Who Really Runs the World? The Chabad Investigation Part 2 of 9

Watch this on Rumble: https://rumble.com/v7ffpyw-who-really-runs-the-world-the-chabad-investigation-part-2-of-9.html

Part 2 — What Did the Rebbe Want for the World?

Opening — Before Following Power, Follow Belief

If I had jumped directly from Part 1 into presidents, Congress, wealthy donors and international institutions, I think I would have made a serious mistake. I would have been looking at relationships without understanding the belief system behind them. A photograph can tell me that two people met, and a government record can tell me that somebody gained access, but neither one tells me why a religious movement would want that access in the first place.

So before following power, I want to follow belief. If Menachem Mendel Schneerson was simply trying to preserve Hasidic Judaism, then Chabad’s worldwide expansion means one thing. If he believed his movement had a responsibility extending beyond the Jewish people and ultimately involving the entire world, then the same expansion means something considerably different. Neither interpretation proves political control, but we cannot fairly investigate Chabad’s activities until we understand what the Rebbe believed he was trying to accomplish.

This is where I had to put aside some of the language used by Chabad’s critics and start reading Chabad’s theology on its own terms. The first thing I discovered was that Schneerson’s vision of redemption wasn’t primarily about escaping this world. The physical world itself mattered. In Chabad thought, God’s purpose wasn’t ultimately fulfilled by abandoning creation and going somewhere else. The purpose involved transforming this world so completely that God’s presence, presently concealed, would become revealed within ordinary physical existence.

That idea is often expressed through the Chabad concept of dirah betachtonim, a dwelling place for God in the lower realm. Once I understood that concept, other pieces began falling into place. If the physical world is the arena in which God’s purpose is ultimately fulfilled, then religion cannot remain entirely disconnected from ordinary life. Eating matters. Business matters. Charity matters. Education matters. Technology matters. Human relationships matter. The material world becomes the place where spiritual work is actually performed.

Human beings also have a role in that process. This is one of the most important things to understand about Schneerson’s worldview. Redemption wasn’t merely an event believers were supposed to sit around waiting for. Human action could help prepare the world for it. Every mitzvah, every act of religious obedience and every effort to reveal Godliness within physical existence contributed toward the larger purpose of creation.

That helped me understand why Chabad placed such importance on sending emissaries outward. Why establish Chabad Houses in distant places? Why encourage people to carry religious activity into their homes, businesses and communities? Why embrace modern communications rather than retreat from them? Within this worldview, the world itself is the arena of the mission. If the world is supposed to be transformed, the mission has to reach the world.

Chabad’s messianic expectation also wasn’t merely a vague hope that someday things would become better. The movement anticipated an actual redemption associated with Moshiach. The future included a world increasingly filled with knowledge of God, the redemption of the Jewish people and the restoration associated with Jerusalem and the Temple. The physical world wasn’t going to be discarded. It was ultimately supposed to reveal what had previously been concealed within it.

That helped me understand why ordinary religious work could carry enormous meaning for Schneerson and his followers. A mitzvah wasn’t merely an isolated good deed. Teaching another person wasn’t merely education. Establishing another religious community wasn’t merely organizational expansion. Within this theology, those actions could participate in preparing the world for redemption.

Then I reached the part that changed this investigation for me. The Rebbe’s vision included the nations. Schneerson did not teach that everybody should convert to Judaism. Jews and Gentiles remained distinct. Jews had their covenant and commandments, while non-Jews had responsibilities of their own. But Schneerson taught that Jews also had an active responsibility toward the moral and spiritual condition of humanity outside the Jewish community.

That means the answer to “What did the Rebbe want for the world?” cannot simply be that he wanted Jews to become more observant. He certainly wanted Jewish observance strengthened, but the vision extended beyond that. He envisioned a world transformed through human action, increasingly conscious of God, morally ordered and moving toward redemption. Jewish people had a particular role within that future, and the nations had another.

None of this proves that Schneerson wanted Chabad controlling governments, banks, legislatures or international institutions. It doesn’t establish a secret political program, and it certainly doesn’t establish world control. Those are separate claims that will require separate evidence. What it does establish is something we absolutely need before examining those questions: it gives us the religious motive behind the mission.

If we later find Chabad interacting with politicians, I don’t want to immediately call that political control. I want to ask whether the interaction makes sense within Schneerson’s religious mission. If we later find outreach directed toward non-Jews, I don’t want to treat that as some unexplained departure from Judaism. I want to know what Schneerson himself taught about responsibility toward the nations. If we later encounter Chabad discussing morality, education, technology or society, I want to know whether those subjects were already present within the Rebbe’s worldview before assigning some hidden motive to them.

That is why this episode may become one of the most important parts of the entire investigation. Before asking how much influence Chabad acquired, we need to understand what it believed the world should become. Before following politicians and institutions, we have to follow the theology and the mission behind them.

Only then can we ask the question that really matters here: what did Menachem Mendel Schneerson actually want for the world?

Investigation 1 — Who Was Menachem Mendel Schneerson?

Before I can tell you what the Rebbe wanted for the world, we need to understand who Menachem Mendel Schneerson actually was. He wasn’t the founder of Chabad. The movement had already existed for roughly a century and a half before he became its seventh Rebbe. What Schneerson inherited in 1951 was an old Hasidic tradition. What developed under his leadership became something with an international reach that would eventually make his name known far beyond the Hasidic community.

Schneerson was born in 1902 in what was then the Russian Empire. His father, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Schneerson, was a prominent rabbinic and Kabbalistic scholar, and his mother was Chana Schneerson. He grew up immersed in Torah, Jewish law and mystical thought, but his education would eventually take him into a very different world as well. He studied mathematics, science and engineering in Europe, including electrical engineering in Paris. That combination matters because the man who eventually led Chabad was not approaching the modern technological world solely from the outside.

The twentieth century through which Schneerson lived was brutal. The Russian Revolution, Soviet repression of religion, the rise of Nazism, the Holocaust and the destruction of enormous portions of European Jewish life transformed the world from which Chabad had emerged. Schneerson and his wife, Chaya Mushka, eventually escaped Nazi-occupied Europe and arrived in the United States in 1941. By then, his father-in-law, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, had already relocated the center of Chabad to New York.

That relocation is important. Chabad’s center of gravity had moved from Eastern Europe into the United States, and specifically to Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Schneerson began working within his father-in-law’s institutions, particularly in areas involving education, publishing and outreach. When the sixth Rebbe died in 1950, Schneerson initially resisted formally accepting the leadership. In 1951, he became the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe.

This is where the story becomes especially important for our investigation. Schneerson inherited a movement that had survived extraordinary persecution and displacement. He could have responded by concentrating primarily on protecting what remained. Instead, his leadership became increasingly outward-facing. Rather than retreating from the modern world, Chabad expanded into it.

Schneerson encouraged followers to go where Jewish people were rather than waiting for those people to seek out Chabad. Couples were sent into cities, countries and communities far from Brooklyn. They established schools, synagogues, Chabad Houses, educational programs and community organizations. The emissary wasn’t supposed to arrive, conduct a temporary mission and then return home. In many cases, that place became home. The emissary raised a family there, built relationships there and established a permanent presence.

That helps explain why Schneerson is difficult to understand if we picture him simply as the rabbi of a congregation in Brooklyn. He remained physically centered at Chabad headquarters, yet the movement radiated outward from there. His influence traveled through people. The emissaries carried the teachings, priorities and mission into communities that Schneerson himself would never physically visit.

There is another unusual aspect of his leadership. Schneerson rarely traveled after assuming leadership of Chabad. He didn’t build the movement by flying from country to country establishing branches personally. People came to him. Politicians, businessmen, religious figures, academics and ordinary people sought meetings, correspondence, blessings and advice. Meanwhile, his emissaries were moving in the opposite direction, outward into the world.

His interest in modern technology also distinguished his leadership. Schneerson did not treat technological development simply as a threat to traditional religion. Radio, satellite communications, video and other technologies could be used to spread Torah and religious teaching farther than previous generations could have imagined. His talks could reach audiences well beyond the room in Brooklyn where he delivered them. Technology could become another instrument of religious mission.

This is where I have to resist looking backward from everything we’re eventually going to uncover. Knowing that this investigation will later reach politics and international institutions makes it tempting to reinterpret Schneerson’s entire life as though he were building a political machine from the beginning. The evidence doesn’t justify that. The foundation of what he was building was religious. The language was Torah, mitzvot, Godliness, redemption and Moshiach.

But religious does not mean small.

That’s what I had misunderstood when I began this investigation. Schneerson’s ambitions for Chabad cannot be measured merely by asking how many synagogues he wanted to build. He inherited a religious philosophy in which the physical world itself had a divine purpose, and he increasingly directed his followers toward carrying that mission outward into ordinary human life.

