpose of creation, and the mission of each individual creature. It teaches people to refine and govern their actions and feelings through wisdom, comprehension, and knowledge.[10] The seven Rebbes developed a corpus of mystical study numbering thousands of books and addressing both the spiritual and physical needs of Jewish life.[10]

Chabad's outreach theology connects individual mitzvot to redemption. It teaches that acts such as lighting Sabbath candles, wearing tefillin, and giving charity help hasten the coming of the Messiah.[9] This belief gives the movement's outreach program a broader theological purpose.

Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson (1902–1994) became the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe after the death of his father-in-law in 1950 and led Chabad until 1994 as its spiritual, intellectual, and organizational head.[12] He arrived in the United States with his wife, Chaya Mushka, in 1941. During World War II, he used his engineering training at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he supervised wiring for the USS Missouri, while initiating a program that sent rabbinical students to Jewish farmers, U.S. servicemen, and Jews isolated from larger communities.[3]

Under Schneerson, Chabad became what a 2024 Congressional Record tribute called the world's largest Jewish educational organization.[3] The 1994 statute authorizing a Congressional Gold Medal recognized his contributions to education, morality, and charity and stated that Chabad headquarters had become a center of more than 2,000 educational, social, and rehabilitative institutions.[13] Education and Sharing Day has been proclaimed by every U.S. president for more than four decades in recognition of his educational and ethical teachings.[3]

Schneerson's outreach program became associated with ufaratsta—“you will expand.”[9] In a 1961 Purim address, he urged emissaries to go where Jews lacked communal resources: “There's a barren land, a developing country, and there are Jews there who do not know they are missing anything … you must dedicate time to travel to these Jews and spend a day with them, a week, a month, a year, 10 years—as long as you are needed.”[14]

He promoted accessible practices including Shabbat candles, mezuzot, Torah study, kosher observance, charity, Jewish books, family-purity laws, love of fellow Jews, and Jewish education.[9] His Hanukkah-awareness campaign began in 1973, when Chabad distributed about 60,000 tin menorahs. A public lighting followed in Philadelphia in 1974, and President Jimmy Carter invited Chabad representatives to light a menorah at the White House by 1979.[11]

Schneerson died in 1994 without children or a designated successor. Chabad subsequently treated him as its final Rebbe, and no eighth Lubavitcher Rebbe has been named.[12]

Shlichus—meaning “mission,” “agency,” or “task” in Hebrew—is the defining institutional mechanism of modern Chabad.[15] Rabbi-and-wife couples, known as shluchim and shluchos, are sent to particular locations to foster Jewish life and are expected to devote themselves to those communities for life.[15] The model predates the modern network: the fifth Rebbe sent emissaries to communities in the Caucasus, while under the sixth Rebbe it developed into an underground network of Jewish leaders in the Soviet Union.[15]

The first major modern initiative began in Morocco in 1950, when Rabbi Michoel Lipsker and his wife were sent to Meknes. They established Torah schools for youth and classes for adults at a time when Morocco's Jewish community was reported to number about 350,000.[16] A later conference in Fez brought together emissaries serving communities across Africa and the Middle East.[16]

Under Schneerson, couples were sent throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the Americas.[15] Each couple generally develops a local territory or activity while consulting the central administration and existing emissaries about locations.[9] A Chabad House may offer meals, classes, prayer services, holiday programming, education, and assistance to travelers, often without membership fees or charges for High Holiday services.[1]

Chabad synagogues typically seek donations rather than levy membership dues. Personal outreach may begin with an informal meeting with a rabbi, followed by a class, a Shabbat dinner, and eventual synagogue attendance.[17] Emissaries have also helped establish or revive communities in locations including St. Lucia, Kobe, Luanda, Bariloche, Iceland, Luxembourg, Malta, and Zambia.[16] In Shanghai, where there was reportedly no minyan in 1999, a Chabad emissary had built a functioning community by 2002.[9]

More than 120 new emissary couples joined the network during the year preceding Chabad's November 2022 conference—an average of one couple every three days.[14] In the same period, the movement completed 120 mikvahs, opened 10 day schools in collaboration with Tamim Academy, and launched 36 Torah scrolls for centers that lacked one. A replication of a U.S. synagogue survey found that the number of Chabad congregations grew by 199% from 2001 to 2020.[14]

