הרבי מליובאוויטש – האם הוא היה המשיח? הרב טוביה סינגר

Call you live on the air. Go ahead and present your question right away. >> Hello Rabbi. Thank you for taking my call. I just Sorry if I get any of the pronunciation wrong, but I wanted to ask you about the Lubavitch and Rabbi Schneerson. It seems like it's uh it is quite a popular belief that he was the Messiah. But it seems to me that most of the objections people would put against Jesus being the Messiah would also apply to him. Like he passed away without any gathering of exiles and world peace and all of these sorts of things. And from my understanding, Chabad is an organization that kind of like you helps bring Jews out of Christianity. It helps them become observant Jews. So it seems to me that uh people in an organization like that would be especially skeptical of a seemingly Jesus-like claim like that. So I just kind of struggle to understand why so many people in Chabad seem to believe he was the Messiah. >> I had the opportunity to meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe and be blessed by him on many occasions. He was a very great man. And while he was alive maybe he would have been that person who was designated to be Messiah. Maybe. In every generation, there's someone who is set aside to be from the who's from the tribe of Yehuda, from a descendant of David and Solomon. Who is ready to step forward in every generation. That's why Messiah is called the branch. What kind of name is a branch for a Messiah? Because like a tree that has hundreds and hundreds of branches that come from a root in the same way from the root of Jesse. This is the language of Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1 from the shares from the root of Jesse have all these branches which means throughout history in every generation there's somebody who is ready to step forward as the Messiah if the generation deserves it. Meaning if Jacob repents, see Isaiah 59 verse 20. The person is a mere mortal. He is not only a descendant of David and Solomon but is a righteous person. He's a teacher in Israel. These are the qualifications we have in the Bible. See Isaiah chapter 2 verse 3 and 4. See Isaiah chapter 11 verse 1 through 3. You see it very clearly. He's a person that teaches and judges. He's not a miracle man. He's not doing any of those things. So therefore it's possible and I thought while he was alive that maybe he is. You know, he certainly seems to display the character that we expect from Messiah, a great teacher. And he uniquely was a person that preserved the Jewish people and preserved Torah during a very very difficult time for world Jewry. During a time in the United States when America was going through a a tremendous upheaval. It was tremendous upheaval in the United States from from the moment really Kennedy was murdered. And it was just upheaval. It was just constant upheaval. Vietnam Watergate and that triggered all the the assassinations where JFK was murdered in '68 and Dr. King of blessed memory was murdered in '68. You know what this did? It ripped the country to pieces. And then you had a president who resigned. A president who resigned? I remember watching it. I was shocked. A president who just resigns and flies away in a helicopter. It's like he thought you were dreaming. It was really there were just a few people in America who kept the tire alive. And he was someone that infused Torah and Hashem. So, of course, that's the kind of person that could be Was he Was he Was he I I have no idea. But let's just say he was. I thought so. And in fact, when the Rebbe had his second stroke, which was catastrophic, and he was at Beth Israel Hospital, word was that he was not going to survive that. And I remember his followers saying, and it was in the news, that he will survive, and his survival of this catastrophic stroke will damage will be the miracle that he will demonstrate that he is in the Messiah. That's what went on at the time. Nobody zero people in Chabad said that he would die. None of them thought he would die. And then he died. And what that was a group then breaks away and says, "Ah, he's supposed to die." And look for these kind of ways of showing that the Messiah is supposed to die, and they look for things that just don't appear in Chabad literature prior to it. It means it was nowhere. So, that's That was an unfortunate move. But I mean, the Messiah is It openly says in the in Mishneh Torah in Laws of Kings, that the Messiah died. If the person dies, then he's not the Messiah, period. End. In Tanakh, when someone is given an anointing for a certain mandate, they fulfill it, or they die, and they're not it. Moses was given a mandate to lead the nation of Israel out of Egypt. He did it. He didn't die. When Joshua was given the mandate to bring the children of Israel to the promised land and cross the Jordan. He did it. And he didn't die and come back. When Cyrus, the king of Persia, was given a mandate to tell the Jews to return to the land of Israel, he did it. And he made the speech that you'll find at the beginning of the book of Ezra. No one dies come back. You do it or you don't do it. If you don't do it, you're not it. It is unfortunate that there were many people who just could not um could not handle that. That would be somebody else. Maybe that's why he never went to the land of Israel during his lifetime. Maybe he was designated to be the Messiah and coming to the land of Israel might I don't know this at all. Something I thought about, like why didn't he go to Israel? Means there's many mitzvahs he could fulfill living in Israel. Like Moses didn't come to Israel. If he would have come to Israel in our thought, that would have been it. Could it be? This is my speculation personally. Maybe. I don't know this. And I'm used to on this show to only talk about things that I know that are demonstrable. I don't. It's just things I you might as well get a peek