By the later decades of his leadership, the Rebbe had become much more than a local Hasidic leader. His followers regarded him as the spiritual center of an expanding international movement. His teachings reached communities around the world. His emissaries continued establishing new institutions, and his public message increasingly emphasized that every individual action could contribute toward transforming the world and bringing redemption closer.

Then came the messianic controversy. Particularly during the final years of Schneerson’s life, expectations surrounding Moshiach became increasingly intense within Chabad. Some followers came to believe Schneerson himself was the anticipated Messiah. After his death in 1994, that belief did not disappear among all of his followers. It remains a real division within Chabad, with some openly identifying Schneerson as Moshiach while others reject or avoid that declaration.

We need to distinguish that controversy from something much more firmly established. Whether Schneerson personally claimed to be the Messiah is a different question from whether he believed the messianic redemption was imminent and central to Chabad’s mission. The second point is much easier to establish. Moshiach and redemption were not side subjects within his later leadership. They were deeply connected to how he understood the purpose of the work being done in the present.

That brings us to the reason Schneerson matters so much to this investigation. He died in 1994, but the system he helped expand did not disappear with him. The emissaries remained. Their children became emissaries. Institutions continued growing. His recorded talks, letters and teachings continued providing direction. A movement centered around a living Rebbe became a worldwide movement continuing the mission of a Rebbe who was no longer physically present.

So before we encounter presidents, Congress, the United Nations or anything else later in this series, remember who we’re dealing with. Menachem Mendel Schneerson was a Hasidic rabbi shaped by traditional Jewish mysticism, educated in parts of the modern scientific and technological world, displaced by the catastrophes of twentieth-century Europe, and eventually placed at the center of a movement he helped turn outward on an international scale.

The next question is therefore much more important than whether Schneerson was personally powerful. We need to understand the idea underneath everything he was building. Why send thousands of people into the physical world instead of withdrawing from it? Why did ordinary physical actions carry such enormous spiritual importance?

To understand that, we have to understand what Chabad believed the physical world was actually for.

Investigation 2 — Why Was the Physical World So Important?

To understand Schneerson’s worldview, we have to start with something that may sound almost backwards to a lot of Christians. In Chabad thought, the physical world is not simply a temporary place we endure until we can finally leave it behind. Matter itself is not the enemy. The physical world is the place where God’s purpose is supposed to become visible.

The phrase commonly used is dirah betachtonim, a dwelling place for God in the lower realms. The basic idea is that God desired a world in which His presence could become revealed specifically within the lowest, most physical level of creation. The goal is not simply for the soul to escape upward toward God. The goal is for the world below to be transformed so that God’s presence is revealed within it.

That changes the meaning of ordinary life. If the physical world is supposed to become a dwelling place for God, then everyday actions become spiritually important. Eating, business, charity, marriage, family, education, work and material possessions can all become part of religious service depending on how they are used. The physical object itself is not automatically rejected. It can be redirected toward a divine purpose.

This helps explain Chabad’s emphasis on mitzvot, the commandments. A mitzvah is not merely a private spiritual exercise performed inside someone’s mind. Physical actions performed with physical objects can become part of revealing Godliness within creation. Lighting candles, giving charity, putting on tefillin, eating according to religious law and performing other commandments become part of the larger work of refining the world.

That word, refining, matters because Chabad theology develops from a much older Kabbalistic understanding of creation. God’s presence is not absent from the physical world, but it is concealed. Human beings live inside that concealment, and their religious task involves acting in ways that reveal the divine purpose already present within creation. The world is therefore not worthless because it is physical. It is incomplete because what is ultimately true about it remains hidden.

Once I understood that, Schneerson’s emphasis on practical action started making considerably more sense. Thinking about God was important, but thought alone did not complete the mission. Something had to happen here. A person had to act. A physical object had to be used. Another human being had to be helped. A place where God had previously been ignored could become connected to something holy.

This also helps explain why Schneerson could embrace parts of modern life rather than simply retreat from them. If the physical world itself is the arena in which God’s purpose is being worked out, then technology, commerce, communication and scientific discovery are not automatically outside the religious mission. They become additional parts of creation that human beings can potentially direct toward divine purposes.

A religious movement that believes holiness requires withdrawal from the material world might naturally view modern technology as contamination. Schneerson could look at the same technology and ask how it could be used to spread Torah farther and reach people who previously could not have been reached. The machine itself was not necessarily holy or evil. What mattered was what human beings did with it.

The same principle could apply to money and business. Money could be used selfishly, or it could support charity, education, religious institutions and outreach. Business could become an expression of greed, or it could become an environment in which someone behaved ethically and redirected material success toward religious purposes. The physical world did not have to disappear before holiness could exist within it. The physical world itself was supposed to be transformed.

This becomes extremely important for our investigation because it gives us a theological reason for Chabad’s interest in ordinary society before we ever begin talking about political influence. Society exists within the physical world. Education exists within it. Economics exists within it. Government exists within it. Technology exists within it. Human relationships exist within it. If God’s purpose concerns the transformation of physical existence, none of those areas is automatically religiously irrelevant.

That does not mean Schneerson wanted Chabad to control government, business, education or technology. We cannot jump from believing that something has religious importance to believing that Chabad therefore wanted political authority over it. Those are completely different claims, and we are going to keep them separate throughout this investigation.

It does mean that when we eventually encounter Chabad interacting with businessmen, politicians, scientists or modern technology, we should not automatically assume that the interaction represents a hidden political strategy. Chabad’s own theology already provides another explanation. If every part of physical existence can be directed toward revealing Godliness, then engaging the physical world rather than abandoning it makes perfect sense within the religion itself.

That explanation does not prove that every later interaction was purely religious, nor does it disprove any evidence of political influence we may eventually find. It simply gives us the proper starting point. Before calling something a political strategy, I want to know whether it already makes sense as religious practice. Before treating wealth as evidence of economic control, I want to understand how Chabad viewed material resources. Before interpreting technology as part of some system of global control, I want to understand why Schneerson believed modern inventions could serve a religious purpose.

This is why the physical world mattered so much. The ultimate goal was not simply to escape creation but to reveal God within creation. The material world was not merely the obstacle standing between humanity and redemption. It was the very place where the work leading toward redemption had to occur.

And once we understand that, the next part of Schneerson’s worldview becomes much easier to understand. If the physical world can actually be transformed through what human beings do within it, then redemption is no longer something humanity simply waits for. Human beings themselves can participate in preparing the world for what comes next.

That means redemption becomes something people can help bring about.

Investigation 3 — Redemption Was Something People Help Bring About

Once I understood why the physical world mattered, another piece of Schneerson’s theology became much clearer. If God’s purpose is to reveal Himself within this world, then the people living inside this world are not simply spectators waiting for God to finish the story. They have work to do. In Chabad thought, what human beings do in the present can actually help prepare the world for redemption.

That is a very important distinction because it changes the way we should understand the messianic expectation within Chabad. Moshiach wasn’t simply a future figure believers talked about while continuing ordinary religious life. The coming redemption gave ordinary religious life its urgency. A mitzvah performed today could contribute toward the condition of the world tomorrow. Human action became connected to the destination of history.

This idea did not begin with Schneerson. Chabad inherited a much older Hasidic and Kabbalistic tradition in which human beings participate in the spiritual refinement of creation. One of the foundational stories behind the Hasidic movement describes the Baal Shem Tov asking Moshiach when he would come and receiving the answer that it would happen when his teachings and “wellsprings” spread outward. Whatever someone outside that tradition thinks of the account, its importance within Hasidic thought is enormous because it connects the spreading of spiritual teaching directly with the coming redemption.

Schneerson inherited that idea and made it intensely practical. The spreading of Chassidic teaching was not merely about making Chabad larger. It carried messianic significance. Teaching another Jew, encouraging another mitzvah, establishing another center of Jewish life and carrying Chassidic teachings somewhere they had never reached before could all be understood as contributing toward the preparation of the world for Moshiach.

This helps explain the urgency behind the movement’s famous language of ufaratzta, spreading outward. The mission was supposed to move westward, eastward, northward and southward. The imagery itself suggests expansion beyond the place where the believer currently stands. Chabad’s outward movement therefore wasn’t simply an organizational strategy for gaining members. It was connected to a religious understanding that the work had to spread.

That distinction matters enormously for this investigation. If I looked only at the organizational result, I might see thousands of emissaries and institutions and conclude that Chabad was simply pursuing expansion for the sake of institutional power. But when I read the theology underneath the expansion, another explanation becomes unavoidable. The people doing the expanding believed the expansion itself contributed toward redemption.

That doesn’t make the expansion politically meaningless, and it certainly doesn’t mean we should ignore influence wherever we eventually find it. It means we need to understand motive correctly before assigning another motive to it. A missionary network can acquire relationships, resources and influence while still being genuinely motivated by religion. Those things are not mutually exclusive.

Schneerson repeatedly emphasized the importance of individual action because the enormous task of redemption was broken down into very small acts. One person performing one mitzvah mattered. One person giving charity mattered. One additional act of goodness mattered. The world could appear unimaginably large, but the individual was not therefore insignificant. A single action could help move the balance in the proper direction.