Network totals vary by year and counting method. A 2021 account reported approximately 4,900 emissary families operating 3,500 institutions in 100 countries and territories.[1] A 2024 Congressional Record tribute reported more than 3,500 centers in 103 countries and all 50 U.S. states.[3]

Chabad's outreach includes Chabad houses, campus centers, mobile “mitzvah tanks,” public menorahs, tefillin campaigns, Shabbat-candle distribution, schools, kindergartens, yeshivas, youth programs, publishing, prison chaplaincy, and social services.[1] Its public-facing strategy includes asking passersby whether they are Jewish, encouraging Jewish men to put on tefillin, distributing Shabbat candles to Jewish women, and erecting public menorahs.[1]

Its mitzvah campaigns encompass love of fellow Jews, Torah education and study, tefillin, mezuzah, charity, possession of Jewish books, Shabbat and festival candles, kashrut, and the Torah perspective on married life. The movement also promotes awareness of the Seven Laws of Noah among non-Jews.[12]

The first college Chabad House opened at the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1969, followed by one at UC Berkeley in 1972.[11] By fall 2016, Chabad on Campus International was present at 198 American colleges, compared with fewer than 30 before 2000.[18] Its campus approach is inclusive but not pluralist: students are welcomed regardless of background or practice, while emissaries strictly follow Orthodox halacha and model observant family life. Among survey respondents who had attended Chabad at least once, 88% were not Orthodox.[18]

In March 2024, Chabad on Campus International and the Anti-Defamation League announced a joint initiative addressing antisemitism on U.S. campuses. It included workshops, training, incident-reporting resources, safety guidance, and a planned campaign promoting Jewish pride and unity.[19]

Pew Research Center's 2020 survey found that 16% of U.S. Jewish adults said they often or sometimes participated in Chabad activities or services. Among participants, 90% identified as Jewish by religion and 24% as Orthodox, illustrating Chabad's reach beyond its Haredi leadership.[17]

Chabad began using online discussion networks in 1988 to distribute Jewish material to tens of thousands of people. Thousands of documents were converted into what the movement called the world's first virtual Jewish library; its web activity expanded in 1994, and Chabad Online Magazine was added in 1999.[20]

Chabad.org traces its origins to a 1989 request from a woman in rural Texas who needed a prayer book because she was allergic to ordinary ink. Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Kazen hand-typed a siddur for the FidoNet network, and the effort developed into Chabad.org, launched in 1993 as one of the first 500 websites.[21] The site reports nearly 60 million annual visitors, content in eight languages, more than 75,000 yearly “Ask the Rabbi” inquiries, and approximately 215,000 students in advanced ChabadU courses.[21]

When New York City schools closed on March 13, 2020, the Chabad CKids team created an online Hebrew school serving about 40,000 children worldwide by March 15. The Nigri International Jewish Online School has also served children from Uganda to Uzbekistan.[21]

Chabad centers provide services to religious and non-religious Jewish tourists, visiting businesspeople, and local communities.[22] In Berlin, a center opened in 2007 as the first new privately funded Jewish center in Germany since the Shoah. The US$8.3 million facility included Germany's largest synagogue, a library, a kosher restaurant, a tourist information center, and a lecture hall; 70% of its funding came from small donations.[23]

In Mumbai, Nariman House was targeted in the November 2008 terrorist attack in which Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg, his pregnant wife Rivkah, and four others were killed; their two-year-old son survived.[22] The reopened center included a synagogue, offices, guest rooms, a restaurant, a commercial kitchen, and security rooms, with plans for a museum in the Holtzbergs' former apartment.[22]

In Russia, the Federation of Jewish Communities became a self-proclaimed representative of Russian Jewry in the early 2000s. Academic research argues that it promoted narratives of Jewish and Russian Jewish success, achievement, and heroism and identifies its alliance with the Kremlin as a cornerstone of its influence.[24]

Kfar Chabad in Israel became one of the movement's two major postwar centers and includes a replica of 770 Eastern Parkway.[4] In Ukraine, the World Jewish Congress lists 123 registered Chabad-Lubavitch communities and identifies Shneur Zalman's tomb as a notable Jewish site.[25]