into how I think. But what happened is that when he died, instead of just saying, "Okay, he was the Messiah for that generation. It's somebody else." They There were some people who said they can't be the Messiah anymore. Like his assistant. And there were others who just said, "No, he's supposed to die and then he'll return as the Messiah." And then what they did was they found obscure sources like a Talmud in in the in Sanhedrin and Rashi offers two explanations for so they See, but the problem was is the claim is fantastic and the evidence was not. And something I've always told you, the evidence fantastic claims require fantastic evidence. We don't have it here. And I've had many people in Chabad tell me over the years that why don't I speak about this what's called the Meshichist movement? And why don't you speak about it? You should cuz they feel there are I just met a fellow here in Jerusalem who's the head of a Chabad in the United States who I remember lecturing for him many years ago in America who said again to me what he said to me many years ago. Said he he felt it's his view that saying that the Rebbe will resurrect and be the Messiah he feels is a disgrace to the Rebbe's legacy. And he asked me in a friendly way exactly what he asked me years ago. And he's a very famous guy in Chabad, very famous. He says, "Why don't you speak about it?" La Havdala, one should never compare this to Christianity. Never do that. Cuz Christianity was a religious movement that oppressed the children of Israel. That's Edom itself that did everything possible to destroy Torah. That it's the Christian canon that in and of itself instructs the Jews that they shouldn't keep the mitzvahs anymore. That brought was a a cancer that transmitted idolatry, the doctrine of the Trinity. So, a person should resist this kind of speech. If you fear Hashem if you've ever said such a thing, you should repent of it immediately. You should never God forbid compare the two. You could say that what happens when when hopes are dashed sociologically that a person will not have any word from Hashem from God forbid comparing Chabad which is a holy movement which spreads Torah all over the world. Such beautiful people. Are there some in that group that have this view? They do. I don't know what the numbers are. Whatever it is. But you can kids go and compare that to a movement that oppressed the children of Israel, that destroyed Torah, that says that Jews don't have to keep any mitzvot and shouldn't keep any mitzvot, and it's in the Christian Bible. I know I'm going to get Oh, that was later. It's not later. It's in Romans chapter 7 speaking about Jews. So anybody wants to say, "Oh, they weren't real Christians." You're making a big, big, big mistake. Big, big mistake. So the Christianity I'm not going to say from the get-go. I can't tell you what Christianity was like in the first few years. Perhaps originally originally it was just a a mistaken uh heresy of Judaism. But they certainly did believe in the Trinity and they certainly kept Shabbos. And we know that. How do I know that? Cuz we see that in Paul's letters. Paul fought that. There's no way in the world Paul was inventing that he was fighting the notion that people should keep Torah. That means Paul was fiercely antinomian. So why if they were if the earliest Christians opposed uh Torah means opposed Torah, then what was Paul complaining about? So it's very clear that's not the case that the earliest Christians were. But it very quickly cuz we see in Paul's letters which were all written in the 50s, that the really it was by then a non-Jewish project at the time. We see who's becoming Christians in the 50s. It's It's non-Jews. I don't mean disparagingly. But so if Nick Fuentes wants to go crazy with me, don't go crazy with me. Means it was non-Jews. Who's Gentiles? Not a Jewish word, but it was non-Jews. Very clear. Doesn't mean there were no Jews. There were, but it was you could see from the text. So, therefore, one should be very, very, very careful if you cherish me. Don't compare Chabad movement, which is a holy movement, which spreads terror around the world, is so instrumental. If people are mistaken in it, it's the same, but it's you can't ever compare it to the ideology of Christianity. That those words should never come out of your mouth. Even me saying this is something that I'm reluctant to do. But, I just say this to others, and that is when you have a fantastic claim, you better come up with fantastic evidence. And moreover, Chazal very clearly stated that if someone dies, then Jesus can't be the Messiah cuz he died. That was it. And Rabbi Akiva even the Rambam demonstrates from Bar Kochba after Rabbi Akiva was a supporter of Bar Kochba, who rebelled against the empire about 60 years after the temple was destroyed in 132. The Rambam proves Jewish law and understanding of Messiah from how Rabbi Akiva behaved. So, Rabbi Akiva endorsed this movement. And he apparently didn't care about three Os and none of that. And then Bar Kochba was killed. The end of it. And that's it. And we have guardrails and playing tennis with a net, not like the others. That's it. So, we have such a massive evidence that all goes in one direction, so that I hope that we'll all be together as one. And but one should resist the temptation chos v'cholila to ever mention the Lubavitcher Rebbe of blessed memory with anything to do with Christianity, God forbid. Cuz it's a mistake to think that the reason why Jesus is not the Messiah is cuz he just simply died. It's that he's everything the opposite of Messiah. Everything is the opposite. She's being the son of God all that. That's what is really fundamentally wrong. Thank you very much for your thoughtful question. May we be blessed to see the [music] coming of the true Messiah and may he be a man and quickly in our time. Thank you. If you enjoyed this program, please like and subscribe. >> [music] [music]