There is something powerful about that worldview because it removes the excuse that one ordinary person cannot possibly affect history. You don’t have to control a government. You don’t have to own a bank. You don’t have to become famous. You perform the act in front of you, and within this theology that act participates in something much larger than you can see.

Now imagine thousands of people living with that conviction.

Suddenly the emissary network makes even more sense. A couple moves halfway around the world, establishes a Chabad House and spends decades working in one community because the success of the mission isn’t measured only by immediate numbers. Every person reached, every mitzvah encouraged and every physical place brought into contact with religious life becomes another part of the larger work.

This is also where Schneerson’s emphasis on Moshiach became increasingly important. Particularly during the later years of his leadership, redemption was not discussed as though it belonged to some unimaginably distant future. There was urgency in the expectation. The world was supposed to prepare for Moshiach, and the work already being performed could help hasten that arrival.

That word “hasten” matters. It means the timetable is not understood only as something completely disconnected from human behavior. Human beings cannot simply manufacture Moshiach according to their own will, but their actions can prepare the world and help bring the redemption closer. The future and the present become connected.

For me, this explained something I had previously misunderstood about messianic movements. I had tended to think of people waiting for Messiah as passive. They wait for the sign. They wait for the prophecy. They wait for God to act. But Schneerson’s Chabad presented something much more active. Waiting itself was not enough. If redemption was close, that created more work, not less.

And that work wasn’t supposed to happen somewhere outside ordinary life. It happened through ordinary life because, as we saw in the previous investigation, the physical world was precisely where the transformation was supposed to occur. The theology fit together. God desires a dwelling place in the physical world. Human beings refine that physical world through their actions. Spreading Torah and Chassidic teaching extends that work outward. The accumulation of those actions helps prepare creation for redemption.

Now we can begin to understand why the movement could think globally without beginning from a political theory of global control. If the destination involves the world, then the mission naturally develops a worldwide horizon. The reason for reaching another city, another country or another person can be theological before it is political.

But that creates a question we cannot avoid.

What happens when a movement believes that humanity can help prepare the world for redemption and then develops an international network devoted to doing exactly that? What does the finished world look like? What are all these actions supposed to produce?

Because saying that human beings can help bring redemption closer only tells us how Chabad believed the process worked. It doesn’t tell us where the process was supposed to end.

To understand Schneerson’s vision, we now have to look at the destination.

What did he believe the redeemed world would actually look like?

Investigation 4 — What Does the Redeemed World Look Like?

If human beings are helping prepare the world for redemption, then we need to know what Schneerson believed they were preparing it for. This is where Chabad’s messianic vision becomes much more concrete. The destination wasn’t simply a world where more people attended synagogue, behaved better or became more spiritual. The ultimate vision was a transformed physical world in which God’s presence was no longer hidden in the way it is now.

That connects directly to what we have already learned about dirah betachtonim. If God’s purpose is to make the physical world a dwelling place for His presence, then redemption represents the completion of that purpose. The world doesn’t cease to exist. Human beings don’t simply abandon matter. The physical creation remains, but its relationship with God changes because the concealment that characterizes ordinary existence is overcome.

One of the clearest features of this future is knowledge of God. Chabad’s messianic teaching draws heavily from the biblical prophets and from Maimonides’ description of the messianic age. The final world is pictured as one in which knowledge of God fills the earth. Humanity doesn’t merely believe that God might exist. Divine reality becomes the defining truth through which the world understands itself.

That future is also associated with peace. Maimonides describes the messianic age as a time without famine or war, jealousy or competition, with material abundance available and humanity occupied with knowing God. Schneerson repeatedly treated these expectations seriously. Advances that reduced suffering, increased abundance or brought distant peoples into greater contact could therefore be viewed through a messianic lens, not because modern technology itself was Moshiach, but because a world moving away from scarcity, isolation and warfare could resemble conditions traditionally associated with redemption.

This is where Schneerson’s attitude toward science and technology becomes especially interesting. He did not necessarily see technological progress as evidence that humanity was becoming spiritually better. A machine can be used for good or evil. But technologies that connect the world, increase knowledge, reduce physical hardship or allow teachings to reach enormous audiences could be incorporated into the work of preparing the world for its ultimate purpose.

The same is true of material abundance. If people are constantly fighting merely to survive, much of human attention is consumed by scarcity. A world with greater abundance potentially frees people to devote themselves to higher purposes. Within this framework, economic and technological development can become part of the conditions through which humanity approaches a different kind of existence, provided those developments are directed toward the proper purpose.

But the redeemed world in Chabad thought isn’t simply a technologically advanced civilization where everybody becomes nicer to each other. It is explicitly religious. God is at the center of it. Torah remains at the center of it. Moshiach is real. The redemption of Israel is real. Jerusalem is real. And, as we’re going to examine next, the restoration of the Temple is not merely a poetic symbol for human progress.

That is an important guardrail because otherwise we could accidentally turn Schneerson’s vision into a modern secular utopia. He wasn’t simply predicting that science would eliminate poverty, governments would eliminate war and technology would connect humanity. Those developments could become useful or even significant within the process, but they were not the destination. The destination was a world consciously aligned with its Creator.

There is also something else here that becomes crucial for our investigation. The redeemed world isn’t envisioned as a world in which everybody becomes identical. Humanity remains humanity. Nations still exist within the prophetic picture. Jews remain Jews. Non-Jews remain non-Jews. The universal element is not that every distinction disappears, but that humanity ultimately recognizes a common divine reality.

That distinction will become extremely important when we get to the Noahide question. Schneerson did not need the entire world to convert to Judaism in order for his universal vision to work. There was already a theological framework within Judaism for understanding how non-Jews could serve God while remaining non-Jews. We are not going to unpack that framework yet, but it explains how a distinctly Jewish messianic vision could nevertheless have something to say about the future of everyone else.

And this is where I began seeing the scale of Schneerson’s vision more clearly. The objective wasn’t merely to expand Chabad. Chabad was an instrument within something larger. The objective was the redemption of creation itself. A Chabad House, an emissary, a mitzvah, a religious conversation, a technological broadcast or an act of charity mattered because each could be understood as contributing toward that destination.

That doesn’t mean every Chabad activity was consciously planned as one step in some giant centralized program. We need to be careful not to convert theology into an organizational flowchart. A worldview can motivate thousands of people without requiring somebody in Brooklyn to direct every individual action. In fact, the emissary model makes considerably more sense when we understand that people can share the same destination while working independently in thousands of different communities.

For our investigation, this creates a fascinating problem. A movement does not need to believe it “runs the world” in order to believe the world should ultimately become something very different from what it is today. Those are completely separate claims. Schneerson’s messianic vision can be universal without being evidence of political control.

But we should not minimize what “universal” means either. This wasn’t merely a vision for one synagogue, one neighborhood, one country or even only the Jewish people. The completed redemption concerns creation. It concerns humanity. It concerns the physical world itself becoming what Chabad believes God intended it to become.

And that means the ultimate destination has concrete religious features. The concealment of God gives way to knowledge of God. Conflict gives way to peace. Scarcity gives way to abundance. Humanity becomes oriented toward its Creator. Israel experiences redemption. Moshiach comes. Jerusalem occupies its prophetic place again.

And at the center of that restored Jerusalem stands something that cannot simply be explained away as a metaphor.

The Temple.

Investigation 5 — The Temple Wasn’t Symbolic

Once I understood what Schneerson meant by redemption, I ran into something that prevented me from treating his vision as merely a religious way of describing a better future. Peace could be interpreted broadly. Knowledge of God could be interpreted spiritually. Even the transformation of the physical world could be reduced to a metaphor if someone wanted to read it that way. But when Chabad described the messianic redemption, there was something much harder to turn into symbolism: the Temple in Jerusalem.

In Schneerson’s worldview, the coming of Moshiach was connected to the restoration of the Beit HaMikdash, the Holy Temple. This wasn’t simply a metaphor for humanity becoming more spiritual. Chabad’s messianic teaching draws directly from traditional Jewish expectations in which Moshiach gathers the Jewish people, restores the proper order of Torah life and the Temple is rebuilt in Jerusalem. The future was spiritual, but it was also physical.

That matters because it brings us right back to the idea we started with. If God’s purpose is ultimately revealed within the physical world, then the culmination of redemption cannot exist only inside someone’s heart. Chabad’s theology expects the physical world itself to reflect that redemption. Jerusalem matters. Israel matters. Moshiach matters. The Temple matters. These aren’t simply symbols representing a psychological transformation within the believer.

From a Christian perspective, this is obviously going to sound very different from how many Christians understand the Temple after Jesus. I don’t want to turn this investigation into a Christian-versus-Jewish theological debate, because that isn’t what we’re trying to determine. What matters here is understanding Chabad on its own terms. If I want to know what Schneerson wanted for the world, I can’t replace his expectation with my own interpretation of biblical prophecy and then pretend I have explained what he believed.