In 1977, Chabad Hasidim opened the Crown Heights Art Institute in Brooklyn to showcase the work of Hasidic artists, an unusual initiative at a time when visual art was not generally associated with the public image of Hasidic communities.[26]

The Schneerson Collection comprises a library of more than 12,000 volumes containing Chabad's history and central teachings and an archive of writings by its spiritual leaders. Chabad alleges that the Bolshevik government seized the library during the October Revolution, while Soviet forces took the archive to Moscow in September 1945 after it had been left behind during the sixth Rebbe's flight from the Nazis. Portions were returned in 1941 and 1974.[27]

Chabad sued Russia and related institutions in 2004. The D.C. Circuit held in 2008 that the defendants lacked sovereign immunity from the claims, and a district court entered a default judgment ordering surrender of the collection in 2010. Civil-contempt sanctions of $50,000 per day were imposed in 2013 and later reduced to interim judgments totaling more than $175 million.[27] The litigation and ownership dispute have remained connected to U.S. diplomatic efforts to secure the collection's return.

Chabad's relationship with Zionism and the State of Israel has changed over time. Before the Holocaust, Lubavitcher leaders urged Jews not to leave Europe for Palestine, reflecting wider ultra-Orthodox opposition to secular Zionism. After the Holocaust, Chabad adopted de facto recognition of Israel while distinguishing support for a Jewish state understood in halakhic terms from endorsement of secular Zionist ideology.[28]

Schneerson directed a group of Hasidim to establish Kfar Chabad near Ben-Gurion Airport and instructed followers in Israel to vote for the Haredi party of their choice.[28] The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs portrays Chabad as seeking since World War II to function as an almost parallel structure for world Jewry and states that the movement temporarily used Agudat Israel as its political vehicle in Israel's 1988 elections.[29] Chabad's Israeli presence also includes schools, synagogues, and social institutions.

Chabad occupies an unusual position in contemporary Jewish life: its leadership is Haredi, while many participants are non-Orthodox.[17] Its combination of strict Orthodox practice, personal outreach, low barriers to entry, and an international emissary network has brought Jewish programming to both major cities and communities with little other Jewish infrastructure.[1]

The Hertog Study found that 88% of surveyed campus participants who attended Chabad at least once were not Orthodox and that personal relationships with rabbis and rebbetzins were central to the campus model.[18] This model allows emissary families to combine religious services, education, hospitality, and community building within a single institution.

U.S. recognition has included the Congressional Gold Medal for Schneerson, annual Education and Sharing Day proclamations, and tributes in the Congressional Record.[13][3] The Department of Justice has also filed briefs in litigation involving Chabad's land use and the Schneerson Collection.[30][27]

Chabad.org's reported digital audience, multilingual resources, and rapid online-school deployment during the COVID-19 pandemic extend this outreach beyond physical institutions.[21] Simon Jacobson describes Chabad's intellectual system as bridging material and spiritual life, faith and reason, and modernity and inherited Jewish practice.[6] From its origins in Belorussia, Chabad developed into a network operating in more than 100 countries.

The most significant internal controversy concerns Messianism. During Schneerson's final years and after his death, some followers regarded him as the long-awaited Messiah. A later religious ruling signed by rabbis associated with the movement asserted that Jews were required to profess that Schneerson “was and still is the messiah.”[31] In 1996, the Rabbinical Council of America rejected the belief that a messianic figure could begin his mission, die, be buried and resurrected, and then complete it.[31]

In 2006, New York's Supreme Court granted Chabad's central leadership a permanent injunction against Congregation Lubavitch and upheld its right to place a plaque outside the main Brooklyn synagogue referring to Schneerson as deceased. The court stated that its ruling did not favor either side in the Messianic debate.[32] The mainstream of the movement moved away from explicit messianic claims over time, although such beliefs persisted among some followers.[1][31]

A separate controversy followed the discovery of a passageway beneath Chabad's Brooklyn headquarters in December 2023. Clashes occurred on January 8, 2024, when an effort was made to fill the passageway, allegedly constructed by students from adjacent properties. The incident prompted extensive media coverage and an antisemitic firestorm online.[8]

Approved sources also differ on founding chronology: one dates Chabad's establishment to 1775, while another academic account gives 1767.[1][11] Contemporary totals for emissaries, institutions, and countries likewise vary by year and counting method.[1][3]