The Lubavitcher Rebbe Was Called God

As I mentioned in my Introduction to Jewish Apologetics video, the Lubavitcher Rebbe was called Lord and God by his most devout followers.

http://failedmessiah.typepad.com/failed_messiahcom/2007/02/the_lubavitcher.html
http://www.haaretz.com/news/the-lubavitcher-rebbe-as-a-god-1.212516

Rabbi Ariel Sokolovsky is a Moldova-born Chabad rabbi in Portland, Oregon, and a more amiable soul would be hard to find.

Yet Sokolovsky maintains a blog he entitled "Rebbegod" and refers to Schneerson as "Rebbe-Almighty" among other adulatory sobriquets.

Drawing on rabbinical sources, he attempts to show that this is not as revolutionary as it sounds. He concedes that there are few people like him who will openly call the Rebbe God. He claims, however, that many people believe it, but do not say so openly for fear of scaring people away from Chabad altogether.

Not only do the most devout followers of Chabad call the Rebbe "God," but the practice is more mainstream than most Chabadniks like to admit. The Rebbe himself encouraged this, saying that it is ok to pray to him since the Rebbe is the essence of God enclothed in a body (Likudei Slichos, Volume 2).

The voice of moderates who believe the Rebbe is in fact dead (though most of this group still adhere to his belief of his ultimate resurrection and coronation as messiah) is increasingly cowed, with violent brawls breaking out and spilling on the streets on a regular basis leading to scores of hospitalizations and arrests.

Even the installment of a memorial plaque can cause a riot; as one rioter told the press: "He's alive - they are writing that the Rebbe is dead!"

Even the moderates believe that the Rebbe will be resurrected and crowned as Messiah. Maimonides said that if someone dies, it disqualifies him as Messiah. Chabad shows that Maimonides is not the be all and end all of Judaism. Chabad believes that Maimonides is dead wrong in this area, and is still considered normative Orthodox Rabbinic Judaism.

Members of the congregation were happy to explain:

What do the pins signify?
"It symbolizes our dedication to the Rebbe above all else."

Above all else? Above God?
"As far as we are concerned, we can pray to the Rebbe and he can deal with God for us."

Is that not turning the Rebbe into a god himself, an idol of your own creation?
"The Rebbe was not created; the Rebbe has always been around and always will be."

If one believes in God but leaves the Rebbe aside, is one still Jewish? 

"When the messiah reveals himself, those who didn't see him won't be saved, so you should work on..." He is interrupted. "Look, what you need to do is start with God and work your way up to the Rebbe."

While it may seem bizarre to describe electrician-cum-rabbi M. M. Schneerson in this way, many of the people seen as messianist view Schneerson as a demigod. They are loathe to state this explicitly, but they will assign him characteristics of God, pray to him and, when pressed, suggest that there is really no difference between him and God. Since the Rebbe was perfection personified, he is greater than any man that ever lived; ergo he is godly - omnipotent, omniscient and unlimited.

Virtually no one within the movement today is willing to deny that Schneerson was the greatest man that ever lived nor that he was perfect.

None have a problem with praying to Schneerson, using his books for divination in place of the Bible. Even amongst those viewed as moderates, "the Rebbe" is often substituted for God in normal conversation, sprinkling their remarks with comments such as "may the Rebbe help you" or "the Rebbe is watching over us."

Even among the moderate minority, the distinction between Schneerson and God is decidedly blurred. Asking adherents whether Schneerson will return as the Messiah is unlikely to yield a directly negative response.

Demigod? The claim that the Rebbe was not created is not a description of a demigod, but of the Rebbe as God, both representationally and ontologically. None have a problem praying to the Rebbe. Again, Chabad disproves the notion that Judaism has no concept of Messiah as God. For the Lubavitchers, Schneersohn is both Messiah and God.

Schneerson wrote of his father-in-law as the messiah, though the previous rebbe had recently died. Adherents believe that when the Rebbe referred to his father-in-law, this was code for the Rebbe himself.

Why do they think that Schneerson is alive?
"The Rebbe was no normal human being," is the response. He was a polymath who "studied under Einstein in Berlin" before "inventing the atom bomb."

How do they view the connection between Schneerson and God?
"The Rebbe is not something different from God - the Rebbe is a part of God," says a British teenaged student.

Does this not 'idolize' Schneerson, in the literal sense? 
 "We cannot connect to God directly - we need the Rebbe to take our prayers from here to there and to help us in this world. We are told by our rabbis that a great man is like God and the Rebbe was the greatest man ever. That is how we know he is the messiah, because how could life continue without him? No existence is possible without the Rebbe."

Would they go so far as to describe the Rebbe and God as one and the same, as some extreme Messianists have done?
"No, some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as the creator.

"They say that God was born in 1902 and is now 105 years old. You can pray to the Rebbe and he will answer, and he was around since the beginning of time. But you must be careful to pray only to the Rebbe as a spiritual entity and not the body that was born in 1902."

Does the Rebbe have a will of his own? What if the Rebbe and God disagree?
"That is a ridiculous question! They are not separate in any way."

So the Rebbe is a part of God. 
"Yes, but it is more complex than that. There is no clear place where the Rebbe ends and God begins."

Does that mean the Rebbe is infinite omnipotent and omniscient? 
"Yes of course," an Argentine student says in Hebrew. "God chose to imbue this world with life through a body. So that's how we know the Rebbe can't have died, and that his actual physical body must be alive. The Rebbe is the conjunction of God and human. The Rebbe is God, but he is also physical."

"Some people have gone too far and described the Rebbe as creator." In other words, there are members of the Chabad organization who see the Rebbe as God in exactly the same sense as the Christian church has seen Jesus as God.

Don't ever let any rabbi or anti-missionary tell you that Judaism is incompatible with the idea that anyone who dies before the prophecies are fulfilled cannot be Messiah, or that Messiah cannot be God, or that God cannot become incarnate. These are lies and propaganda against belief in Jesus, and the situation with the Rebbe proves it.