Within traditional Jewish messianic expectation, the restoration of the Temple belongs to the redemption itself. Maimonides’ description of Moshiach became particularly important within Schneerson’s teaching. The messianic king restores Israel’s religious order, gathers the dispersed Jewish people and is associated with rebuilding the Temple in its place. Schneerson treated this framework seriously rather than reducing Moshiach to an age of generalized human kindness.

That makes the physical nature of Chabad’s redemption impossible to ignore. Earlier we saw that the physical world is supposed to become a dwelling place for God. Now we see that the culmination of that process includes an actual sacred center within the physical world. The redeemed future isn’t humanity leaving earth behind. It is a transformed world in which God’s presence is openly recognized within creation.

This also helps explain why Jerusalem and the Land of Israel carry significance that goes beyond ordinary nationalism within this worldview. A purely political interpretation would see territory, sovereignty and government. A religious interpretation sees biblical promises and messianic expectation layered onto those same physical places. That doesn’t mean every political event involving Israel should be interpreted as part of a Chabad messianic strategy. It means that when Chabad speaks about the future, geography itself can carry theological meaning.

I need to make that distinction because this is another place where an investigation like ours could get out of control very quickly. The fact that Chabad expects a rebuilt Temple does not establish that Chabad controls Israeli policy. It does not establish a secret plan to destroy existing holy sites. It does not establish that wealthy Chabad supporters are purchasing land for Moshiach. We have not established any of those claims, and traditional belief in a future Temple cannot be used as evidence for them.

What we can establish is that the destination Schneerson taught was concrete. The messianic future wasn’t merely “people become better.” It contained identifiable elements inherited from Jewish tradition. Moshiach comes. The Jewish people experience redemption. The dispersed are gathered. Jerusalem assumes its messianic importance. The Temple is restored. Humanity increasingly recognizes God, and the physical world becomes capable of revealing divine reality in a way it presently does not.

That also helps us understand why Schneerson’s intense focus on Moshiach matters to this investigation. If Moshiach were simply another word for gradual social improvement, then the movement’s messianic language could be interpreted almost entirely as inspirational rhetoric. But if Moshiach refers to an expected person and redemption includes concrete events within history, then the urgency surrounding preparation for Moshiach takes on a much more literal meaning.

This is where some of Schneerson’s followers eventually went further. As expectations intensified, particularly toward the end of his life, some came to believe that Schneerson himself was the person who would fulfill that messianic role. That belief became especially controversial after his death in 1994 because some followers continued to identify him as Moshiach. We need to keep that claim separate from Schneerson’s broader teaching. The fact that some followers identified the Rebbe as Messiah does not by itself establish that Schneerson publicly declared himself to be Messiah.

What is much harder to dispute is the centrality of redemption to the movement he led. Schneerson repeatedly urged people to prepare for Moshiach and understood present religious action as contributing toward the coming redemption. The destination wasn’t supposed to remain forever in the distance. The work being done now was connected to the world that believers expected to come.

And that is the part I want us to remember as this investigation continues. We are dealing with people who can genuinely believe that an ordinary act performed today participates in preparing humanity for an actual future redemption. You don’t need a secret conspiracy to explain why someone with that belief would devote an entire lifetime to spreading the mission. The theology itself supplies an extraordinarily powerful motivation.

But now we arrive at the question that took this investigation beyond the boundaries I originally expected. If redemption involves the world, what happens to everyone who isn’t Jewish? If Moshiach represents a transformed human future rather than merely the restoration of one religious community, then billions of Gentiles have to fit somewhere within that picture.

Schneerson had an answer to that question, and it did not require the nations to become Jewish.

Instead, the mission expanded beyond the Jewish people.

Investigation 6 — Then the Mission Expands Beyond Jews

This is where Schneerson’s vision became much more important to my investigation. Up until this point, almost everything we have discussed could remain within the boundaries of Judaism. Chabad could spread across the world, establish thousands of communities and prepare for Moshiach while still directing its mission primarily toward Jewish people. But that was not the complete vision. Schneerson believed the nations had a role in the redeemed world too.

The important thing to understand is that his answer was not conversion. Schneerson was not teaching that the billions of non-Jews on earth needed to become Jews before redemption could occur. Within the traditional Jewish framework he emphasized, Jews and Gentiles have different covenantal responsibilities. Jews are obligated to the commandments of Torah applicable to them, while the nations are associated with a more universal framework traditionally traced back to Noah.

This is where the Seven Noahide Laws enter our investigation. Traditionally, they are understood as broad categories involving the rejection of idolatry and blasphemy, prohibitions against murder, theft, forbidden sexual relationships and cruelty involving the flesh of a living animal, along with the requirement to establish systems of justice. We are going to examine the content and possible legal implications of those categories much later. Right now, what matters is why Schneerson thought Chabad should care whether Gentiles observed them.

That question turns out to be extremely important because Schneerson did not treat the Noahide framework merely as an interesting Jewish teaching about what non-Jews happened to be responsible for. He argued that Jews themselves had a responsibility to encourage non-Jews toward these universal commandments. Scholar Naftali Loewenthal describes this as an unusually outward-looking development within postwar Orthodox Judaism because it gave observant Jews responsibility for the moral and spiritual condition of society beyond the Jewish community.

That caught my attention immediately. I had entered this investigation assuming Chabad’s worldwide network existed primarily because Jewish people were scattered throughout the world. Send a rabbi wherever Jews live, establish a Chabad House and strengthen Jewish observance. That still explains a major part of the emissary system, but it doesn’t explain everything Schneerson believed his followers were responsible for doing.

The surrounding Gentile society mattered too.

Schneerson’s reasoning was connected to the circumstances of the modern world. Earlier Jewish communities often lived under governments where openly teaching religious principles to the surrounding Gentile population could have been dangerous or impossible. Schneerson believed modern societies, particularly those providing freedom of religion and speech, created opportunities that previous generations did not possess. If Jews now had the freedom to communicate these principles peacefully, he believed that responsibility could actually be acted upon.

This is also where one word in the historical discussion requires context. Schneerson’s interpretation of Maimonides sometimes employed traditional language about Jews being obligated to “compel” humanity toward the Noahide commandments. Read by itself, especially in modern English, that can sound immediately political or coercive. But Loewenthal’s discussion is important because he notes that Schneerson also addressed circumstances where coercion was not possible and spoke instead about persuasion. In the modern Chabad campaign, what we can document at this stage is outreach, teaching and persuasion. Whether that religious framework was ever carried toward governmental enforcement is a separate question for later episodes.

That distinction prevents us from jumping ahead of the evidence. A rabbi telling a Gentile that God expects him not to murder, steal or worship idols is religious evangelism. A government enforcing a religious prohibition because a rabbi says God commanded it would be something very different. We cannot collapse those two things simply because they originate from the same theology.

But neither should we minimize what Schneerson was saying. His mission had crossed an important boundary. Chabad’s responsibility was not understood solely as preserving Jewish religious life. There was now an explicit universal component. Jews had their mission, Gentiles had their obligations, and Chabad believed it had a responsibility to communicate those obligations beyond the Jewish community.

This helps us understand the redeemed world we examined in the previous investigation. Schneerson did not envision Moshiach arriving to rule over a planet in which billions of Gentiles suddenly became Jews. The distinction remained. Jews would serve God through their covenantal responsibilities, while the nations would serve God according to theirs. Humanity could therefore move toward a common recognition of the Creator without becoming one undifferentiated religious population.

That is an important correction to the idea that Chabad was trying to create one world religion. What I found does not fit that description very well. Schneerson’s system preserves distinctions rather than eliminating them. The universal element is the recognition of God and a basic moral order, not the conversion of every human being into a Lubavitcher Hasid.

But think about what this means for our investigation. Once a religious movement believes it has a God-given responsibility to communicate moral principles to all humanity, its interaction with the world outside Judaism becomes much easier to understand. Talking to non-Jews isn’t necessarily an accidental side effect of operating internationally. It can become part of the mission itself.

And this is where I had to remind myself of the standard we established in Part 1. A universal religious mission is not evidence of universal political control. Christianity has carried its message across nations for two thousand years without that fact alone proving that Christians secretly control every government where missionaries operate. The same standard has to apply here. Chabad’s universal ambitions tell us what it wants people to believe and how it wants people to live. They do not tell us how much political power Chabad actually possesses.

At the same time, I could no longer tell myself that Chabad’s relationship with Gentile society was irrelevant to understanding the movement. Schneerson himself had made it relevant. The Noahide campaign gave Chabad a theological reason to speak beyond the Jewish community about God, morality and the proper ordering of human life.

That was the moment the scope of the investigation changed for me. I had started by asking why a Jewish movement had spread so widely. Now I understood that the movement’s destination wasn’t simply a world filled with stronger Jewish communities. 

