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Sharon's nephew to protest Gaza pullout
05.05.2005.18:43
Hundreds of rabbis from the so-called messianic camp of the Lubavitcher Hassidim will meet Thursday in Kfar Chabad to formulate a battle strategy against the disengagement plan, which they see as an imminent threat to the Jews of Israel.
They will also discuss ways of better disseminating the message that the late Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the messiah.
One of the participants reportedly will be Rabbi Ofer Miodovnik, one of the rabbis at the Chabad yeshiva in Safed, who also happens to be Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's nephew. Sharon's two deceased wives were the sisters of Miodovnik's mother. Miodovnik grew up in a secular household before becoming observant. He was unavailable for comment.
According to Rabbi Yigal Pizam, the rabbi of the Chabad community in Kiryat Shmuel, near Haifa, the concept of Greater Israel is a central tenet of Chabad thought.
"The rebbe spoke on innumerable occasions of the importance of upholding the entirety of the Torah, of reaching the entirety of the Jewish people and of protecting the entirety of the Land of Israel," he said.
Thursday's meeting will coincide with the anniversary of a famous discourse given by Schneerson in 1991 entitled, "Do everything in your power," in which he urged his hassidim to prepare the world for the messianic era. "And, more specifically," said Pizam, "that the rebbe is Moshiah."
Like many other messianic Chabad rabbis, Pizam's cellphone contains the digits 770, the address of Chabad's headquarters on Eastern Parkway in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He answers his phone with the greeting: "Long live our master [the rebbe]."
According to Pizam, since the rebbe is Moshiah, no one can be more qualified than him to warn against the dangers of the disengagement plan.
"The rebbe... said that ceding parts of the Land of Israel to gentiles endangers every single Jew," he said. "We must make this known unabashedly."
Rabbi Yosef Yitzhak Wilschanski, head of the Chabad yeshiva in Safed, also said the rebbe's opinion on this matter must be made known.
"We must do everything in our power to publish the rebbe's teachings on the dangers of giving up land," he said. "It is also incumbent on every one of us to disseminate the idea that the rebbe is Moshiah." More than 400 students learn in the Chabad yeshiva in Safed.
All Chabadniks, and especially the more messianic ones, are emphatic about the dangers of ceding land to the Palestinians and the disengagement plan.
Still, even among the more messianic elements there is dissent regarding operative measures that should be taken against disengagement. Many fear that burning tires, blocking roads and other expressions of civil disobedience might be counterproductive.
During Pessah, more than 1,000 Chabadniks visited Sa-Nur, Homesh and Avnei Hefetz, three settlements in northern Samaria slated for evacuation.
Through the end of the Jewish month of Nissan, about 20 Chabad students have set up a temporary yeshiva in Homesh, and each day of the week a different Chabad rabbi has come to speak. Miodovnik also visited the yeshiva this week to speak to the students about the dangers inherent in his uncle's disengagement plan.
Rabbi Uriel Gurfinkel, a Chabad emissary in Avnei Hefetz, who organized the visits to the settlements, said he planned to bring at least six Chabad families to Homesh to live.
In tandem, Chabad rabbis are planning to bring hundreds of hassidim to visit the settlements in the Gaza Strip and encourage their residents.
What perhaps sets the more zealous Chabadniks apart from their colleagues is the belief that disseminating the idea that the rebbe is the messiah must be actively pursued. In fact, the dissemination of the idea actually speeds the coming of the messianic era, they say.
So-called messianic Chabadniks believe that the rebbe, whose 11th yahrzeit is approaching, is really still alive. They admit this leap of faith cannot be rationally understood, but nevertheless adhere to it.
Even Chabadniks who are not openly messianic are said to believe that the rebbe is the messiah. However, they reportedly are apprehensive that openly espousing this belief is detrimental to Chabad's primary mission – to bring secular Jews closer to authentic Judaism.
Jerusalem Post
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