Chabad is a Jewish movement that originated in Belarus and turned into a global movement Encyclopedia

The “Chabad” movement – also known as “Chabad-Lubavitch” – is a Hasidic Orthodox Jewish movement, with its main headquarters in the United States of America. It was founded by Rabbi Shneur Zalman in the 18th century in Belarus (Belarus), and by the beginning of the third millennium it had followers in the thousands. Until 2021, the movement has sent 4,900 Jewish families on missions to 100 countries and territories with the aim of running Hasidic Jewish educational homes.

Origin and establishment

From the small village of Liaudi in Belarus, the Chabad movement arose in 1775 at the hands of Rabbi Shneur Zalman (known as Rabbi Alter), who was a student of leaders in the emerging Hasidic movement at that time.

Zalman laid the first foundations for the movement. He focused on studying the texts of Kabbalah (Jewish mysticism), spreading Hasidic teachings, and wrote the book “Hataniyah,” which contains the main ideas of the movement’s philosophy. He chose the name “Chabad” for his movement, which is an abbreviation of 3 Hebrew words: wisdom, understanding, and knowledge. , summarizing the basic religious philosophy of the sect.

Thought and ideology

The Chabad movement seeks to revive Jewish concepts in the hearts of its followers, instill a sense of devotion and love toward others, and aims to bring non-religious Jews closer to their faith.

Chabad’s practices are consistent with those of general Orthodox Judaism and Hasidic groups, but it has some unique customs in dress and ways of celebrating the holidays.

Among the opinions promoted by his movement is the rejection of the idea of ​​“land for peace,” and it also calls for the deportation and killing of Arabs. As stated in the book “Hataniya” (the movement’s most famous fundamentalist book), “all non-Jews are satanic creatures with nothing good inside them at all.” The book also states that “the Jews must leave the lands of the defiled Gentiles and settle in the holy land of Palestine.”

The movement was distinguished from other isolated Hasidic movements by its attempt to take advantage of modern tools to reach all the Jewish communities dispersed around the world, thus gaining international presence and fame.

To expand its influence globally, the movement relies on its emissaries, known as “Shloshim,” and often sends an entire family to manage the “Chabad House” in a given country.

Flags and symbols

Shneur Zalman

Zalman was born on September 18, 1745, in the town of Lyuzhna in Belarus, and began receiving religious education at an early age, as he joined the “Holiness Society” in the city when he was only five years old at the time, and obtained the title of rabbi at the age of eight.

After he turned 18, he traveled to the town of Mezrich and joined the Hasidic movement, which was then run by Rabbi Dov Ber, and Zalman quickly became one of his most prominent students.

After Rabbi Beer’s death in 1773, Zalman was appointed responsible for organizing and expanding Hasidic activities, and two years later he founded the Chabad Movement to spread Hasidic teachings.

During that period, the “Jewish Enlightenment Movement” (Haskalah) emerged, and it called for the adoption of the values ​​of the Age of Enlightenment and secularism, and for the integration of Jews into European society, as they were known for their isolation. It stood before several Jewish movements that differed from it in its approach, including the “Chabad” movement, which became Its main goal.

Zalman suffered from the Jewish Enlightenment movement, and was arrested because of it. He spent 53 days in prison, threatened with execution, before the movement acquitted him and released him.

Rabbi Zalman, who believed in the necessity of establishing “a Jewish state in the Promised Land from the Nile River to the Euphrates River,” continued to develop and expand the Chabad movement until his death on December 24, 1813.

Menachem Mendel Schneerson

Menachem Mendel Schneerson was born on April 18, 1902 in Nikolayev, southern Ukraine, and is the fifth grandson of the third rabbi of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement.

After the death of the movement’s sixth leader, Rabbi Yosef Isaac, in January 1950, Schneerson succeeded him in January 1951, and hundreds of educational institutes came under his control. He and his office became a destination for Jews to consult on solutions to their personal problems, or to general issues facing Jewish groups in the region. The world or in Israel.

Throughout the 40 years of leading the movement, Schneerson was able to transform “Chabad” from a relatively small sect, into a “globally influential Jewish force,” as he sent envoys to all continents, with the aim of embracing “all Jews regardless of their origins and ideas,” and spreading Jewish teachings in the dispersed Jewish groups. He was an advocate of rejecting religious isolation.

The seventh rabbi of the Chabad movement, Schneerson, died in June 1994, after suffering a stroke two years earlier, which paralyzed his right side and caused him to lose the ability to speak. No one succeeded him in the leadership of the Chabad movement, and many of his followers still believe that he will be resurrected because he is the “awaited Messiah.”

Most prominent stations

Following the death of Rabbi Sheneur Zalman, the followers of the movement split into two groups: the first was led by his son Dov Ber Sheneuri, and the other followed his student Aharon Halevi.

The son, Bear, moved the movement’s headquarters to the Russian town of Lubavitch, near the border with Belarus. The movement remained stationed there for nearly a century, then Shalom Dov Ber Schneerson moved it to the Russian city of Rostov in 1915.

After the death of Rabbi Schneerson in 1920, his only son, Yosef Isaac, took over the leadership of the movement, during a critical political period that Russia suffered after the outbreak of the Bolshevik Revolution, in which communism imposed official atheism in Russia.

Isaak was arrested and imprisoned on charges of planning counter-revolutionary activity, and was eventually forced to leave Russia. He lived for a period in Latvia and Poland before moving to the United States in 1940.

Following Isaac’s death in 1950, he was succeeded as leader of the movement by Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schnersion (his son-in-law), who spread the movement’s thought globally and was keen to send envoys to all continents, with the aim of spreading Jewish teachings among the dispersed Jewish groups.

During Schneerson’s leadership, the movement demanded that successive Israeli governments annex the Palestinian territories and the Golan after the 1967 war, considering this a sacred matter no less important than waiting for the appearance of Christ.

Menachem continued to spread the ideas of the movement until his death in 1994, and no one succeeded him in its leadership, but it maintained its breadth and spread, and became the most open among the “Jewish and ultra-Orthodox” groups in the modern era.

Following the “Al-Aqsa Flood” operation launched by the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) on October 7, 2023, on the settlements surrounding the Gaza Strip, pictures spread of Israeli soldiers belonging to the movement, announcing the conversion of a building in the town of Beit Hanoun in Gaza into a “Chabad” house. “.