Schneerson’s vision contained a place for the moral transformation of humanity itself.

And once I understood that, the next question became unavoidable. If the Rebbe believed the nations should remain nations and Gentiles should remain Gentiles, what exactly did he believe their place was in the world he was trying to prepare for Moshiach?

That is where the distinction between Jews and Gentiles becomes absolutely essential.

Investigation 7 — Gentiles Were Not Supposed to Become Jews

This distinction is one of the most important things I found while trying to understand Schneerson’s universal vision. If Chabad believed it had a responsibility toward the entire world, my first instinct was to interpret that through the missionary model I already understood. Christianity goes into the nations seeking converts. If Chabad was carrying a message to Gentiles, was the ultimate objective to bring Gentiles into Judaism? The answer I found was no.

In Schneerson’s framework, a Gentile did not need to become Jewish in order to have a proper relationship with God. In fact, the system depended upon the distinction remaining. Jewish people had their covenantal responsibilities, traditionally expressed through the 613 commandments, while non-Jews had a different set of universal responsibilities associated with Noah. The goal wasn’t to erase the distinction between Israel and the nations. The goal was for both to fulfill the responsibilities Chabad believed God had assigned to them.

That changes the way we should understand the Noahide campaign. If conversion isn’t the objective, then success cannot simply be measured by how many people join Chabad or become Jewish. A non-Jew could hear the message, accept the existence and authority of the Creator, live according to the Noahide framework and remain exactly what he was ethnically and nationally. From within this worldview, that person would not be an unfinished convert waiting to become Jewish. He could be fulfilling the role expected of a non-Jew.

This is why describing Schneerson’s universal vision as a plan to convert the world to Judaism would be misleading. The vision was universal, but it wasn’t uniform. Humanity was supposed to recognize one God without humanity becoming one people. Jews and Gentiles could share a moral relationship to the Creator while continuing to have different religious obligations.

That also tells us something important about the kind of world Schneerson expected after redemption. The messianic future wasn’t supposed to eliminate the nations. Traditional Jewish expectations about Moshiach preserve Israel’s distinct role while also envisioning the nations coming to recognize and serve God. The prophets repeatedly contain this combination of particular and universal themes, and Chabad’s messianic worldview operates inside that tension rather than eliminating either side of it.

This is where the phrase “one world religion” can actually confuse the investigation. If by that phrase someone means that every religion disappears and every person becomes part of the same religious institution, the evidence we have examined doesn’t support that description of Schneerson’s program. Chabad wasn’t asking Gentiles to become Hasidic Jews, put on tefillin, observe every Jewish dietary commandment or assume the entire covenantal obligation of Torah.

But there is another side to this that we shouldn’t ignore. Saying Gentiles didn’t need to become Jews does not mean Schneerson believed every religious belief or practice was equally acceptable. The Noahide framework still makes claims about God, worship, morality, sexuality, justice, human life and human behavior. It therefore presents a universal moral standard even while rejecting universal conversion.

That is a much more precise way of describing what I found. Schneerson wasn’t proposing that everyone become Jewish. He was proposing that there are divine standards that apply to everyone.

Those are two very different ideas.

This distinction also explains why Chabad could approach non-Jewish political leaders, businesspeople, educators and ordinary citizens without necessarily trying to recruit them into Judaism. If the responsibility toward Gentiles concerned universal moral principles rather than conversion, Chabad could speak to someone as a Christian, Muslim or person with no Jewish background and still believe there was something religiously important to communicate to them.

That makes the movement’s potential audience enormous. Jewish outreach naturally follows Jewish populations. Noahide outreach potentially follows humanity. Once the responsibility is understood that way, geography becomes much less limiting because a place doesn’t need a large Jewish population for the surrounding society to matter within the universal side of Schneerson’s vision.

Again, none of this establishes political control. It is important that we keep saying that because the theology itself is significant enough without exaggerating it. A movement believing that God has given all humanity moral obligations does not prove that movement possesses the power to impose those obligations. Christians and Muslims also make universal claims about truth and morality. Believing something should apply to humanity and possessing governmental authority to enforce it are completely different things.

But this distinction creates a question that will become increasingly important later in the series. If conversion isn’t required, how is the universal moral vision supposed to spread? If Gentiles don’t need to enter Chabad institutions or become Jewish, then the ideas themselves can travel independently of religious membership. A person could encounter the moral teaching through education, public discussion, books, media, relationships or conversations with people already connected to the movement.

That may help explain why Schneerson emphasized persuasion and education. You don’t necessarily need someone to change his religious identity before influencing how he thinks about morality. You teach the principle. You explain why you believe it is universal. You encourage the person to live by it while allowing him to remain outside Judaism.

There is another consequence of this structure that I don’t want to lose. Chabad’s vision of unity isn’t necessarily sameness. The world can become unified in recognizing God while retaining different peoples, nations and responsibilities. That is quite different from imagining one global religious institution controlling everybody from the top.

Understanding that protects us from forcing the evidence into the conspiracy theory we are supposed to be testing. If I went into this determined to find a secret plan to make everybody Jewish, the actual theology would contradict me. I have to let it do that. If evidence weakens the theory, it belongs in the investigation just as much as evidence that strengthens a concern.

At the same time, the evidence leaves us with something more interesting than a worldwide conversion campaign. Schneerson believed a Jewish movement had a responsibility to communicate a divinely grounded moral framework to people who would never become Jewish. That means the mission could move beyond synagogue walls without requiring the people it reached to enter those walls.

And now the enormous Chabad emissary network starts looking different. The shliach wasn’t necessarily being sent across the world simply to increase the membership of Chabad. He was being sent into a physical place that Chabad believed could be transformed, into a Jewish community that could be strengthened, and into a wider society whose moral condition could also matter within the larger work of redemption.

So the next question isn’t simply why Chabad wanted more followers. That question is too small.

The question is why Schneerson believed emissaries needed to go almost everywhere.

Investigation 8 — Why Send Emissaries Everywhere?

Once I understood the theology behind Chabad’s mission, the worldwide network of emissaries started making much more sense. If the physical world is supposed to be transformed, if individual actions help prepare that world for redemption, and if the responsibility extends in some form beyond the Jewish people, then staying in Brooklyn would never have been enough. The mission had to move outward.

Chabad calls these emissaries shluchim, from the Hebrew word for an agent or messenger. A married couple might leave the community where they were raised and move somewhere with very little established Jewish infrastructure. They might go to a major city, a university campus, a tourist destination or a place with only a small Jewish population. Rather than visiting temporarily, many build their lives there, raise their families there and spend decades developing a permanent local presence.

That is what makes the system so effective. Schneerson did not simply send traveling preachers around the world to conduct meetings and then return home. The emissary becomes part of the community. He learns the people, develops relationships, performs weddings and funerals, teaches children, organizes holidays, helps travelers, counsels families and gradually builds an institution around those relationships. The movement expands through permanent human presence.

But the structure is not as centralized financially as someone might assume from looking at the Chabad name. Research into the movement shows that emissaries can receive initial assistance, guidance, educational materials and institutional support from the larger Chabad network, but local operations commonly depend heavily upon local fundraising. A Chabad House may carry the international identity of Chabad while functioning financially through donors in its own community.

That distinction matters because it changes the picture of how this worldwide network was built. We are not necessarily looking at one enormous treasury in Brooklyn paying every rabbi’s salary and financing every building around the planet. The model is closer to multiplication. Establish a local emissary, develop relationships, attract supporters, build a local financial base and allow that center to establish itself within the community.

Once that happens thousands of times, the result can look remarkably powerful from the outside without requiring one central command structure controlling every dollar and every decision. The emissaries share theology, identity, teachings and allegiance to the Rebbe’s mission, but they operate inside very different local environments. That combination of ideological unity and operational decentralization is important to understanding Chabad correctly.

It also explains why relationships become so important. A shliach entering a community doesn’t begin with political authority or enormous financial resources. He begins with people. If one of those people happens to be a successful businessman, philanthropist, mayor, university official or government leader, the relationship can eventually give the local Chabad institution access and resources that it didn’t possess when the emissary first arrived.

We found examples of exactly this kind of relationship in the material we examined. In Baku, Rabbi Berel Lazar sought assistance from businessman Lev Leviev, and the relationships surrounding that work eventually reached Azerbaijan’s political leadership. In Budapest, Chabad’s development included cooperation with local authorities and donor support. These examples don’t prove that emissaries were secretly dispatched to capture governments or recruit billionaires. They show something more ordinary and, in some ways, more powerful: permanent local relationships can accumulate influence over time.

This is why I don’t think we should describe the shliach simply as a missionary. Missionary is partly correct, but it doesn’t capture the whole function. The emissary can become rabbi, teacher, counselor, organizer, fundraiser, community representative and connector at the same time. After twenty or thirty years in one place, those relationships can extend across business, education, philanthropy and government simply because those are the people who make up the community.

And there is another feature of the system that struck me. The shliach doesn’t necessarily need a large organization around him before beginning the work. A husband and wife can become the starting point. They build relationships first and infrastructure later. That makes the model highly adaptable because Chabad doesn’t need to construct a massive institution before establishing a presence somewhere new.

The theological motivation behind this is just as important as the organizational model. If someone genuinely believes he has been sent to a particular place as part of preparing the world for redemption, failure looks different. A difficult assignment isn’t simply a bad career move. Living far from family isn’t simply an inconvenience. Raising children in a remote location isn’t simply a lifestyle choice. The mission can be understood as sacred work connected to something much larger than the individual emissary.

That kind of conviction produces persistence. An ordinary corporation might close an unprofitable branch. A religious emissary can remain because success isn’t measured only by revenue. One family helped, one person brought back into Jewish observance, one child educated or one additional mitzvah performed can justify continuing the work because each action has significance within the larger religious vision.

Schneerson also taught that people do not arrive in particular places accidentally. Chabad teachings could interpret travel, business and relocation themselves as opportunities for divine service. If a person found himself somewhere distant from Jewish life, the question wasn’t necessarily, “Why am I stuck here?” It could become, “What am I supposed to accomplish here?” That mentality turns geography into mission territory without requiring a conventional headquarters to micromanage every movement.

This is where the worldwide map of Chabad becomes easier to understand. From the outside, someone could look at thousands of Chabad centers and immediately see an international power structure. From inside the theology, those same dots on the map represent something else: physical places where the work of refinement is being carried out. Both observations can matter, but they answer different questions.

The network undeniably creates influence because networks create influence. Thousands of permanent representatives spread across countries, cities and institutions inevitably develop relationships. Some of those relationships will reach wealthy individuals. Some will reach politicians. Some will reach universities. Some will reach international organizations. But the existence of those relationships does not prove that the original purpose of sending the emissaries was secretly to capture those institutions.

That is precisely why I want to keep motive and effect separate. The religious motive is well documented. Schneerson wanted the teachings and practices of Chabad carried outward, Jewish life strengthened wherever Jews could be reached, and the larger world moved toward the conditions associated with redemption. The resulting network can then produce social, financial and political access whether or not those forms of access were the original reason an emissary arrived.

And now we are approaching another piece of the system that made this expansion possible on a scale previous generations could barely have imagined. Schneerson inherited a movement that believed its teachings needed to spread outward, but he lived at the exact moment when humanity developed machines capable of carrying a voice, an image and a message across the planet almost instantly.

He did not run away from those machines. He saw a reason to use them.

Investigation 9 — Why Embrace Technology?

By this point, another part of Schneerson’s worldview started falling into place. If Chabad believed its teachings needed to spread outward, if emissaries were supposed to reach distant communities, and if human action could help prepare the physical world for redemption, then technology presented an extraordinary opportunity. A new invention did not necessarily represent competition with religion. It could become another instrument for accomplishing the mission.

That attitude makes much more sense when we remember what we learned about the physical world. Schneerson did not teach that holiness required abandoning matter. The question was what human beings did with matter. The same principle could therefore be applied to a printing press, telephone, radio, satellite transmission, computer or any other communication technology. The device itself could serve destructive purposes, or it could be redirected toward something Chabad considered holy.

This wasn’t merely Chabad adapting reluctantly because modern technology had become unavoidable. Schneerson had an unusual personal background for a Hasidic religious leader. Before becoming Rebbe, he had spent years in European academic environments studying mathematics, science and engineering. That did not make him a scientist in the modern professional sense, and I don’t want to exaggerate his credentials, but it does matter that he was comfortable engaging scientific and technological subjects rather than treating them as automatically hostile to religious belief.

Eli Rubin’s study of Chabad thought helps explain the deeper theology behind this attitude. Schneerson could speak about scientific discovery and technological invention as developments that ultimately existed within God’s creation and therefore could be incorporated into divine service. Human beings might invent the machine, but within this worldview the possibilities contained within creation ultimately came from God. The important question became whether humanity would use those possibilities for concealment or revelation.

That makes communication technology particularly important. If spreading Chassidic teaching was connected to preparing the world for redemption, then a technology capable of carrying those teachings across enormous distances had obvious religious value. Previous generations needed a teacher physically present in a town. Modern communications could allow one teaching to reach thousands of people in different locations at nearly the same time.

Think about how dramatic that change would have appeared during Schneerson’s lifetime. He was born in 1902, when global communication was still limited compared with anything we know today, and he lived until 1994, when satellite television, international broadcasting, computers and rapidly expanding telecommunications had already transformed the planet. He watched humanity become capable of communicating across distances that had separated communities for centuries.

From Chabad’s perspective, that wasn’t merely technological progress. It could become religious opportunity. If the mission was to spread outward, humanity had suddenly constructed the machinery necessary to spread farther than any earlier Hasidic teacher could have imagined.

That is why I think we have to be extremely careful when interpreting Chabad’s enthusiasm for technology. In the kind of investigation we are conducting, it would be very easy to see religion combined with global communications and immediately start talking about technological control. But that isn’t what the evidence establishes. There is a much more direct explanation sitting openly inside Chabad’s theology: technology could help carry the message.

This becomes especially interesting when we return to the old Hasidic image of the “wellsprings” spreading outward. For generations, that meant teachings moving through books, teachers, students and communities. Modern communications radically changed what “outward” could mean. A message no longer had to travel at the speed of a horse, ship or individual messenger. Eventually it could cross continents almost instantly.

Printing had already played an enormous role in Chabad before Schneerson. His predecessor, Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Schneersohn, invested heavily in publishing and institutional education. Schneerson expanded that outward-facing approach in an era when electronic communication offered possibilities far beyond printed books. The medium changed, but the religious logic remained remarkably consistent: take the teaching and move it farther outward.

There is another reason technology fit the worldview so well. Chabad’s theology teaches that apparently ordinary physical things can contain possibilities for divine service that are not immediately visible. A machine designed for secular communication can become a vehicle for Torah. A broadcast system built for entertainment can transmit religious teaching. A computer developed for commerce, science or government can eventually become a tool for education and outreach.

That is essentially the same theological pattern we have been following throughout this episode. The physical world appears ordinary, but it can be redirected toward divine purpose. Money can become charity. A building can become a Chabad House. A business trip can become an opportunity to perform a mitzvah. A communication network can become a means of spreading religious teaching.

The technology therefore doesn’t sit outside the theology. It fits inside it.

And this becomes even more important when we think about Schneerson’s physical location. He remained centered in Crown Heights while the movement expanded internationally. The Rebbe did not personally need to travel from country to country for his teachings to travel. Emissaries carried them physically, publishing carried them through text, and modern communications increasingly allowed his voice and image to move outward while he remained in Brooklyn.

That combination is powerful. You have a central religious teacher who remains physically rooted in one location, thousands of emissaries establishing permanent communities elsewhere, and communications technology allowing teachings and messages to circulate throughout the expanding network. None of that requires a hidden command center. It is visible organizational infrastructure built around a shared religious mission.

Technology also helped create something previous generations could not achieve as easily: simultaneity. People separated by thousands of miles could increasingly hear the same message at approximately the same time. That matters to any international movement because it helps maintain a common identity across enormous geographic distances. Local Chabad centers could be operationally independent in many respects while remaining connected to the same Rebbe, teachings and sense of mission.

Again, that creates real organizational power. I don’t want to pretend otherwise simply because the motivation was religious. Communications technology allows movements to coordinate, preserve identity, mobilize supporters and spread ideas. Those capabilities can produce influence. But influence produced through an openly used communications network is not evidence that the network was created for secret technological control.

The distinction becomes especially important because later in this series we are going to encounter Chabad relationships with people and institutions involved in business, finance, government and international affairs. If I begin with the assumption that every modern tool Chabad touches must be part of a hidden control structure, I can make almost anything look sinister. That would destroy the investigation because the conclusion would already be built into the method.

What the evidence supports at this point is much simpler and much more interesting. Schneerson believed the physical world could be elevated toward divine purpose. He believed religious teachings needed to spread outward. He believed individual human actions helped prepare the world for redemption. Modern technology dramatically increased the ability to communicate, educate and connect people across distance. From inside that worldview, embracing those technologies was almost inevitable.

And now the pieces of Part 2 are coming together. The physical world matters because it is where God’s purpose is supposed to become revealed. Human action matters because people participate in preparing that world for redemption. Moshiach and the Temple make the destination concrete. The nations matter because redemption ultimately concerns humanity rather than Jews alone. Emissaries spread the mission geographically, while technology allows the message to spread beyond the physical reach of any individual emissary.

Taken together, this is no longer merely a collection of unusual religious beliefs. It is a coherent worldview with a destination and a method for moving the world toward that destination.

So now we can finally ask the question that has been sitting underneath this entire episode. What was Menachem Mendel Schneerson actually trying to accomplish?

Was he trying to change the world?

Investigation 10 — Was Schneerson Trying to Change the World?

After following Schneerson’s theology this far, I think the answer to this question is yes. He was trying to change the world. But that answer needs an immediate qualification, because saying Schneerson wanted to change the world is not the same as saying he wanted to control the world. Those are completely different claims, and confusing them would destroy the distinction this investigation has been trying to maintain.

What I found was a religious leader whose vision extended far beyond maintaining an existing Jewish community. Schneerson wanted Jews to become more observant, Chassidic teachings to spread outward, emissaries to establish permanent communities throughout the world, physical life to become directed toward divine purposes and non-Jews to recognize the universal obligations he believed God had given humanity. All of this was connected to an expected messianic redemption that he believed human beings could help prepare the world to receive.

That is an enormous vision. It would be misleading to reduce it to synagogue attendance or Jewish community preservation. Schneerson believed history was moving toward a destination. He believed human behavior mattered to that destination. He believed the physical world itself was supposed to be transformed, and he organized a movement around getting people to participate in that transformation.

The word “change” therefore isn’t something I am imposing upon Chabad from the outside. The theology itself is transformational. The world in its present condition is not the world as it ultimately should be. God’s presence remains concealed. Human beings misuse the physical creation. People live without recognizing their Creator. War, suffering, moral disorder and spiritual confusion remain. Redemption represents a world in which those conditions are fundamentally different.

Schneerson’s answer was not to wait passively for God to fix everything. The individual was supposed to act. The Jew performs another mitzvah. The emissary travels somewhere new. The teacher reaches another student. The businessman uses his resources for something holy. The printing press produces another religious text. The communications system carries another teaching. The non-Jew is encouraged toward the universal moral responsibilities Schneerson associated with the children of Noah. Each action is small, but within the worldview we have examined, those actions accumulate toward something much larger.

This is why I think it would also be a mistake to treat Chabad’s worldwide expansion as though growth itself were the final objective. Organizations naturally want to survive and expand, and Chabad is certainly an institution with institutional interests. But the sources we examined give us a religious explanation for why expansion mattered beyond simply making Chabad bigger. Spreading outward was connected to preparing the world for redemption.

That distinction changes the question I originally brought into this investigation. I started with people making extraordinary claims about Chabad’s power, and I wanted to know whether there was evidence that this relatively small Hasidic movement somehow stood behind governments, wealthy families and international institutions. Part 2 doesn’t answer that question, because we haven’t investigated those relationships yet. What Part 2 establishes is something that has to come first: Chabad possessed a worldview that gave it a reason to engage the world.

That is significant because there are two opposite mistakes we could make here. The first would be to say that because Chabad’s motivation is religious, any political, financial or institutional influence we eventually discover must therefore be harmless or irrelevant. That doesn’t follow. Religious movements can exercise enormous political influence while sincerely believing they are serving God.

The opposite mistake would be to say that because Chabad wanted to transform the world, every relationship it developed must therefore have been part of a secret plan for world domination. That doesn’t follow either. Christianity wants the Gospel preached throughout the world. Islam makes universal claims about humanity. Secular political philosophies seek to transform societies. Environmental movements seek global changes in human behavior. 

A universal vision does not automatically equal a conspiracy.

What makes Schneerson interesting is the particular combination of ideas we have uncovered. He believed the physical world had a divine purpose. He believed human actions helped reveal that purpose. He believed spreading Chassidic teachings contributed toward redemption. He expected an actual Moshiach and the restoration of the Temple. He believed the nations had responsibilities before God without needing to become Jewish. He built an international emissary movement, and he embraced modern methods capable of carrying that mission farther than previous generations could have imagined.

Those ideas fit together. They aren’t ten unrelated facts about an unusual rabbi. They form a coherent understanding of history in which the world has a purpose, humanity has responsibilities and present actions help prepare creation for a future messianic condition.

That means when Schneerson encouraged people to affect their communities, he wasn’t merely offering motivational advice. The community mattered because the world mattered. When he sent emissaries abroad, geography mattered because the mission was supposed to spread. When he encouraged non-Jews toward universal moral principles, society outside Judaism mattered because redemption extended beyond the Jewish people. When he embraced technology, communication mattered because the teachings needed to reach outward.

So yes, Schneerson was trying to change the world, but based on what we have examined so far, the mechanism begins with religious transformation rather than political conquest. Change the person. Change the home. Change the community. Spread the teaching. Perform the commandment. Establish another center. Reach another person. Use another physical resource for what Chabad understands as God’s purpose. Multiply that process across enough places and the world itself begins to change.

There is something else about this model that I think we need to carry into the rest of the series. A movement doesn’t necessarily need centralized control over everyone participating in it if those people share the same worldview. Thousands of individuals can make independent decisions while moving in approximately the same direction because they believe in the same mission. That is not evidence of conspiracy. It is one of the ordinary ways religion, culture and ideology produce coordinated social effects without requiring somebody at the top to issue instructions for every action.

That observation may become important when we eventually start mapping Chabad’s relationships. If we find a businessman supporting one Chabad institution, a politician attending another, an emissary speaking with a government official and a wealthy donor financing a project somewhere else, we cannot simply draw lines between all of them and announce that we have discovered centralized control. We will have to determine what the relationship actually is, what was requested, what was accomplished and whether influence can be demonstrated.

But Part 2 has given us a reason to follow those relationships. Schneerson wasn’t teaching his followers to seal themselves inside Crown Heights and wait for Moshiach. His vision pointed outward. The world was the arena. Human action was the method. Redemption was the destination.

And the mission did not end at the boundary between Jews and everyone else. Schneerson believed there were moral principles intended for humanity itself. He believed Jews had some responsibility to communicate those principles, and he believed the modern world had created opportunities for that responsibility to be exercised openly.

That leaves us at a very different place from where we began this episode. I no longer need a conspiracy theory to explain why Chabad would be interested in society beyond Judaism. Schneerson’s own theology explains it. The harder question is what happened when that theology left the synagogue and encountered actual political power.

Because eventually the language of the Seven Noahide Laws did not remain only in Chabad books, speeches and religious conversations.

It reached Washington.

Ending — What Happens When a Universal Religious Vision Reaches Government?

At the beginning of this episode, I wanted to understand belief before following power. I think that was necessary because without understanding Schneerson’s worldview, almost everything we are about to investigate could be interpreted incorrectly. A photograph with a president could become proof of control. A wealthy donor could become proof of a financial conspiracy. A meeting with a government official could become proof of hidden authority. Before making any of those leaps, I needed to know what Chabad actually believed it was trying to accomplish.

Now I think we have an answer. Schneerson believed the physical world had a divine purpose. He believed human beings could participate in preparing that world for redemption. He believed Chassidic teachings should spread outward, Moshiach would actually come, the Temple would be restored, and humanity would ultimately recognize its Creator. He also believed that this future included non-Jews without requiring them to become Jews.

That last part changes everything about where this investigation goes next. Once the mission extends beyond the Jewish people, Chabad has a theological reason to speak about the moral condition of society itself. The Seven Noahide Laws provide the framework for that responsibility. They aren’t simply commandments for members of Chabad, nor are they commandments intended to turn Gentiles into Jews. Within Schneerson’s understanding, they represent divine principles that already apply to humanity.

At this stage, that is still a religious claim. A religious leader can believe God has established universal moral laws without possessing any authority to make governments recognize them. A rabbi can teach the Noahide laws to a non-Jew without creating public policy. An emissary can persuade someone to follow them without creating legislation. We need to preserve those distinctions because the next part of this investigation is where those boundaries begin to matter.

What happens when the religious leader no longer speaks only to his own followers? What happens when his representatives begin developing relationships with elected officials? What happens when presidents publicly praise the moral framework he is promoting? What happens when Congress begins putting the words “Seven Noahide Laws” into resolutions and public laws associated with honoring that religious leader?

None of those things automatically means the United States adopted Jewish religious law. That is going to be one of the most important distinctions in the next episode. A congressional recognition is not the same thing as a criminal statute. A presidential proclamation is not the establishment of a religious court. Government praise for a moral teaching is not necessarily government enforcement of that teaching.

But I also don’t think we should dismiss it simply because it wasn’t enforcement. If I had discovered that American presidents repeatedly praised the universal moral code promoted by some obscure Christian denomination, that Congress placed the denomination’s religious terminology into federal legislation, and that representatives of the movement maintained continuing relationships in Washington, I would want to understand how that happened. Chabad deserves exactly the same scrutiny.

And that is where Part 2 leaves me. I began by asking what Schneerson wanted for the world, and the answer turned out to be much larger than I expected. He wasn’t merely trying to preserve Hasidic Judaism. He believed the world itself was moving toward redemption and that human beings had responsibilities in preparing it. Jews had a particular role, Gentiles had another, and Chabad believed it had a responsibility to help move that process forward.

That still doesn’t tell us who runs the world. It doesn’t prove Chabad secretly controls governments, banks, technology companies or international institutions. In fact, much of what we have examined provides perfectly understandable religious explanations for activities that could otherwise be made to look sinister. If I am going to accuse anybody of exercising political power, I need political evidence rather than theological speculation.

So that is exactly what we are going to look for.

We are going to leave the theology behind for a moment and follow the paper trail into Washington. We are going to look at presidents, congressional resolutions, public laws, Education Day, Chabad’s representatives in the capital and the actual language the United States government used when speaking about Schneerson and the Seven Noahide Laws. Then we can separate what really happened from what people on the internet claim happened.

Because the question is no longer whether Schneerson wanted the Noahide principles communicated beyond Judaism. The evidence we have examined says that he did. The question now is whether those principles remained religious teaching once Chabad reached America’s political leadership.

In Part 3, we find out how the Noahide Laws reached Washington.

Bibliography

• Glinter, Ezra. Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024.
• Loewenthal, Naftali. Hasidism Beyond Modernity: Essays in Habad Thought and History. London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2020.
• Rubin, Eli. Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2025.
• Schneerson, Menachem M. Likkutei Sichot: An Anthology of Talks. Bamidbar. Brooklyn, NY: Kehot Publication Society.
• Touger, Malka. Excuse Me, Are You Jewish? Stories of Chabad-Lubavitch. Brooklyn, NY: Sichos in English.
• Wexler, Philip, with Eli Rubin and Michael Wexler. Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World. New York: Herder & Herder / Crossroad Publishing Company, 2019.
• Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain. Challenge: An Encounter with Lubavitch-Chabad. London: Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain, 1970.

Endnotes

1. Eli Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity: An Existential History of Chabad Hasidism (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2025). Rubin provides the broader theological framework for Chabad’s understanding of divine immanence, concealment, the physical world, and dirah betachtonim—the idea that God’s purpose is ultimately realized within the lowest, physical realm rather than through abandoning it.
2. Menachem M. Schneerson, Likkutei Sichot: An Anthology of Talks, Bamidbar (Brooklyn, NY: Kehot Publication Society). Schneerson repeatedly connects physical mitzvot and ordinary human action with the refinement of the world and the fulfillment of creation’s divine purpose.
3. Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity. Rubin traces the development of Chabad’s activist theology from earlier Kabbalistic and Hasidic traditions, showing how spiritual transformation becomes connected with concrete human activity within the material world.
4. Schneerson, Likkutei Sichot. Schneerson’s discussions of ufaratzta, the spreading of Chassidic teaching, connect the dissemination of the “wellsprings” of Hasidism with preparation for the final redemption.
5. Naftali Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity: Essays in Habad Thought and History (London: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2020). Loewenthal documents the unusually activist character of Schneerson’s leadership and the increasing prominence of messianic redemption within his teachings and campaigns.
6. Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity. Rubin explains how Schneerson’s conception of redemption joins the transformation of the individual with the transformation of the physical world, making human activity part of the movement toward the messianic future.
7. Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity. Loewenthal discusses Schneerson’s messianic worldview in relation to Maimonides, including the expectation of Moshiach, the restoration of Jewish religious life, the gathering of Israel, the rebuilding of the Temple, and a future characterized by knowledge of God.
8. Schneerson, Likkutei Sichot. The talks repeatedly connect present religious activity with the future redemption and restoration of the Beit HaMikdash, treating the Temple as part of the concrete messianic expectation rather than merely as a metaphor for spiritual improvement.
9. Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain, Challenge: An Encounter with Lubavitch-Chabad (London: Lubavitch Foundation of Great Britain, 1970). This early English-language presentation of Lubavitch describes the movement’s outward-looking mission, its expectation of Moshiach, and the importance assigned to spreading Chassidic teaching throughout the world.
10. Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity. Loewenthal documents Schneerson’s interpretation of Maimonides as placing responsibility upon Jews to encourage non-Jews to observe the Seven Noahide Laws. He notes Schneerson’s 1963 discussion employing the traditional language of “compelling” humanity while also describing persuasion where coercion was not possible.
11. Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity. Schneerson’s Noahide campaign represented an unusually expansive understanding of Jewish responsibility toward Gentile society. The objective was not conversion to Judaism but the observance by non-Jews of the universal commandments traditionally associated with the descendants of Noah.
12. Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity. In the messianic order described in this framework, Jews and Gentiles retain distinct responsibilities. Jews remain bound to the commandments applicable to Israel, while non-Jews remain non-Jews and fulfill the Seven Noahide Laws; universal recognition of God therefore does not require universal conversion to Judaism.
13. Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity. Rubin characterizes Schneerson’s mature project as extending toward “a Jewish vision for all humanity,” helping explain how Chabad’s particular Jewish identity could coexist with an explicitly universal conception of humanity’s ultimate purpose.
14. Malka Touger, Excuse Me, Are You Jewish? Stories of Chabad-Lubavitch (Brooklyn, NY: Sichos in English). Touger’s accounts illustrate the practical operation of shlichus: emissaries establishing themselves in distant communities, developing long-term relationships, strengthening Jewish life, and building institutions capable of becoming permanent local centers.
15. Ezra Glinter, Menachem Mendel Schneerson: Becoming the Messiah (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2024). Glinter describes the expansion of Chabad’s emissary network and its decentralized financial structure, in which emissaries can receive initial support and direction while commonly becoming responsible for developing their own local donor bases and sustaining their institutions.
16. Touger, Excuse Me, Are You Jewish? The stories of Chabad activity in locations including Baku and Budapest illustrate how emissaries could develop relationships with businesspeople, donors, civic authorities, and political figures as local Chabad institutions became established. These examples demonstrate relationship-building and access but do not by themselves establish political control.
17. Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity. Rubin discusses Schneerson’s engagement with modern science, mathematics, engineering, technological development, and communications. Schneerson’s approach allowed modern inventions to be understood as physical capabilities that could be redirected toward Torah, education, and divine service rather than rejected simply because they were products of modernity.
18. Challenge: An Encounter with Lubavitch-Chabad. Discussions such as “Torah in the Space Age” illustrate the movement’s willingness to engage modern science and technology through a religious framework, including the use of contemporary scientific and technological developments as ways of communicating religious concepts to modern audiences.
19. Rubin, Kabbalah and the Rupture of Modernity. Schneerson’s engagement with technological communication fits the larger Chabad understanding that physical creation can be incorporated into divine service. Modern communications therefore provided a means of extending teachings across geographic boundaries without changing the underlying religious objective.
20. Philip Wexler, with Eli Rubin and Michael Wexler, Social Vision: The Lubavitcher Rebbe’s Transformative Paradigm for the World (New York: Herder & Herder / Crossroad Publishing Company, 2019). The work examines Schneerson’s teachings as a broader social vision concerned not merely with individual spirituality but with the transformation and repair of society.
21. Glinter, Menachem Mendel Schneerson. Glinter documents the increasing intensity of messianic expectation surrounding Schneerson, particularly during the later period of his leadership. Some followers came to identify Schneerson himself as Moshiach, but follower belief should be distinguished from the separate question of whether Schneerson explicitly and publicly proclaimed himself to be the Messiah.
22. Loewenthal, Hasidism Beyond Modernity. Loewenthal likewise examines the messianic dimension of late twentieth-century Chabad and the continuation of messianic expectation after Schneerson’s death in 1994, including differences within Chabad concerning explicit identification of Schneerson as Moshiach.
23. Taken together, Rubin, Loewenthal, Schneerson’s published talks, Glinter, Touger, and the earlier Lubavitch materials support the central conclusion of Part 2: Schneerson advocated an outward-moving religious program intended to affect both Jewish life and the wider human world in preparation for messianic redemption. These sources establish a universal and transformational religious vision; they do not, by themselves, establish a program of covert political control or world government.
24. The distinction between universal religious aspiration and governmental power is therefore essential to the investigation. Part 2 establishes motive and worldview rather than political authority. Whether Schneerson’s universal moral teachings subsequently entered relationships with presidents, Congress, federal proclamations, or American public policy requires a separate documentary investigation, which is the subject of Part 3.

#WhoReallyRunsTheWorld #ChabadInvestigation #ChabadLubavitch #MenachemMendelSchneerson #LubavitcherRebbe #MessianicRedemption #Moshiach #NoahideLaws #SevenNoahideLaws #ChabadEmissaries #Shlichus #ThirdTemple #GlobalMission #ReligiousInfluence #FollowTheEvidence #CauseBeforeSymptom

WhoReallyRunsTheWorld, ChabadInvestigation, ChabadLubavitch, MenachemMendelSchneerson, LubavitcherRebbe, MessianicRedemption, Moshiach, NoahideLaws, SevenNoahideLaws, ChabadEmissaries, Shlichus, ThirdTemple, GlobalMission, ReligiousInfluence, FollowTheEvidence, CauseBeforeSymptom